Efforts exerted to achieve

The world’s largest plant that sucks carbon dioxide directly from the air and deposits it underground was put into operation in Iceland on September 8, making a breakthrough in realising the goal of carbon neutrality (Net Zero emissions) by 2050.

Swiss start-up Climeworks AG, which specialises in capturing carbon dioxide directly from the air, has partnered with Icelandic carbon storage firm Carbfix to develop a plant that sucks out up to 4,000 tonnes of CO₂ from the air per year. That’s the equivalent of the annual emissions from about 790 cars.

Direct air capture is one of the few technologies extracting carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and is viewed by scientists as vital to limiting global warming, which is blamed for causing more heatwaves, wildfires, floods and rising sea levels.

It cannot be denied that emission reduction strategies such as the transition to renewable energy, energy efficiency and combating deforestation are extremely important. However, they alone will not be enough to realise the ambition mentioned above.

THE NECESSITY TO ACHIEVE CARBON NEUTRALITY

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), average global temperatures between 2011 and 2020 were 1.1°C higher compared with 1850 to 1900. If this trend continues, the planet will be 2-3°C hotter by end of this century.

The main cause of the increase in temperature is the higher amount of CO₂ in the atmosphere, which causes the atmosphere to trap the Sun's heat and prevent it from being radiated back into space. Since 1850, the proportion of CO₂ in the air has increased from 0.029% to 0.041% (288 ppm to 414 ppm).

Over the past 50 years, more than 1200 billion tons of CO₂ has been emitted into the planet's atmosphere – with 36.6 billion tons in 2018 alone. As a corollary, the average temperature of the earth's surface has increased about 0.8°C in just half a century.

The Paris Agreement, a legally binding international treaty on climate change, was adopted by 196 Parties at COP 21 in Paris in 2015. Its goal is to limit global warming to well below 2, preferably to 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared to pre-industrial levels. To achieve this long-term temperature goal, countries aim to reach global peaking of greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible. According to calculations by the IPCC, if the maximum emissions are about 300 billion tonnes, there will be a 50% chance of limiting the increase in global temperature to 1.5°C. However, if CO₂ emissions remain at current levels, the aforementioned CO₂ “budget” will be used up in just 7 years.

The IPCC’s special report highlighted the importance of achieving net zero emissions by 2050, underscoring that only cutting greenhouse gas emissions is not enough. To prevent the worst effects of global warming it is necessary to drastically scale up carbon removal technologies (negative emission technologies – NETs).

Carbon removal refers to pulling existing CO₂ out of the atmosphere, with methods ranging from simply planting trees to building gigantic carbon-sucking machinery. Carbon removal is essential because China, India, and other emerging economies will continue to use fossil fuels for energy for years after the US and Europe have largely phased them out, and because a few sectors of the economy, like aviation and steel production, will also likely rely on fossil energy for decades.

To reach net zero global emissions before 2050, those emissions will have to be offset by carbon removal.

COUNTRIES’ EFFORTS IN CO₂ REMOVAL

As the host of COP26, the UK is showing strong steps towards reducing CO₂ emissions in the atmosphere, towards net zero emissions by 2050 and averting the climate crisis.

In May, 2021, a project worth GBP30 million – funded by UK Research and Innovation – was officially announced to test methods to realise this effort in an efficient and feasible manner on a land area of 100 hectares. This is one of the largest trials in the world.

Accordingly, the project will be rolled out across the UK, by test trees, peat, rock chips, and charcoal as ways of removing climate-heating emissions.

These greenhouse gas removal demonstrator projects will investigate enhanced rock weathering – crushing silicate rocks and spreading the particles at field trial sites on farmland in mid-Wales, Devon and Hertfordshire; and the use of biochar, a charcoal-like substance, as viable methods of carbon sequestration. Testing will take place at arable and grassland sites in the Midlands and Wales, a sewage disposal site in Nottinghamshire, former mine sites, and railway embankments.

Large-scale methods of using trees to capture carbon will also be examined across the UK. The last trial will measure the carbon removal potential of energy crops such as willow and miscanthus grass for the first time at a commercial scale. These crops would be burned for energy, with the CO₂ emissions to be trapped and stored underground.

Scientists at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have concluded there is no way of keeping the global temperature rise to the internationally agreed target of 1.5C without both cutting emissions and removing billions of tonnes of CO₂ from the atmosphere each year by 2050. The UK’s official climate advisers estimate the UK is likely to need to remove about 100m tonnes of CO₂ a year by 2050 in order to reach net zero.

Carbon removal is also deemed essential because it will be difficult to halt all emissions from sectors such as aviation, farming and cement by 2050. The new trials are part of a £110m government programme that also includes trials of using technology to scrub CO₂ directly from the air.

As the second largest emitter of CO₂ in the world, the US is making important moves to remove CO₂ from the atmosphere. The US Department of Energy (DOE) on August 17 announced US$24 million in funding for nine research projects to explore and develop new methods of capturing and storing carbon from the air. Direct Air Capture (DAC) is an expanding field in decarbonisation and a key facet of the plan to achieving net-zero emissions by 2050.

"Finding methods to remove and store carbon directly from the air is an absolute necessity in our fight against the climate crisis," said Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm. "This investment in carbon capture technology research through universities and DOE laboratories will position America as a leader in this growing field, create good-paying jobs, and help make our carbon-free future a reality."

Studies indicate curbing carbon emissions alone will not be sufficient, and innovative approaches like direct air capture will be required to combat the climate crisis. 

Accordingly, US$24 million will be funded to two national laboratories and seven universities, including North Carolina A&T State University, an Historically Black University. The awards tackle topics including the discovery of novel materials, chemistries, and processes for extraction of carbon dioxide from air, and combined experimental and computational studies on carbon dioxide capture for sequestration or reuse.  

In September 2020, Norway announced a US$1.8 billion funding package for the world’s first full-scale carbon capture and storage (CCS) project named ‘Longship’.

Accordingly, the project will fund a carbon capture project at a cement factory in southern Norway, which is operated by Germany’s Heidelberg Cement, and a waste incineration plant in Oslo that is operated by Finland’s state-owned energy company Fortum. Fortum states on its website that the project “can annually remove as much pollution from the atmosphere as is generated by 60,000 cars.”

Both facilities plan to capture around 400,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions.

Longship will also include the project Northern Lights, a joint venture between oil giants Equinor, Shell, and Total. The Northern Lights project will transport liquid CO₂ by ship from the capture plants to an onshore facility on Norway’s west coast, at Øygarden in Vestland County, for temporary storage. Northern Lights will then move the CO₂ via a pipeline to a subsea reservoir in the North Sea.

Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg said it is a “milestone” in the Norwegian government’s efforts to combat climate change. “The project will lead to emission cuts, and facilitate development of new technology and thus new jobs.”

Carbon removal has not only received great attention from governments, but also drawn much effort from businesses and investors.

Apple Inc. recently announced a US$200 million fund with the goal of removing carbon from the atmosphere. The Restore Fund was launched in partnership with Conservation International and Goldman Sachs. The fund aims to remove one million metric tons of carbon dioxide annually from the atmosphere, equal to the amount spewed by more than 200,000 passenger vehicles. The project aims to prove that investment in nature can generate a financial return for investors.

The US$100 million Carbon Removal X Prize, which is funded by SpaceX and Tesla chief Elon Musk and his foundation, was officially launched on April 22.

The four-year global competition invites innovators and teams from anywhere on the planet to create and demonstrate solutions that can pull carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere or oceans and sequester it durably and sustainably. To win the grand prize, teams must demonstrate a working solution at a scale of at least 1000 tonnes removed per year; model their costs at a scale of 1 million tonnes per year; and show a pathway to achieving a scale of gigatonnes per year in the future.

Any carbon negative solution is eligible: nature-based, direct air capture, oceans, mineralisation, or anything else that achieves net negative emissions, sequesters CO₂ durably, and shows a sustainable path to achieving low costs at the gigatonne scale.

Analysis by the World Resources Institute (WRI) has shown that the most cost-effective and lowest risk strategy for building out carbon removal capacity involves developing and deploying a variety of approaches in tandem.

Each carbon removal approach offers both promise and challenges, but capturing and storing the CO₂ that is already in the air must be part of the climate change strategy around the world to avoid dangerous levels of global warming.

The importance of removing CO₂ from the atmosphere is undisputed. However, according to Christian Bauer, a scientist at the Laboratory for Energy Systems Analysis (Switzerland), the technologies for CO₂ capture are merely complementary to an overall decarbonisation strategy – that is, for the reduction of CO₂ emissions – and cannot replace it. Sharing the same view, Professor Cameron Hepburn at the University of Oxford emphasised that cutting emissions from the burning of fossil fuels as fast as possible remains vital to tackling global warming.

Published: 29,2021
Production manager: TRUONG SON
Translation: THU HANG, KHANH BINH
Design: VAN TOAN, PHAN ANH
Sources: Vox, DW,The Conversation, Reuters, The Guardian,WRI, Energy.gov