Is It Time for an Emergency Rollout of Carbon-Eating Machines?
Facilities that suck carbon dioxide out of the air could be powerful weapons for fighting climate change. But their deployment requires a huge wartime-style investment.
The climate emergency demands that we dramatically and rapidly cut emissions. There’s no substitute for that, full stop. But it also demands a technological revolution to reverse years of out-of-control emissions: The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change notes that if we want to meet the Paris climate agreement’s most optimistic goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, we have to deploy some sort of negative emissions technologies.
One promising technique is known as direct air capture (DAC), machines that scrub the atmosphere of CO2. Early versions of these facilities already exist: One firm called Carbon Engineering has been developing the technology for over a decade. DAC facilities use giant fans to suck in air, which then passes over special plastic surfaces, where it reacts with a chemical solution that binds to the CO2. The air leaves the facility minus the carbon.
https://www.wired.com/story/is-it-time-for-an-emergency-rollout-of-carbon-eating-machines/
