Pulling CO2 from air feasible, if still costly, way to curb global warming

we burn energy.

“In a way, it’s too late to argue that we shouldn’t consider [such] solutions. The concern that this kind of technology would give us an excuse not to do anything [to reduce carbon emissions] is wrong, because we’re too late for that,” Lackner said. “We have to push very hard right now, and we have to have every means at our disposal to solve this problem.”

Note that the paper stands in contrast to a report put out last year by the American Physical Society, which flatly states that direct air capture of CO2 “is not currently an economically viable approach to mitigating climate change.”

Without dramatic cost reductions, that report contends, other options for reducing CO2 output from decentralized sources will be more economically feasible — including increasing efficiency; switching to cars and other devices powered by electricity coming from non-carbon-based sources, such as nuclear, solar and wind; and using low-carbon fuels created from biological or other materials.

Government-sponsored efforts to foster research and development of carbon capture and sequestration are mostly focused on removing CO2 from stationary sources, and even that technology still faces serious financial and technological challenges.

Lackner and colleagues argue, however, that many other technologies have started out at extremely high cost, which has dropped as the technology is refined and products are produced on mass scales. They also contend the air capture systems could reduce the cost of transporting captured carbon from stationary sources to storage sites.

“Demanding an assurance of economic viability at the outset stifles innovation, favors incrementalism and keeps game-changing ideas from consideration,” the authors said. Even if the technology started with a baseline cost of $600 per ton of CO2, the cost could probably be substantially reduced as the technology develops. “The challenge seems large but no larger than the corresponding challenges in other climate mitigation technologies,” they say.

Taking CO2 directly out of the air has been going on for decades on a small scale in submarines and spaceships. Processes for liquefying air already require removal of water and CO2, too.

Lackner, a director and adviser to Kilimanjaro Energy, the company he founded, is studying how certain resins could absorb CO2. He and co-author Allen Wright of the Lenfest Center are shareholders and consultants to Kilimanjaro, one of three companies working on various air capture techniques (you can view a video of Wright explaining the technology at MIT’s Technology Review).

Another company working on air capture technology, Global Thermostat, was formed by two Columbia University professors: Peter Eisenberger, a physicist who founded the Earth Institute and formerly ran research labs for Bell Labs and Exxon, and Graciela Chichilnisky, an economist, mathematician and entrepreneur.