As the climate crisis becomes more imminent, carbon capture and storage (CCU) technology has been advertised as part of the solution. This process involves taking advantage of emissions or carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and diverting them. However, reviews published in the journal One earth It questions the feasibility of many of these methods to meet both long-term and short-term emission targets following the Paris Agreement, and focuses on technologies that use non-fossil carbon dioxide to permanently store carbon. I suggest that.
CCUs usually work by understanding carbon dioxide emissions from a power plant or industry. This carbon dioxide is then converted to new products such as methanol as fuel using electricity, heat, or catalysts. “It’s really nice,” said lead author Kiane de Kleijne (@kianedekleijne), a climate researcher at Radboud University. “We are taking problematic waste and turning it into a valuable product. However, after evaluating and harmonizing many previous studies on CCUs, CCUs have consistently reduced emissions. I found that it wasn’t. ”
For technology compatible with the Paris Agreement, the IPCC has taught us that we need to halve carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 and reach zero emissions by 2050. Zero emissions by 2050. DeKleijne and her team evaluated the technical maturity of the CCU, the distance to widespread use of the technology.
“If the technology does not plan to significantly reduce emissions and is still far from commercialization, it may be better to direct funding to technologies that have the potential to significantly reduce emissions.” de Kleijne says.
Researchers have evaluated the effectiveness of CCU technology in reducing emissions throughout the life of the process. For many CCUs investigated, the recovery and conversion components are very energy consuming, and if the final step in the cycle is the production of something like methanol, the use of the final product will also produce emissions. “Often there is a problem because it doesn’t actually reduce emissions compared to traditional products,” says de Kleijne.
This review warns that the potential of CCU technology may divert attention from more effective emission reduction options such as carbon capture, permanent storage, and consumption reduction. However, the team has considered several low-emission CCU systems that store carbon for long periods of time and states that deKleijne is promising. For example, carbonization of steel slag to create construction materials can sequester large amounts of carbon that will remain stored indefinitely. In addition, if carbon is captured directly from the atmosphere, or if carbon is captured after the combustion of biomass that has been isolated by photosynthesis, then carbon in the atmosphere can be used to reduce the CO concentration in the atmosphere.2Something de Kleijne wants to continue investigating.
“I would like to be able to extend the analysis a bit more, because it doesn’t look good because I did this assessment for the CCU,” she says. “But it would be nice to be able to compare it to other alternatives that replace fossil fuel-based products and services.”
