2000 - Cleaning Up Carbon

• Main Authors: 2021 AAPT Virtual Winter Meeting 2021, Lackner, Klaus
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: Underline Science Inc. 2020
• Subjects: Education; Physics; Climate Change; Iceland
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.48448/0mwx-c153; https://underline.io/lecture/10736-2000---cleaning-up-carbon

The world’s energy infrastructure creates a huge, unmanaged CO2 waste stream. Fossil carbon dumping is putting us onto an overshoot trajectory relative to the 1.5°C target set in Paris.  Carbon must be drawn down at a staggering scale. Picking up carbon litter implies collecting and storing more carbon than was emitted during the 20 th  century.  Storage technologies are unpopular. However, Iceland shows how to form mineral carbonates from CO2 and basalt deep underground. Collecting carbon poses new challenges. Biomass capture is unlikely to scale. Direct air capture is scalable, but untested and too expensive. Once affordable, it will likely play an important role in climate stabilization.  In addition, air capture will support a circular carbon economy.  Solar energy, water and carbon dioxide taken from the air will be the ingredients for synthetic fuels for airplanes, ships and trucks.  Then there will be no more need for fossil fuels.