Recapture

December 23, 2024

Ariana Gomez for The New York Times

Back in 2022 I blogged on growing battle surrounding carbon recapture in the US’s Mississippi River Chemical Corridor, commonly known as Cancer Alley. While critics acknowledged the process worked, they objected to the pollution caused by the facility itself, and the energy required to power the equipment. Today, my NY Times feed reported that more than 2 years later over 1,000 big companies have pledged to eliminate their carbon emissions over the next few decades, and part of those efforts came from paying for carbon dioxide removal. During 2024, Microsoft, Google, and British Airways were among the companies that committed a total of US$1.6 billion to purchase carbon removal credits. This is up from less than US$1 million in 2019, and it is believed this will grow to US$10 billion during 2025, and reach US$1.2 trillion by 2050. While huge sums of money are being dedicated to the emerging field, these projects will not have a meaningful effect on global temperatures anytime soon. There are only a few dozen operational facilities today that capture only a trace of carbon emissions. It is estimated that if 100’s of more such plants were built it would only recapture about 1% of the worlds annual carbon dioxide emissions.

When I looked online, I found that while there are several ideas for geoengineering plans and technologies designed to cool the planet, carbon dioxide recapture is attracting the big money. Investors believe while this will have a negligible short term impact on temperatures, it will begin to make a difference as emissions fall and the technology becomes more powerful. While some carbon polluters have committed to reducing carbon emissions, more are opting to continue to pollute and instead paying for carbon recapture credits. The US government is supporting the recapture movement through the Inflation Reduction Act that has tripled tax credits for capture and storage of carbon directly from the atmosphere. This 2021 bipartisan bill included US$3.5 billion to build four demonstration projects.

Pulling greenhouse gases out of the air is expensive and currently costs as much as US$1,000 per ton to capture and sequester carbon dioxide. Analysts say the price would need to drop to US$100 a ton for the industry to be viable. Damien Steel, chief executive of the carbon recapture firm Deep Sky, says, “This isn’t a market. A market means liquidity, repeatability, standards. We have none of that here.” As the NY Times reported, the industry is still creating a form of gold rush as investors readily fund new companies hoping that some of their bets will pay off. Many scientists and activists say the most effective way to combat global warming is to rapidly phase out oil, gas, and coal, as it is the burning of these fossil fuels which heat the planet. Former Vice President Al Gore, co-founder of Climate Trace, said, “We need to obey the first law of holes. When you’re in one, stop digging.”

THOUGHTS: Carbon recapture is only the latest technological innovation humans employed to try and resolve a problem of our own making. As an archaeologist the irony was not lost on me that I was digging through the trash dumps that the next culture had buried as they created a new living space on the remains of the past. When the pollution became too great, people would move to the next pristine site and begin again. The problem now is the pristine places are diminishing, and the polluted locations are broadening. This is particularly evident as our land, water, sea, and air are polluted on a globalized scale. If we do not “stop digging” our holes, the earth will be left for the next interplanetary archaeologists to dig. Act for all. Change is coming and it starts with you.