 "Iceland gets world's biggest carbon capture plant. Will it rid the world of pollution?")
The world’s biggest carbon removal plant is being constructed in Iceland.
The Mammoth plant in Iceland is nearly ten times bigger than the current record holder.
The plant will suck carbon dioxide straight out of the atmosphere in a process known as direct air capture (DAC).
But what do we know about the facility? Will it solve global warming?
Let’s take a closer look:
What do we know about the facility?
As per The Verge, the facility is the brainchild of Swiss tech climate company Climeworks.
Climeworks caters to companies such as JPMorgan Chase, Microsoft, Stripe, and Shopify.
As per CNN, it began building the facility in June 2022.
Direct Air Capture works by sucking carbon dioxide straight out of the atmosphere and storing it in the ground.
The plant comprises modular “collector containers” with fans that draw in air.
The air passes through a special filter which soaks up the carbon dioxide.
Once the filter is full, it is heated up to 100 degrees Celsius – which releases the CO2.
The C02 is then mixed with water and sent deep underground where it forms into solid rock, as per The Verge.
CNN reported that Climeworks has tied up with Icelandic company Carbfix for this process.
The plant has room for 72 such containers. These can be placed atop each other and moved around easily.
The plant currently has 12 containers and more will be added in the coming months.
Impact Shorts
More ShortsThe plant will be able to capture 36,000 metric tonnes of CO2 per year.
That equates to removing around 7,800 fuel-powered cars off roads for a year.
It will be fully complete by the end of 2024.
The Mammoth plant is Climeworks’ second commercial project.
Its first plant, known as the Orca plant is also in Iceland.
That plant has the capacity to capture 4,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year.
Worsening climate change and inadequate efforts to cut emissions have led UN scientists to estimate billions of tonnes of carbon must be removed from the atmosphere annually to meet global climate goals.
“Starting operations of our Mammoth plant is another proof point in Climeworks’ scale-up journey to megaton capacity by 2030 and gigaton by 2050,” Jan Wurzbacher, co-founder and co-CEO of Climeworks said.
Climeworks is part of a consortium that has been selected for award negotiations under a US programme for the technology to build a 1 million tonne plant.
The removal process is energy intensive, but Climeworks’ plants in Iceland are powered by the country’s renewable geothermal power plants.
Will it rid the world of pollution?
That’s the million dollar-question.
Critics warn that focusing on removing CO2 could deter companies from reducing their emissions as much as possible.
Lili Fuhr, director of the fossil economy program at the Center for International Environmental Law, told CNN that the technology “is fraught with uncertainties and ecological risks.”
The amount of CO2 the plant will be able to remove from the atmosphere pales in comparison to what humanity is pumping out every year.
Stuart Haszeldine, professor of carbon capture and storage at the University of Edinburgh told the outlet that though the plant was “an important step in the fight against climate change” it was a ’tiny fraction’ of the carbon required to be sucked out.
“The science is clear to have a chance at meeting the temperature targets outlined in the Paris Agreement, the world must remove several billion tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by 2050 at the latest,” Climeworks CEO Christoph Gebald told FastCompany. “And while emission reductions remain the top priority, reaching net zero in 2050 and beyond is impossible without active carbon removal.”
“The sheer size of the challenge can’t be met by one single carbon removal solution but can only be done if we start scaling the most promising, scalable, and efficient solutions at once,” he says. “The good mix is certainly made up of both nature-based and tech-driven solutions. Unfortunately, scaling an industry to a gigaton scale cannot be done overnight. This is why we need to start today, and we need to not lose momentum until 2050, so that we can meaningfully remove carbon from the atmosphere when the world will need it most.”
According to The Verge, Microsoft, which is a client of Climeworks, itself emitted around 13 million metric tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2022.
CNN quoted the International Energy Agency as saying that 70 million tonnes per year need to be removed from the atmosphere by 2030 in order to hit global climate goals.
The technology also remains prohibitively expensive.
Climeworks did not detail the cost per ton of removal at the Mammoth plant but said it is seeking to reduce costs of the technology to $400-600 (Rs 34,000 to 50,000) per tonne by 2030 and $200-350 per tonne (Rs 16,700 to Rs 29,224) by 2040.
Climeworks also has plans for plants in the United States and Kenya.
As per Bloomberg, the largest proposed plant is in Louisiana.
It is part of a DAC hub funded by the Biden administration.
“The one key enabler to lowering our cost curve is industrial scaleup,” Gebald told Fast Company earlier this year. “And to be an effective solution to fight the climate crisis, an entire carbon removal industry will need to develop over the next 10-20 years, creating capacities of gigatons of carbon removal by 2050.”
Other companies are constructing even bigger facilities.
CNN reported that a plant called Statos will be able to remove 500,000 tonnes of carbon per year.
The plant, which is coming up in Texas, belongs to oil firm Occidental.
Some are taking a different approach.
According to FastCompany, startup Heirloom is pulling carbon out of the atmosphere via powdered rock dust.
Other researchers are working on systems that can capture CO2 and release it for storage without consuming large amounts of energy.
Ben Kolosz, an assistant professor of renewable energy and carbon removal at the University of Hull, told Bloomberg, “All of these pieces of tech need to work together in order to remove 10 billion tonnes of CO2 per year by 2050, and DAC is only a small part of that.”
With inputs from agencies
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