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 Market Mysteries of the week

  Can we slow climate change by sucking carbon back out of the air?

Answer:

A little bit, sort of. Corporations see capturing carbon from the point of production as one of their key strategies for reducing overall greenhouse gas emissions and achieving their net-zero targets.

Why are companies making these net-zero commitments?

As we've covered in recent

Mysteries

, we're

running out of time to prevent a climate crisis

, so

investors and regulators are pressuring corporations to do something

. Corporations are feeling the literal and metaphorical heat, and

the majority of companies worldwide

have

made pledges to reduce their carbon emissions

.

Even the biggest denier oil and gas companies have

started reducing the intensity of their emissions

. That means a reduction of the greenhouse gases per barrel of oil. They're still going to increase oil production so much that the overall absolute emissions will keep increasing. It's

mostly greenwashing

, but it's a start.

One of the

main ways industrial companies plan to reduce their carbon emissions is through carbon capture.

The development of new technologies like Direct Carbon Capture (DCC) has broadened the methods of addressing greenhouse gas pollution alongside emission reductions and carbon offsets. 

What is Carbon Capture?

It's essentially

grabbing greenhouse gasses from the air to repurpose them

for other uses. From huge walls of fans with filters to panels of engineered resin that catch CO2 on their sticky surface, Direct Carbon Capture (DCC) is a rapidly evolving field.

One of the best places to use DCC is at a point source like the exhaust of a coal-fired power plant. The airflow path is predictable and concentrated with CO2, making it easier to stop the greenhouse gas from getting into the atmosphere in the first place. The captured CO2 can then be pressurized and turned into a liquid for transport. The only way to ensure that the CO2 does not re-enter the atmosphere is to pump it deep underground, where it reacts to form carbon-based rock.

Is carbon capture the solution we've been looking for?

Carbon capture is one of the

most frequently-mentioned interim solutions to reduce emissions while transitioning away from fossil fuels

and high-polluting industrial production. Still, its

reputation for success isn't strong.

Since carbon capture is most effective at a concentrated point of pollution,

we depend on the polluters

to measure the effectiveness and direct the by-product. So far,

carbon capture projects have been expensive failures,

often

capturing half what they expected o

r indirectly

creating more greenhouse gas emissions overall

. 

This technology pulls CO2 out of the air but creates liquid CO2 as a by-product. That liquid CO2 needs to go somewhere. One use for that liquid CO2 is industrial refrigeration, but

the most common use is pumping it underground to dislodge pockets of oil, aka fracking.

The vast majority of captured carbon in the United States is sold back to oil companies to help them pump more oil.

So even if the technology were successful,

we'd need a better system for what we do with the captured carbon.

What else needs to be done?

Carbon capture will not solve the problem outright, but it is one piece of the puzzle.

Corporations will need to combine several strategies to achieve net-zero with the necessary urgency. We'll dig into other energy efficiency, emissions reduction, and carbon offsetting strategies in future pieces. 

Does your company have a net-zero target yet?

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