Turning CO2 into cash (1 Viewer)

[msommer]

Not sure whether this is a political Forum topic, but since it addresses climate change that appears to be squarely here, I'm putting it here

Turning CO2 into cash

Scientists from round the world are meeting in Germany to improve ways of making money from carbon dioxide.

They want to transform some of the CO2 that’s overheating the planet into products to benefit humanity.

They don’t claim the technology will solve climate change, but they say it will help.

Carbon dioxide is already being used in novel ways to create fuels, polymers, fertilisers, proteins, foams and building blocks.

Until recently, it was assumed that energy-intensive firms burning gas to fuel their processes would need eventually to capture the resulting carbon emissions and bury them underground.

This option is inefficient and costly, so the prospect of utilising some of the CO2 as a valuable raw material is exciting for business.

Katy Armstrong, manager of the Carbon Utilisation Centre at Sheffield University, put it this way: “We need products for the way we live - and everything we do has an impact.

“We need to manufacture our products without increasing CO2 emissions, and if we can use waste CO2 to help make them, so much the better.”

Many of the young carbon usage firms are actually carbon-negative: that means they take in more CO2 than they put out.

The article goes on to give three examples of tech that is being deployed today, is net CO2 load negative and is commercially available.

IMHO the world should embrace discovering and employing tech like this (and other tech to lower emissions as well) to eventually lower CO2 concentration in the atmosphere to alevel the human race can survive in with minimal global disruption

 

[msommer]

bump for the evening crowd

 

[SaintsInDome2006]

Out of curiosity is this a company that looks reputable? I ask because I feel fairly well convinced that cities (really mine) could do more to reutilize waste. Louisiana has a ton of by product from the oil and gas industry and NO has a longstanding history of corruption in the landfill industry. I guess I’m just wondering about who practically applies these goals in the OP?

 

[E Street Brat]

Al Gore has been making :boatloads: off of C02 for decades now. 

 

[NCCommish]

The country of Bhutan is carbon negative but they also require that at least 60% of their land remain forest. Probably won't work here. So tech it is. Like they said can't do it all with this kind of tech probably but every bit helps and you never know when some inventive man or woman will create the killer app as it were.