With climate change at the forefront of most environmental policies and initiatives, scientists and researchers are scrambling to figure out a way to address the problem. Let’s face it, the earth is getting warmer at an alarming rate. The current warming trajectory means that parts of the world will be faced with constant weather-borne catastrophes in the coming decades. Over the much longer term, global warming could cause countless animal extinctions and even threaten the very existence of mankind itself. Thankfully, several leading solutions are being developed that could rewind the CO2 emissions clock. While scrubbing carbon dioxide from the air might seem impossible, it is very close to becoming a reality.
Carbon Capture and Storage
Some of the world’s leading scientists have developed an anti-emissions technology that is being called carbon capture and storage. In a nutshell, the technology is able to draw carbon dioxide from the earth’s atmosphere and turn it into raw usable coal. Once the coal is created it is able to be safely stored in huge underground storage facilities that present no contamination risk to the greater environment. Thus far the carbon capture and storage technology has only been used on a small scale, however, the processes driving the technology are thought to be fully scalable to an industrial level.
How Does Carbon Capture and Storage Work?
An international group of researchers and scientists operating out of RMIT University in Australia have been able to create a fully functional electrocatalyst made out of liquid metal. This electrocatalyst is able to pull carbon dioxide out of the air and turn it into a solid coal-based matter through room temperature reactions. The solid carbon is then auto-transported to a large underground silo by the filtration system’s built-in solid carbon transport system. This technology scaled out has the potential to rewind the earth’s carbon clock.
How Scalable is It?
The carbon capture and storage technology was devised from the get-go with scalability in mind. The team of scientists that devised the technology claim that the technology is scalable on an industrial level. In fact, unless the technology is scaled out in mass on globally, it would only be able to remove a marginal amount of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Placing a large scale carbon capture and storage center in every major city on earth could help reduce carbon emissions by a double-digit percentage globally.
Could Carbon Capture and Storage Cure Global Warming?
Experts that have closely studied the carbon capture and storage technology believe that it could be a key component towards finding a cure for global warming. While the technology alone could not offer a solitary cure, if it is used in coordination with other initiatives it could likely help to dramatically reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The percentage of carbon dioxide that the technology is capable of realistically reducing could be a double-digit percentage if processing centers were widespread and built to industrial scale. These processing centers would also need to be strategically located in places where carbon emissions are the highest.
Does The Technology Pose Any Risks?
The carbon capture and storage technology does not pose any primary risks, as the process is clean and pollution-free. It does, however, present a serious secondary risk. Due to the fact that carbon capture and storage technology is able to mass-produce raw coal that would be usable as a fossil fuel energy, there would always be a temptation to use this coal to create dirty and non-green energy. Laws and regulations, however, could be put into place that prohibit coal produced by carbon capture and storage technology to be used to produce further greenhouse emissions.