Ahead of the Glasgow climate conference (Cop 26), the British government is investing heavily in anti-global warming technologies. Some of them are worrying.
Over the past few months, climate commitments have been making the headlines. Not a day goes by without a multinational, a country or a city announcing its decarbonizing ambitions. Carbon neutrality is all the rage. What is less well known is that the forces funding the fight against global warming have no idea how to achieve zero carbon. Much to the delight of Her Majesty’s scientists, who have no shortage of resources, imagination or audacity.
Absorb carbon
At universities, researchers are sketching out more or less crazy technologies to ensure our low-warming future. Six months before the opening of the world climate summit in Glasgow, Boris Johnson’s government has just released £166 million (€193 million) in funding forCO2-absorbing technologies.
Do you love the sea? So do scientists at the University of Exeter. They want to whet the ocean’s appetite for carbon dioxide. Once CO2 bubbles have formed in seawater, the promoters of the Sea Cure project claim to be able to capture them, like “bubbles in a glass of Champagne”.
Disadvantage: too much carbon acidifies marine water. Organisms that depend on limestone to build their skeletons (sea urchins, corals) or their shells (shellfish, lobsters, crabs) will be disgusted. You can’t win every time.
The ocean’s appetite
Because they absorb a quarter of our carbon dioxide, the oceans are the focus of lab attention. Planetary Hydrogen imagines throwing millions of tonnes of olivine (also known as green sand) into the sea to help the ocean absorb carbon and accelerate its transformation into carbonates. These minerals would then have to end their lives on the seabed. The inhabitants of the abyss may not appreciate seeing their environment transformed into a chalk quarry.
Back on terra firma. Cooks often clean their electric ovens by pressing the… pyrolysis button. The PyroCore company is proposing to build a very, very large oven in which wood waste, heated to 500°C, would produce (in addition to thermal energy) charcoal.
Spread in forests or on pastures, these carbon-rich pyrolysates should be absorbed by the soil.
Pollutant recovery
Students at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich have designed an atmosphericCO2 vacuum cleaner. The problem is that heating the solvent in this direct-attraction system (DAC) requires a lot of energy. But the scientists from the University of Nottingham believe that all that’s needed is a lot of decarbonized energy.
They are seriously considering equipping the Sizewell C nuclear power station with a DAC to decarbonize the ambient air. Using 10% of the energy produced by an EPR reactor would capture 1.5 Mt of carbon dioxide per year, they estimate. Small detail: EDF has not yet laid the foundation stone for the Sizewell C power station. Rolls Royce is also interested in this technology.
So is Carbon Neutral Petrol. The start-up is even planning to turn the recovered carbon into … plastic. Just in case we run out.
