In September 2021, Swiss company Climeworks opened its first large atmospheric carbon dioxide capture plant, the largest in the world, in Iceland. The idea is exactly what you would imagine: huge fans blowing air through a series of filters and extracting carbon dioxide, then injecting it into porous basaltic soils for permanent capture. The idea of extracting the carbon dioxide from the air that accounts for most of the problem generating the climate emergency is a good one, were it not for the fact that, although it is indeed the root of the problem, the concentration of carbon dioxide we are talking about is only around 0.04%, which means that its extraction is tremendously inefficient.
For Climeworks, processing enough air to extract one ton of carbon dioxide costs approximately $600 to $800. Given the pricing system for emissions credits, there are a lot of companies and institutions who want these credits so they can say they are carbon neutral (they still emit, but pay to offset it), and are willing to pay amounts in the $1,200 range, which allows Climeworks to maintain a profitable business.
Another player is Project Greensand, a Danish company that injects carbon dioxide from countries like Belgium into a depleted oil field in the North Sea by capturing it in industries that would otherwise be pumped into the atmosphere.
The project aims to safely and permanently store up to eight million tons of CO2 each year by 2030, which would be the equivalent of 40% of Denmark’s emissions reduction target and more than 10% of the country’s annual emissions, and contribute to the Nordic country reaching carbon neutrality in order to comply with the Paris Agreements.
Again, the equation is similar: the industrial activity needed to capture and permanently sequester carbon dioxide generates approximately 21% of what is sequestered, but the activity can be made profitable thanks to what third parties, either governments or companies, pay for continuing to emit. This is the idea behind emissions markets: to convert them into a product with a specific price and to make the market economy, which has proven to be the most efficient mechanism designed by man, to work to reduce them.
In other cases there is talk of using the sea: given its size, capturing atmospheric carbon dioxide, converting it into sodium bicarbonate and dumping it in the oceans in reasonably low concentrations is something that could be relatively innocuous, and would offer a cheaper way of getting rid of carbon dioxide.
Nevertheless,we are talking about the same thing: capturing atmospheric carbon dioxide, which is expected to grow more than tenfold by 2030, but which does not prevent emissions, by offsetting them. This poses a very significant risk: that instead of many countries, industries and companies reducing their carbon footprint, they will simply pay to continue polluting the atmosphere.
The thing to remember here is that it has already been shown that we can significantly reduce our carbon footprint by investing in renewable energies. In fact, the transition to renewables in itself offsets much of the increase in emissions that we have experienced since the end of the pandemic. Capturing atmospheric carbon dioxide is something that we may well have to consider doing in any case to try to avoid the increase in its concentration; but the problem lies in using the availability of this technology as an excuse to continue emitting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This is undoubtedly a dangerous option for trying to achieve so-called carbon neutrality, especially if we take into account that these emissions are not only due to industrial activity, but also to issues such as forest fires, which are becoming more frequent and intense due to climate change.
The question we have to ask ourselves is which part of the emissions markets is a good thing in terms of reducing emissions, and which part is simply a way of deceiving ourselves by pretending to be carbon neutral when, in reality, we continue to emit large quantities of carbon.
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This post was previously published on Enrique Dans’ blog.
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