Emerging Trend: Carbon Capture

With global warming from climate change accelerating there are a set of technologies and solutions emerging to hopefully address the challenge. NASA keeps a real time tracker of the effects of climate change here. One of the most direct and more science fiction like that is still nascent but in the pilot phase is carbon capture. Carbon capture is a set of technologies that is able to pull carbon dioxide from the air and store it back underground, hypothetically turning the clock back on global warming.

There are three startups on the cutting edge of carbon capture technologies - Global Thermostat, Climeworks, and Carbon Engineering. Their technology is based around exposing filters to air, that once saturated, are heated to free the carbon dioxide and pump it into tanks or back underground.

All three have working technologies that do this, the challenge right now is to find a business model that makes this a profitable activity. Substantial progress has been made in the last several years with the average cost falling from $600 per ton of captured CO2 to $100 a ton.

Critical to this effort right now are government tax credits that give back up to $50 for every ton of carbon stored underground. The improved efficiency of the technology and federal tax credits has captured the attention of big oil, who can use the recaptured CO2 to increase well pressure for oil extraction.

The next wave of carbon capture includes using the reclaimed carbon dioxide in transportation fuels by mixing it with hydrogen, reducing the carbon emissions of vehicle fuels by up to 20% in the next decade.

Currently the scale these firms are operating on is esmall but as they become profitable the hope is to scale up and start capturing noticeable amounts of greenhouse gases, hopefully slowing down global warming.