The roughly two-hectare facility, still under construction, is hosting what could be called a carbon removal Olympics. It will pilot eight different versions of a similar technology using various machines that will suck in air, remove the carbon dioxide and send it to a central plant where it will be compressed and liquified for storage deep underground.
The winner of this initiative wouldn’t get a medal on a podium. Instead, Deep Sky, the Montreal-based project developer behind it, plans to take the best versions of the direct air capture technology that prove most effective in Canada’s climate and deploy them on a commercial scale all over the country.
I’ve read a lot of skepticism over the years about how carbon capture is a gimmick that doesn’t work but helps prop up the fossil fuel industry as a greenwashing scam.
And then I see something like this:
“We don’t know if it works or how we’ll pay for it.”
Government subsidies from politicians eager to greenwash their oil and gas industry.
Or they’re generating buzz for a private investment scam where they can take the money and run.
Plants capture 56% of fossil fuel emissions annually, and they are the most efficient way we have to capture CO2 with solar power. So we would have to grow an additional 0.4 earth’s worth of plants, every year, and then find a place to hide them where they never rot or break down forever, just to break even.
To do the capture directly with human chemistry would take up even more space just in solar panels, due to the lower efficiency.
The only way to cut down on atmospheric carbon is to stop using fossil fuels all together.