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.
Direct carbon capture that runs on solar during the day and automatically shuts down at night.
Like a tree.
Yeah, planting trees (in a place where forest fires aren’t going to be a problem) is probably cheaper and less energy intensive.
It took thousands of years for plants to capture the carbon we burn every year. We are so far past ‘the trees will help us’.
That doesn’t mean that planting more trees can’t be a part of the solution.
No, not the entire solution. But a cheap, quick and easy part of it.