Why is a Japanese firm testing vending machines that suck carbon dioxide from atmosphere?

Emissions of carbon dioxide, the driver of climate change around the world, reached a near record high in 2022. Now, a firm in Japan is attempting to solve the problem in a novel way – by deploying vending machines that suck in C02. Let’s take a closer look: According to Bloomberg, Asahi Soft Drinks, a division of Tokyo-Asahi group, a top beverage maker in Japan, will begin testing such vending machines next month. The company is in the process of patenting the machines, which it calls a “forest in the city” that will have a material to ‘absorb C02’. The machines, which will have a white powder-like material made from a variety of calcium compounds, will draw in air to keep drinks cool or warm. After it has drawn in CO2, the powder will then be deployed to make fertiliser and algal sea beds, as per Bloomberg.

The company will initially deploy 30 machines in the Kanto and Kansai regions of Japan.

Each machine will absorb around 60 kilograms of carbon dioxide per year, company spokesperson Yoshiie Horii told the outlet. The company, which has 260,000 machines across Japan, is rolling out these units to adhere to its 2050 ambition to become carbon neutral. “The vending machine market is shrinking year by year and the market environment is difficult,” company spokesperson Yoshiie Horii said. According to Japan Times, vending machines are everywhere in Japan. The country still has the highest number of machines of any country per capita. The Japan Vending System Manufacturers Association pegs the number at four million – 1 in every 31 people. CO2 around the world Humanity, on a whole, emits around 34 billion tonnes of C02 per year, according to The Guardian. [caption id=“attachment_12587712” align=“alignnone” width=“640”] Japan is the fifth-largest emitter of CO2. Image credit: Pexels[/caption] Al Jazeera quoted scientists as saying that global emissions of carbon dioxide will touch 40.6 billion tonnes in 2022.

That’s just under 2019 – a year which saw a record in emissions.

If current emissions levels persist, there is a 50 per cent chance that warming of 1.5 degree Celsius will be exceeded in nine years, according to the “Global Carbon Budget 2022” report by a group of scientists who track emissions and publish in peer- reviewed scientific journals. In 2021, more than half of the world’s CO2 emissions were from three places – China (31 per cent), the US (14 per cent) and the European Union (8 per cent). India accounted for 7 per cent of the global CO2 emissions, according to the report. The projected emissions decrease in China (0.9 per cent) and in the European Union (0.8 per cent), but increase in the US (1.5 per cent), India (6 per cent) and the rest of the world (1.7 per cent). In India, emissions in 2022 are to increase by 6 per cent, driven mostly by a 5 per cent increase in coal emissions. Emissions from oil are up sharply, with an estimated rise of 10 per cent, but this returns them to about the 2019 levels, the data showed. Data data by Global Carbon Atlas put Japan among the five largest emitters of CO2 around the world in 2021. Japan, which emitted 1,067 metric tonnes of emissions in 2021, is the fifth largest producer of C02.

The other countries are China, the US, India and Russia.

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More and more scientists are warning that the goal of capping climate change at 1.5 degrees Celsius reached at the Paris Climate Accord is becoming unfeasible. To meet the target, countries must cut global greenhouse emissions 45 per cent by 2030. By mid-century, the emissions must be at net zero. Glen Peters, research director at CICERO climate research institute in Norway, told AFP the data suggests the rise is consistent with underlying trends and deeply worrying. “Emissions are now five per cent above what they were when the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015,” Peters added. “You have to ask: When are they going to go down?” “Global Carbon Budget for 2022 is deeply depressing,” Mark Maslin, a professor of climatology at University College London, told AFP. “To have any chance of staying below the internationally agreed 1.5C global warming target we need to have large annual cuts in emissions – which there is no sign of.”

The Japanese firm isn’t alone in its attempt.

Many other companies around the world have already deployed such ‘carbon capture’ devices. As per The Guardian ,a big problem with this technology remains the price – around $600 (Rs 50,000 per tonne). “It is not super intuitive,” Jan Wurzbacher, who opened the world’s biggest carbon capture plant in Iceland told The Guardian. “But that doesn’t mean it is hard. There is no physical reason it can’t be done for $100 (Rs 8,000) per tonne in the next 10-20 years.” Professor Thomas Crowther, an ecologist at ETH Zurich, told The Guardian described the potential of such technology as immense. But the challenge of removing CO2 from the atmosphere remains monumental. According to The Guardian, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has warned that after 2050 ‘billions of tonnes of CO2’ may need to be captured and buried per year. “Unless affordable and environmentally and socially acceptable CO2 removal becomes feasible and available at scale well before 2050, 1.5C-consistent pathways will be difficult to realise, especially in overshoot scenarios,” the newspaper quoted IPCC as saying. Some experts say carbon capture cannot be the main strategy. Profssor Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Penn State University and author of The New Climate War told The Guardian,  “Of all of the geoengineering schemes, Dac seems the safest and most efficacious. It could, along with natural reforestation, be an important component of broader efforts to draw down carbon from the atmosphere, a strategy that arguably belongs in any comprehensive climate abatement program. But since we’re only talking about capturing 10 per cent at most, of current carbon emissions, this obviously cannot be a primary strategy for cutting emissions.” With inputs from agencies  Read all the  Latest News,  Trending News,  Cricket News,  Bollywood News, India News and  Entertainment News here. Follow us on  Facebook_,_  Twitter and  Instagram_._