Carbon Management

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^‍Capturing CO₂ from exhaust pipes

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While the world is developing and scaling climate solutions, existing factories are still pumping out millions of tons of CO₂ every day. If we can capture that CO₂ and make sure that it doesn’t reach the sky, it will help us stretch the carbon budget that we still have. Ensuring that we don’t use these polluting factories longer than necessary, even when retrofitted with CCS, is critical because we typically don’t capture all the CO₂, and storing it is still really hard.

₀₁ Point-source carbon capture

The world has been talking about carbon capture, or point-source capture, for a long time. While it is not a long-term solution, capturing the CO₂ that comes out of exhaust pipes can help decarbonize industry and energy in the near term. In situations where the exhaust fumes are quite clean, like geothermal energy and gas power plants, capturing the CO₂ is relatively easy and cheap. For applications where the fumes are dirtier, such as cement or coal, it is harder.
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Removing CO₂ from the sky

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There are many ways to remove CO₂ from the air. Natural carbon removal includes a wide variety of organic solutions, including planting trees, growing seaweed and restoring ecosystems. Direct air capture (DAC) is a new method, which can remove CO₂ from the air anywhere, not just at the site of emission.

₀₁ Natural climate solutions

Numerous natural methods exist for CO₂ removal, including afforestation, forest conservation, and improved soil management. These approaches currently account for approximately 30% of yearly CO₂ emissions removal. They are cost-effective, capable of being scaled up worldwide, and offer additional advantages such as enhanced agricultural productivity. However, this solution has some challenges like forests and croplands being prone to wildfires and other natural disasters, and the fact that natural-based removal is hard to measure.
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₀₂ Biomass with Carbon Removal and Storage (BiCRS)

Biomass can be used to capture and store CO₂. Typically this is called Biomass with Carbon Removal and Storage (BiCRS). In certain use cases, energy is extracted from the biomass, for example by burning it, after which the CO₂ is captured and stored. This is called bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS). In theory, BECCS could produce carbon-negative power. In practice, this is still quite hard to achieve, and expensive. Within BiCRS, biochar is one of the main technologies. Biochar is made by burning organic waste without oxygen, creating energy in the process. The end product, biochar (i.e. charcoal) stores CO₂ for hundreds of years and can be added to soil to improve fertility.
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₀₃ Engineered solutions

Right now, we have some promising ways to capture carbon dioxide (CO₂) from places where a lot of it is produced, like factories making ethanol or hydrogen. These methods are a step in the right direction but aren't enough by themselves to completely stop climate change. In the future, to really make a big difference, we need to figure out how to do this in industries that don't produce as concentrated CO₂, like steel and cement making. This is tough because it's expensive, and without new rules or improvements in technology, it's hard to do on a large scale.

Another cool idea is Direct Air Capture (DAC), which literally takes CO₂ right out of the air. It's a great tool for tackling climate change because it can accurately measure how much CO₂ we're removing. However, it uses a lot of energy, could run into legal issues, and is currently one of the most expensive options available. So far, there are only two big projects doing this.
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₀₄ Enablers

To be able to know how much CO₂ we remove from the air and how much we capture for instance, in the soil, we require adequate carbon measurement. High-quality data enables better decision-making and more robust carbon markets.
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CO₂ storage

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Once CO₂ is captured, we can use it as input for different products or store it permanently. One of the main uses of CO₂ is the production of synthetic aviation fuel (see energy production → sustainable fuels chapter). However, as the CO₂ is still released when the e-fuel is burned this application doesn’t store CO₂ for long. CO₂ can also be used to make chemicals, like plastics, and this stores CO2 for longer. It can also be stored permanently, for example by storing it underground, injecting it into the deep ocean, or by reacting CO₂ with naturally occurring minerals to form stable carbonate minerals.

₀₁ Carbon utilization with semi-permanent storage

The biggest use cases of carbon utilization are chemical synthesis and fuel production. Chemical synthesis means that CO₂ is utilized in chemical processes to produce a variety of products, including chemicals and polymers—which we can make plastics for example. We can also use the CO₂ to produce fuels, like e-SAF, which is aviation fuel derived from renewable energy (see energy production → sustainable fuels chapter for more info).
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₀₂ Carbon storage

Carbon can be stored in various ways. One way is geological storage where the CO₂ is injected underground into rock formations and stored thousands of meters below the surface. Another way is mineral carbonation, which involves a reaction of CO₂ with naturally occurring minerals to form stable carbonate minerals. We can also store CO₂ in the deep ocean, where it is dissolved under high pressure. Lastly, CO₂ can be used for enhanced oil recovery where the CO₂ is injected into oil fields to help release more oil, after which it is stored underground.
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