Can engineering solutions save us from the climate crisis? – 04/04/2024 – Environment

On a windy Icelandic plateau, an international team of engineers and executives is installing an innovative machine designed to alter the very composition of Earth’s atmosphere.

If all goes as planned, the enormous vacuum will soon suck in large quantities of air, removing carbon dioxide and then storing greenhouse gases deep underground.

Just a few years ago, technologies like these, which attempt to re-engineer the natural environment, were on the margins in the world of science. They were too expensive, too impractical, too science fiction.

But with the dangers of climate change worsening and the world failing to meet its targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, they are moving into the “mainstream” among scientists and investors, despite questions about their effectiveness and safety. .

Researchers are studying ways to block some solar radiation. They are also testing whether adding iron to the ocean could transport carbon dioxide to the sea floor. They are drawing up plans to build gigantic umbrellas in space. And, with giant installations like this one in Iceland, they seek to reduce the concentration of carbon dioxide in the air.

Since the beginning of the industrial era, humans have pumped large volumes of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere in pursuit of industrialization. This has resulted in a reshaping of the planet’s balanced atmosphere, which intensifies heat, worsens droughts and storms, and threatens human progress.

As the risks have become clearer, political and business leaders have committed to keeping global average temperatures up to 1.5°C above pre-Industrial Revolution levels. But for several months last year, the world briefly surpassed that threshold.

Global temperatures are expected to rise by up to 4°C by the end of the century. This has given more weight to what some people call geoengineering, although its advocates prefer the term “climate interventions.”

The hope lies in the idea that employing measures like these can buy us time at a time when energy consumption is rising, and the world is not transitioning away from fossil fuels quickly enough.

Many of the projects are controversial. A plant similar to the one in Iceland is being built in Texas by Occidental Petroleum. Occidental intends to use some of the carbon dioxide it captures to extract more oil, the burning of which is a major cause of the climate crisis.

Some critics say other types of interventions could create new problems by altering weather patterns or amplifying human suffering through unintended consequences. In practice, they ask themselves: should humans experiment with messing with the environment in this way? Do we know enough to understand the risks?

“We need more information so we can make these decisions in the future,” says Alan Robock, professor of atmospheric sciences at Rutgers University (USA). “What is more risky: to do or not to do?”

Others argue that fanciful or expensive technologies will waste resources and time, or deceive people with the false idea that it will be possible to slow global warming without eliminating fossil fuels.

There is a risk that adventurous actors will advance efforts to change the climate. Mexico has banned what is known as solar radiation modification after a California startup released sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere without permission.

As these technologies are very new, there is relatively little regulation regulating them.

“There are these much bigger questions about who decides how all of this is coordinated over time,” says Marion Hourdequin, a professor of environmental philosophy at Colorado College.

Air capture

Edda Aradottir walks through fresh snow to inspect the direct air capture plant in Iceland.

Aradottir is CEO of Carbfix, an Icelandic company that works with the Swiss startup that built the plant, Climeworks. Known as Mammoth, the project is powered by clean geothermal energy and capable of capturing up to 36,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year and pumping it underground.

That’s just one millionth of annual global emissions. But unlike trees, Climeworks promises to store this carbon dioxide forever.

When Mammoth turns on in the coming weeks, it will be the largest facility of its kind in the world, although the amount of carbon it can absorb will still be just a drop in the ocean.

The Occidental plant, under construction near Odessa, Texas, will be more than ten times more powerful than Mammoth, powered by solar energy, and will have the potential to capture and store 500,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year.

It uses a different process to extract carbon dioxide from the air, although the goal is the same: most of it will be stored deep in the ground.

Even as more companies decide to start offsetting their emissions, there are cheaper ways to do so, including preserving forests and paying for renewable energy. For example, it costs $500 to $1,000 to capture a metric ton of carbon dioxide with direct air capture, compared to $10 to $30 per ton for most carbon credits today.

The business world is optimistic. BCG Boston Consulting Group expects more companies to start buying credits to pay for carbon dioxide removal and more governments to encourage this purchase.

In the United States and Europe, governments began to subsidize the construction of plants. By 2040, BCG expects the market for carbon dioxide removal technologies could grow from less than $10 billion today to as much as $135 billion.

The direct air capture market has vehement detractors in academia, activist circles, and beyond.

Some say it is nothing more than a ploy by oil and gas companies to prolong the industries responsible for creating global warming. They point to the extensive evidence that fossil fuel interests have worked for years to minimize public awareness of climate change, and the fact that some of the carbon captured will be used for additional oil production.

As people begin to deliberately mess with the climate in new ways, questions arise. If today’s extreme weather and rising temperatures arose inadvertently, what might happen when we begin actively trying to control the planet’s atmosphere?

“It’s true that we have been altering the climate through greenhouse gas emissions for centuries,” says Hourdequin. “But trying to intentionally manage the climate through geoengineering would be a distinct undertaking, quite different from the kind of careless interference we’ve gotten ourselves into so far.”