11th March 2023:
A few days ago while I was lying in bed I heard on the radio a brief mention of a new breakthrough in a carbon capture process that meant that engineers could now capture CO2 from the air and turn it into a bicarbonate solid which could then safely be stored in the sea. It was being billed as a breakthrough, and I made a mental note to myself whilst still half asleep to look it up later in the day and see what the fuss was about.
Now, it has to be said that the activist literature is full of dire warnings about the promise of techno-fixes, which all too often boil down to greenwash, profiteering, and the avoidance of taking action. So for that reason I have always been very sceptical about any possible techno-fixes, and have always focused my efforts on actual GHG reduction, rather than business as usual and hoping for a miracle techno-fix. So it was with this sceptical mind that later that day I did an internet search to find out what had actually been discovered. Before I relate what that was, I will need to digress a little to fill in some of the details of what it is we are dealing with here.
If you're reading this blog, then the likelihood is you will have heard of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), a method whereby CO2 from heavy greenhouse gas (GHG) producing industries is captured from the exhaust stream and pumped into natural undergound cavities which are then sealed. The cavities are often oil and gas deposites that are being emptied for consumption, and which serve the useful function of also providing a convenient place to store CO2. In this way the GHGs are prevented from entering the atmosphere where they cause global warming, and are instead locked away, presumably for millions of years in these underground cavities.
The process has proved controversial from the word go, partly due to the high cost and the commercial unfeasibility of installing CCS technology, and also partly due to concerns about the long term safety and viability of storing vast amounts of GHGs in deep undergound cavities. And despite large sums of money being spent on research and development for two decades, things haven't really improved. So enter Carbon Capture & Mineralisation (CCM), a completely new process that also captures CO2 from the air but which, instead of pumping it into an underground reservoir, converts it into a solid mineral, usually a bicarbonate.
CCM has multiple benefits over CCS. Firstly, it doesn't rely on long term storage in deep underground cavities, and so all of the concerns related to that are avoided. Secondly, the final product can be sold commercially, and so there is a profit incentive to doing this that makes the process much more financially feasible than CCS. Thirdly, it can be safely dissolved into sea water, where as an alkaline it will actually help to reverse the dangerous acidification of the ocean due to CO2 absorbed from human industry (which, by the way, on its own is catastrophic, as it is toxic to the marine plankton that produce 50% of the world's oxygen), and also benefits marine life. And lastly, it can easily be retrofitted onto existing installations, and does not require expensive new capital builds. All told, that makes CCM something that I, as a climate activist, am actually quite excited about. It sounds like it could be a dream ticket. Could it, or is it all just another money making hoax and false flag solution?
Skyonic is the first company to secure a U.S. patent for a carbon-capture and mineralization process. On theirs and their partner websites, they say:
Skyonic specializes in developing and retrofitting industrial plants to mineralize CO2 emissions and turn them into carbon-negative chemical products. The resulting solid carbonates and bicarbonates are safe for landfill storage or can be sold for use in the production of baking soda, hydrochloric acid and limestone.
It’s a sustainable and remarkably affordable solution for industries constantly confronting stricter regulations. Retrofitting an existing cement facility to capture roughly 300,000 tons of CO2 emissions annually is Skyonic’s first full-scale project. Dubbed Capitol SkyMine, it’s the world’s first for-profit initiative of its kind, preventing nearly 300,000 tons of CO2 from going up in smoke.
Transforming CO2 emissions into solid products for a profit. That’s what you call innovation. And that’s what makes Skyonic Corporation a game-changer. In addition to reducing harmful emissions produced through combustion, SkyMine is designed to operate at a profit due to the sale of byproducts efficiently produced by its process. There is a market for sodium bicarbonates, or baking soda, to be used in feed stocks, glass manufacturing and algae biofuel production.
It sounds like a game changer. The Capitol Skymine project, the first of its kind, has been running now for nearly 10 years. Attached to a cement facility in the US, it captures some 300,000 tons of CO2 and converts it into products which are then sold commercially. Here in the UK, a similar operation was launched in June 2022. According to the press release:
The new Tata Chemicals Europe (TCE) plant at Northwich in north-west England is currently on track to capture about 36,000 tonnes of CO2 a year. Eventually, this will rise to 40,000 tonnes, about 11 per cent of the facility’s emissions, and more than 100 times the amount captured in power station pilots by energy firm Drax. Martin Ashcroft at TCE says the £16.7 million demonstration project, helped by a £4.2 million government grant, shows net zero doesn’t mean outsourcing manufacturing overseas.
So that's carbon capture and mineralisation. It's a new technology that is vastly improved on CCS, and though it is still in its early days, it does show promise.
Let's do some quick math, and see whether this kind of technology could make a significant contribution to the reduction of GHG levels. The Skyonic plant in the US mineralises some 300,000 tonnes of CO2 per year, whereas the US produces around 5.5 billion tonnes of CO2 per year. To absorb 50% of that amount would require roughly 2,000 CCM plants. That sounds like a lot, but if we assume a figure of US$10 million per plant, that amounts to US $20 billion. Mandatory government spending in the US is some $4 trillion per year, so this is well within the realm of possibility, and we haven't considered the fact that it may even be commercially feasible, which would mean as an industry it could grow rapidly on its own feet. I'm sure there are downsides, I don't know the ins and outs of the whole industry, I'm just going on an hour's worth of research on the web and digesting what is said there by the industries themselves, which is always going to be heavily biased.
So this doesn't count as hard evidence, and it's important to be cautious. I'd like to see what NGOs like Corporate Watch or the Post Carbon Institute (or any environmental NGO, they all seem to be strangely silent on the matter) have to say about this technology as a potential solution, or part solution, to the climate problem. But in the absence of that, it seems on the face of it to be genuinely promising. Of course, we are facing more than just the emissions of GHGs and climate change. CCM, even if it were to prove feasible on a large scale, does not address species extinction or the loss of biodiversity, which many biologists and conservationsists, along with the UN, consider to be a worse problem than climate change. Neither does it address intractable problems like Peak Oil. So even if CCM works, it is not a 'get out of jail free' card. Humanity still has severe problems. Nonetheless, it would certainly offer significant breathing space, and a dose of hope that is much needed.
Now let me finally get back to the morning news broadcast that mentioned a breakthrough in CCM technology. If all of the above wasn't good enough news for the despairing climate activist, then perhaps the following will do the job. The announcement was concerning a breakthrough in direct air capture (DAC) of CO2, whereby CO2 is directly captured form the air, and not just from the exhaust fumes of an industrial installation. Capturing CO2 from the air is far more difficult because the concentration is far less than in exhaust gases, which means the whole process requires more energy and materials, which amounts to a heap more money. Scientists in the US however have modified some of the materials used in the existing process to produce a process that is two to three times more effective at capturing CO2 from the air. The upside to this is that it has the potential to substantially reduce the cost of DAC, making the possibility of plants whioch capture CO2 from the air and mineralise it into a bicarbonate which can be stored in the sea, as in the CCM process, much more likely.
To quote from New Scientist:
Dawid Hanak at Cranfield University in the UK says the research has the potential to “substantially reduce the cost of DAC”. The captured CO2 can be converted into sodium bicarbonate, or baking soda, with the addition of seawater. This can then be safely stored in the ocean, which represents an “infinite sink” for captured CO2, the team suggests.
Releasing baking soda into the ocean wouldn’t pose any ecological harm, says SenGupta. Sodium bicarbonate is an alkali, so it could offer some benefit by reversing the acidification of the ocean that occurs when CO2 is dissolved, he says. “Higher alkalinity also means more biological activity; that means more CO2 sequestration.
So it looks like CCM could be a game changer, and the technology is improving rapidly. I'm not going to pin my hopes on it, but I will be keeping my eye on it, and for all those despairing climate activists out there, this is worth taking note of. We are all demanding radical change, but developments like this do make me question my own activism: is it possible that I've been wrong, and that radical change is not necessary, and science and industry can save the day?
I think the answer is definitely no. Science and industry may be able to make a game changing move as regards to GHG emissions, and to bring them back to safe levels, but they can do nothing for the earth, whose biodiversity and species are being devastated. While I welcome CCM as a positive development, it does nothing to change the rate of destruction of the earth's biosphere, and the fact that what we are doing is profoundly wrong.
Also, I think it is important to question the sanity of a culture that does nothing in the face of an existential threat like climate change, and instead sits back and hopes that some new technology will save the day. And also the morality of a culture who, in the face of climate change and massive global species loss, do absolutely nothing and carry on business as usual. It seems to me that CCM or any new mitigating technology, even if successful at bringing down GHG levels, does not alter the fact that our society is profoundly sick. These are the actions of unhinged people who have lost their native human intelligence and morality, and have become depraved and illegitimate creatures of the earth.
Coming to mind is the film Avatar, which depicts an indigenous race of alien beings on another planet facing the hostile threat of an invading army of humans intent on exploiting the natural resources of their planet, and killing all life in the process. Basically, what most humans today are doing. If this invading army developed CCM technology to prevent the climate from destabilising, would that suddenly make then the good guys? The answer is definitely no, they remain evil, because that is what they are, and the CCM tech just makes for good business, nothing else.
So make no mistake, even if CCM is deployed on epic scales and brings down global GHG levels, thereby preventing runaway global warming, we are still living in a culture toxic to life on earth. The only lasting solution is a radical change in our consciousness and in the way we live, and in our relations with each other and the wider biosphere. That is outside of the scope of science and industry, and the reason why, although I would breathe a sigh of relief and celebrate, ultimately I would remain a militant environmentalist if CCM brought GHGs back down to safe levels, as the net effect of global industry on the planet remains horrific, and far too high a price to pay in my opinion for benefits which are largely profit driven and non-essential.