The World We Can Avoid By Removing Excess Carbon Dioxide

In April 2017, the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere went over 410 parts per million. These suggests that the last time atmospheric CO2 was over 400 ppm was at least as far back as the Pliocene, three to five million years ago, before humans roamed the earth and when the climate was considerably warmer than today.

If we have put too much carbon dioxide into the air, wouldn’t it make sense to simply remove it? Well, yes: it would. Sadly, it’s a costly affair, and doing it on a large enough scale to make a real difference would be arduous. To turn it into a viable technology, we need two things: time, and plenty of money. Billionaire philanthropist and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has taken it as a personal challenge.

Carbon Engineering (CE), a company owned in part by Bill Gates, has constructed a prototype plant, installed large fans, and has been extracting around one tonne of pure CO2 every day for a year. Recently, CE passed a major milestone, when it directly began synthesizing a mixture of petrol and diesel, using only CO2 captured from the air and hydrogen split from water with clean electricity. This carbon-neutral, synthetic petrol and diesel will fuel today’s cars, trucks, ships and planes.

The technology may not sound new, but it would be groundbreaking. In the past, synthetic fuels have been made from CO2 and H2, but on a much smaller scale. Carbon Engineering’s pilot plant is the first instance of Air to Fuels where all the equipment has large-scale industrial precedent. It gives a real indication of commercial performance and viability.

A High-stakes Gamble

Governments have argued that the world’s primary concern shouldn’t be to capture excess CO2, but to make less emissions. In the journal Science, Professor Kevin Anderson, deputy director of the Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research, and Glen Peters research director at the Center for International Climate Research (Cicero) in Norway, argue that technologies to remove excess carbon from the planet may not work at scale.