Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS)- A Solution to the Climate Crisis
A new study published in Nature, “Equity in allocating carbon dioxide removal quotas”, highlights the need for a crash program to develop Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technology and to agree on targets for each country if we are to have any chance of avoiding the worst effects of the climate emergency, which are likely to occur much sooner than expected.
The evident inability of individual countries to significantly reduce their carbon dioxide emissions shows that creating markets to trade emission rights is insufficient. Unless we start applying drastic alternatives, we will be limited to token reductions and merely exchanging emissions between companies, and we will have passed the tipping point beyond which we can no longer slow climate change.
A logical, and natural, solution for fixing carbon dioxide is to plant more trees. However, despite the popularity among the public for this measure, which has seen the creation of vast plantations around the world and countries such as Ethiopia plant 353 million trees in a single day, this will not solve the problem on its own and sometimes simply creates additional problems when these plantations are created in ecosystems such as grasslands, which were never intended to host trees.
Other interesting alternatives include the use of a building materials capable of absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through chemical reactions that can help them grow, strengthen or repair themselves. Another is covering beaches with olivine, a group of green silicates made of very cheap iron and magnesium found in vast abundance in the earth’s crust, which absorb carbon dioxide as it oxidizes through the progressive action of waves.
One way or another, we must find as many ways as possible to capture carbon dioxide, either directly from the atmosphere, or at the moment of its emission. The first approach is possible, but requires intensive measures, given that the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is measured in parts per million, and it is doubtful that even with the right technologies, which do exist, they would make a significant difference.
The alternative is to capture carbon dioxide during the industrial processes that produce it large amounts, such as oil refining — which will continue until there are viable alternatives for its many uses — or concrete production, and then store it underground. Carbon dioxide can even be used as an energy source in the final stages of the industrial processes that systematically generate it. Obviously, the availability of such technologies should never be used as an excuse to increase our carbon dioxide emissions, but they can help alleviate the problem.
It’s clear that we are now have more and more technologies for capturing carbon dioxide at our disposal and that the companies dedicated to researching these processes are finding it easy to attract investors. In short, the economic opportunity and the need is there. And it’s becoming more important to everyone with every day that passes.
