Over the last few years, several countries have introduced targets to reach carbon neutral economies — and renewable energies play a huge role in that. If the world is to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, as governments all around the world have pledged, we’ll likely need to increase the pace of production, distribution and use of solar panels, wind turbines and other sources of renewable energy.
But while growth in the renewable energy sector has been nothing short of impressive in the last decade, that won’t be enough on its own to bring about the energy transition fast enough.
That’s because experts say that decarbonizing some sectors of the economy will be extremely difficult and expensive. Some sectors — like heavy industries, fertilizers and long-haul transport — are expected to eventually transition to hydrogen, but the technology to make that change a reality is still a long way away. Other industries, like cement, may be very hard to decarbonize even after we shift into a hydrogen economy.
Simply put, If we don’t find alternative ways to reduce the emissions of these sectors, we may have to set aside our net-zero emission targets.
But the technology to avoid that scenario and decarbonize heavy industries may already be here: Carbon capture and storage. This includes an array of new technologies that can remove carbon dioxide from the air, preventing it from contributing to global warming. For example, special solvent filters could be applied to the chimneys of heavy-emissions factories and plants, trapping the CO2 before it reaches the atmosphere and putting it away. In rarer cases, some technologies could even remove CO2 directly from the air.
Yet the capture processes are just part of the journey. How will the captured carbon be transported, stored and reused? Fortunately we are seeing a flurry of interesting innovations in these fields:
- One solution is to compress the carbon, then dump it where it came from: deep underground. Nature offers plenty of geological sites that would be perfect to store carbon: essentially, you want porous rock surrounded by a layer of impermeable rocks to act as a seal. Some sandstone formations and oil reservoirs, for example, would be excellent locations. But paradoxically, pumping carbon underground requires a lot of energy — and leaks could always undermine the efforts.
- The removed CO2 can be used to produce synthetic fuels — first of them being e-methane (synthetic methane) which is similar to fossil methane. This would likely be a stop-gap solution as we move away from oil, gas and coal and the other high-emissions fuels we still depend on. But using the captured carbon and other elements to create new fuels could greatly reduce their environmental footprint.
- A range of companies, such as Blue Planet and The Los Gatos, are already turning the captured carbon into carbonate rocks, which can be used to produce building materials such as concrete. Compared to fuels, which would release the carbon immediately, concrete would sequester it for many years.
There are also a range of emerging solutions that promise to not only to lock away the carbon, but to extract value from it. Several start-ups have already begun to find ways to inject the CO2 into the creative loops of the circular economy — to produce plastics, grow greenhouse plants, make sparkling drinks, and much more, skipping the storage issue step and issue. Here are a few of the most ingenious ideas:
- The UK-based company Deep Branch has developed a process to replace soy-based animal feed with proteins made from recycled carbon dioxide, potentially solving two environmental quagmires at once. Soy crops have been linked to deforestation in parts of the world including the Amazon, and the global demand for the product has been skyrocketing for years — partially fuelled by its use in animal feed. In Deep Branch’s alternative animal feed, the carbon captured at emitting sources goes through a fermentation process that produces a high-value protein that can be used to feed animals without requiring arable land.
- Similarly, the Californian company Kiverdi has developed technology that traps carbon and transforms it into nutrients and bio-products, such as fishmeal. It is usually made with wild-caught fish, which means that producing high levels of fishmeal to sustain the world’s growing hunger for seafood could lead to overfishing and threaten entire ecosystems. But Kiverdi’s proprietary bioreactors — powered by renewable energy — can turn CO2 into nutrients that are mixed with other ingredients to make sustainable, competitively priced fishmeal, which the company says has the same nutritional value as the more traditional feed.
- The textile industry is responsible for some 1.2 billion metric tons of CO2 per year — close to the level of emissions of the entire automotive industry. No wonder that here too, green innovation is brewing. The Dutch company DyeCoo has developed technology to replace the water and steam normally used to dye garments and fabrics with captured CO2. The company pressurizes CO2, turning it into supercritical CO2 — a state in which it facilitates the dissolving of the dye and carrying it into the textiles’ fiber.
- Coty and LanzaTech have found carbon-captured applications in the perfume industry too. Fragrances usually need ethanol, which allows the scent to disperse but is generally produced from ethene in a fossil-fuel-intensive reaction — or from natural sources like sugar cane, which requires the use of arable land and has an environmental impact. The companies have found a way to produce ethanol from captured carbon, and are in the process of introducing the new ingredient in the fragrances and ingredients they produce for Lacoste, Calvin Klein and other top brands.
- A new Canadian online shop has begun selling products made at least partly by sequestered carbon emissions. Expedition Air, a Calgary-based store, sells 22 different items made from recycled carbon dioxide — everything from pens, to yoga mats to crayons. Each product serves as a carbon sink: they’re made of a powder derived from carbon dioxide captured at a natural gas plant in Calgary. And, except premium products like concrete pens, they sell for competitive prices too.
ENGIE EXPERT EYE - Samuel Saysset, Lead Techno Advisor and ENGIE Global Expert
“Turning CO2 into profits may sound futuristic, and yet technologists have already come up with innovative solutions making huge progress in that domain in the past years. For example, expedition Air is the consumer product division of Carbon Upcycling Technologies, which has developed a carbon capture and utilization (CCU) technology producing nanoparticles from CO2 emissions for use in concrete, anti-corrosion coatings, new plastics, adhesives, and other products.
There are other many initiatives and companies that are already turning CO2 into valuable products, such as building materials (CarbonCure, CarbonBuilt…), chemicals and fuels (Dimensional Energy, SkyNRJ…) or even proteins (Solar Food, Avecom…). They all combine resources that are abundant (renewable energies, CO2, water and air).
Industrial CO2 emissions (power plants, cement and steel plants…) can of course be a large source of carbon, but some of the carbon material supplied to Carbon Upcycling, for example, comes from the air (Direct Air Capture by companies like Carbon Engineering). Valorization of CO2 by-product from biogas upgrading can also be considered.
The question regarding public support to these new products will be critical. A large-scale study[1] (2,000 survey participants) was performed in the US to examine public perception of carbon dioxide-based products. 69% of the participants reported at least some openness to consuming or using a CCU-based product.
