To save itself, humanity needs carbon-capture tech by 2030, warn scientists

By Brian Santo, contributing writer

The world needs to find and implement effective ways to remove carbon from the atmosphere by the 2030s to prevent further global warming, a prominent climatologist just reported.

Separately, an Icelandic company earlier this year started capturing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂ ) with a new technique. The installation is believed to be the first negative-emissions plant in existence.

We are no longer talking about avoiding climate change that might occur in the future; we’re now talking about mitigating the climate change that we’re experiencing now.

The average global temperature is currently 1°C warmer than it was preceding the industrial age. Most governments in 2015 agreed to a goal to keep the global average temperature from rising more than 1.5°C. Accomplishing that would probably hold the line against further swamping island nations and prevent even more severe weather than we’re already experiencing, among other adverse effects.

If the world wants to minimize global warming to 1.5°C, “we will need geoengineering by the mid-2030s to have a chance at the goal,” climatologist Bill Hare of Climate Analytics told attendees at the Climate Change 2017 conference in London, organized by think tank Chatham House. His remarks were reported by The Guardian.

Even with carbon-sucking geoengineering efforts, scientists at the conference said that they are growing skeptical that holding the world to a 2°C rise will be possible.

Planting forests remains an option for fixing carbon but might be difficult to accomplish with forest areas being cut for arable land and for development. Plans to restore forests or plant new ones tend to run up against resistance founded on disagreements about land rights. Scaling back the livestock industry and reducing vehicle emissions isn’t going to be enough and is proving difficult to pull off anyway.

“If you’re really concerned about coral reefs, biodiversity, [and] food production in very poor regions, we’re going to have to deploy negative emission technology at scale,” said Hare. There don’t seem to be any other options for mitigating climate change, Hare told his audience.

Scrubbing the air of carbon has long been an option but one that most planners preferred to avoid, in part because the process was likely to be enormously costly.

But perhaps it won’t be that expensive.

Last May, Iceland’s Climeworks brought online what appears to be the very first CO₂ -capture system. The commercial plant was installed in Switzerland, near Zurich. The Direct Air Capture system can pull up to 900 metric tons of CO₂ out of the air annually. The CO₂ can then be sold commercially.

That makes the practicality of capturing CO₂ from the air dependent on the market for CO₂ . It turns out that market is sizable and growing. 

By one estimate, the CO₂ market was worth $6 billion in 2015 and is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 3.7% through at least 2025.

CO₂ is used for fire-fighting, freezing and cooling food products, extraction of oil, and carbonation of beverages. It is also used in various surgeries including arthroscopy, endoscopy, and laparoscopy.