@@shlnglls i think if that renewable energy which is used to power this massive machinery can be used to replace other polluting energy generation, we can still save a lot of carbon going into atmosphere
@@akash4043 Yes and no. This does not have to be a zero sum thing. It would be better to have such technology than not. You can perhaps install new renewable plants right next to it and run it remotely somewhere. There are always way more options than appear at first. Most problems are in part a framing problem.
@@akash4043 While that might be true, it's a matter of getting companies to accept the change in technology. For the biggest offenders, they would have to be compelled by law and/or someone else would have to pay for it. Either way, not the easiest thing to accomplish on a large scale.
Isn't it just incredibly insane that we allow companies to dump carbon dioxide into the atmosphere for free and then we pay other companies hundreds of dollars per tonne to remove it?
what a dum, ignorant take, companies wont pay for it, you will pay. costs are always forwarded to the customer. Whats actually insane is that we care about 'carbon dioxide footprint' instead of actually using that money to produce something useful or help the poor etc.
The simplest and most effective way to store carbon has been around since the beginning of times: TREES Trees store carbon, retain water, keep soil in place esp. on slopes, provide shade == cool the ground down, provide food, provide building materials for humans and animals; It is extremely low-maintenance etc. Instead of building machines to 'fix' the carbon problem, plant trees 1.000.000 trees; Choose 'local varieties', mix them up. Plant them wherever you can. Look after them for ~5 years. After that they can look after themselves for the next 200 years. If after 1.000.000 trees planted, we humans are still around... plant another 1.000.000 trees. If you want to 'build machines', build machines that can plant 1.00.00 trees; They need to be simple, cheap and available for free... KISS: let mother nature do what she does best: Look after us all.
Thank you!!! I'm sitting here thinking about how they are trying to store carbon, and losing my mind a little bit. I get that this is a great effort in trying to reduce CO2 emissions, but Good Old mother nature has always proven time and time again that she works best. Preserving Forests, planting trees, and cleaning up the ocean in my mind should be the number one most important thing. We will curtail the climate crisis pretty quick by just allowing nature to naturally restore balance. I'm always trying to find the most natural way to restore our Earth.
Trees grown in the global south actual create more CO2 and warm the climate faster. CO2 removal isn't the answer, cooling the planet is. Look into the MEER Reflection technology. It is cheap, scales, and works very fast.
Why is it irony? It's serendipitous and a rather beautiful accidental analogy. Of course real plants are amazing; we can counter desertification by planting trees, making swales and reducing grazing on average through more intensive herding (mega-herds). And of course it's devastating that we cut down primal jungle forest for quick profits instead of the deep ecological and economical services they can provide with sustainable stewardship. But how does artificial CO2 removal degrade or add from those things? Often innovation is based on what nature already discovered and this is nothing new; we just sort of replicated trees. On Iceland there is not the environment to grow trees like in the Jungle, but they can use geothermal and solar energy to capture CO2. It's a green solution to reduce emissions for companies that really won't unless someone else started; the fossil fuel industry which itself is not only cause of CO2 emissions (the consumer ultimately chooses, but they sure do 'lobby'), but also of direct environmental impact. This technological solution for capture does not solve those other issues by other human activities, but it does help with CO2 pollution (more CO2 is great for plants, but not when the change is greater than species can handle in their natural migrations, for instance away from more invasive species given the new parameters - that's a big reason why plants go extinct or are endemic in the first place). In combination with sustainable stewardship for natural spaces, technology like this can lead to a societal change where we can actually demand from big industries and nations that they become more and more sustainable. Finally the capture capacity of these devices is far greater than nature, at least at first (so for most emerging ecologies). Imagine putting these in the middle of the Sahara, not many trees will grow there, but these devices would capture CO2 nevertheless. Point is, wherever you can invest in nature recovery to capture CO2 that's a great first step, but wherever the potential of this technology outweighs that of nature itself, it sure can help a lot!
It would be cool if they could downsize the filters and place them over exhaust pipes for commercial producers of CO2, or even cars. That way the CO2 would be more concentrated and they wouldn't require filtration of so much air.
Interesting, we’ve had these machines for millions of years. They are called plants seems like it would be much cheaper just to stop chopping down all the trees.
Seems like it, but they have been trying to prevent that unsuccessfully for years, because money. How do you reckon it's cheaper when any attempt to suade people from stopping sustenance farming is causing poverty, or how is it cheaper when you have to fight illegal timber companies that employ violence to continue their evil trade, how easy is it for a country that relies on cutting down the forest for income to quit doing that? Cheaper maybe, but not easier. The best solution is land renewal nearby logging and farming operations so that you can actually stop the activities, but it's probably neither the cheapest nor the easiest.
Let's pose some questions; how much energy would it take to operate this plant? You said it "could" be powered by renewables, Is it now powered by rewnewables? Is that sustainable? I have hard time believing we don't have the land to plants trees, the best carbon capture. We have millions of hectares of savannas and deserts that can be reforested. Some TED talks have had speakers discuss this. So what is more cost effective solution? Reforestation or making machines that would be powered by large land areas of solar panels covering the very soil that would have plants to capture the carbon?
Only a research plant would be powered by the grid, which in Iceland is mostly thermal. "We have millions of hectares of savannas and deserts that can be reforested.". But do YOU have those, or do other people live there or own those? Are you and others really OK spending money somewhere it doesn't make you money in return, or are you far more comfortable spending it near you, where your local ecology and economy can blossom? On Earth there is plenty for "all", but who gets to define who is part of this "all"? "So what is more cost effective solution? Reforestation or making machines that would be powered by large land areas of solar panels covering the very soil that would have plants to capture the carbon?" False dichotomy. You can place these over the ocean. Both options are not completely mutually exclusive at the very least. Moreover, since some levels of sunlight permit solar arrays to be interspersed with agriculture or plants that can help regrade the soil.
So many here in the comments complaining about "why not just plant trees?" and such. The issue with that is that you need both a lot of time and a lot of space to plant a forest and get results. These is pretty much a technological forest that can be up and running in a much shorter time with a much smaller footprint. While they have all of them clustered around the same building here, imagine a city where every building has one of these running on the roof. Each one might not pull a lot of CO2 each, but having so many would be a massive force multiplier. And like he said, the more you build the cheaper the whole thing becomes and the more the technology develops the more efficient the system will become. He talked about turning the captured CO2 into stone underground, there's already a company who has figured out how to turn captured CO2 into bricks for buildings. Just imagine where combining these two technologies together can lead.
An 18.6% increase in permaculture (responsible land management) would sequester 9.3 gigatons of carbon by 2050; the sequestration these machines do is microscopic by comparison.
If you plant trees: Wood for living Wood for selling Plants for food Solving problems related to population through turning deserts green Balancing "CO2 disasters' Giving more life for animals/people overall Constant production of supplies which can be monetized and further re-invest in the same process
Planting trees is not a solution. It's just another way to pawn the problem off on something. No amount of trees can undo 100 yrs of unbalanced C02 emissions.
It would probably net neutral in a few years, being it can sequester 10,000 units of CO2 per day. Plus it sounds like they can be ran by biofuels or even solar power. Trees take a long time to be able to pull large amounts of carbon. So this in general is a net win and really exciting, as the technology will only get better.
Great timing! I've been looking for ways to contribute (even on a personal scale) to the fight against climate change. I'll research more but I like what I hear, go science! 👏
i wonder how i didin´t know about these machines until now. Furthermore, this TedTalk only has 100k even though he is talking about an incredible improvement for the whole society. People are slept.
If you consider what it took to build (steel concreate etc.) and what it takes to run (electricity from coal), what is your net carbon footprint as of today? I get that it will get better but like perpetual motion, my gut feeling is your best case scenario is break even.
@@lloyd7273 it actually doesn't , if you scale up the production and distribution infrastructure. The absolute carbon cost is concerning. Also think about the wider social implications of the market signals in this approach.
@@Bigobe244When you scale up it isn’t just the carbon costs of shipping and installing that goes up,the rate that you remove carbon goes up exponentially. Its just a matter of how fast it can cancel out the carbon it made to set it up, then after it reaches that milestone anything after is pure reduction in carbon.
This can only be a viable option if cost goes way, way down and volume goes way, way up. I hope you can do it. For the moment I'm quite sceptical since all other attempts (mainly by fossil fuel giants) have failed miserably.
One of the challenges he mentions if the volume of air that needs to be processed cause of the low concentration. I'm sure that problem wouldn't be much of a problem if they where built in the middle of a city.
Wouldn't all of the dust ruins/block the sorbent layer anway? Especially when we have to run a lot of air through the material and cities air aren't very dust-free apparently
I'm maybe wondering the same thing to other people, but why don't we put these "solvents" at the dead source of CO2? The source must have higher CO2 density too, so I expect it'll be more effective.
He barely mentions forests - simply says planting alone will not be enough. Conserving existing forests is more important than planting them. Also, grassland (not lawns) is very efficient at carbon capture if memory serves. How about redesigning our tech for energy efficiency and durability? The amount of gadgets that now need batteries is astounding - even those who a couple of decades ago did not have batteries. We have largely stopped using mechanical tech (like scales, thermometers) and now use battery driven instead. The car and energy industry is developing without any consideration of what to do with the batteries at the end of service life (you must plan for that in the design phase). The service life of tech/gadgets/appliances is now remarkably short. Much shorter than before. Just look up 'planned obsolescence'. The industry purposefully makes things hard/impossible to repair, thus maximising ewaste. *Tech will not save us. We must reign it in if we wish to live in any kind of modernized lifestyle.* There is a guy called Andrew Millison (botanist) who through his videos is teaching how we can support or destroy our planet's ability to thrive naturally (and actually HAVE freshwater. He shows how to *work with nature, support it* with methods, some of which have been known for centuries (Native Americans were good at this for example). I love trees. We should plant more, agreed. I also think we should tech less. We don't need to - and we shouldn't - wait for any tech to save the day.
Far less than it can capture during it lifetime operations. As a comparison, solar panels emit about 25 times less carbon dioxide equivalent per kilowatt hour than coal-powered electricity. If the production energy mix was fully green that would be even less, however, solar panels still get made using fossil fuel energy.
Quick math, it would cost like 100 trillion to get all CO2 emissions/year. So If they can get the cost down 10 times then it would become a good solution.
Most notable moment mentioned - is actually, low concentration of co2 in atmosphere! so it's mean - better not to pollute, either later invest millions, or if no other options: capture in the same place with the emissions.
Awesome 👍 We need to build them globally instead of Mars Moon mission s and evil wars.. Nobel prize for this!! I would note many urban areas industrial regions trees cannot be planted in mass.
No, these are stupid because the build process and the energy use also emits CO2, so at the end of the day it emits more carbon than it captures. Carbon capture machines are the pinnacle of greenwashing
No we don't need yet another freaking machine. This is pure idiotism. We need to restore biosphere and particularly forests if we care about the balance of atmospheric gases!
think the best starting place for them to put these plants would be near those companies that dump the carbon into the atmosphere. This way before it has spread to the atmosphere, larger amount may be caught by these machines
We would need 10 million of these machines that cost $10 million each in order to remove the CO2 that we make per year :). Here is a crazy idea instead, stop making so much CO2 in the first place.
As a country uk does not produce the amount of co2 that they go on about, instead they crippled uk industry and now China etc produce the goods and co2
@@theone-jn4zq No, we add every year 40 billion tons more. Lets remove some of those by not adding them instead of removing 10 tons per day for 10 million dollars :D
Excellent engineering! Ultimately however, the problem is the prevalence of human activity. Approximately 60% of a human organism consists of water, which becomes increasingly unsustainable when deviating from that core value. The same may be suggested of the planetary organism, which is veritably drowning in human activity.
Could you not find a way to attach this to the industries releasing this kind of pollution? I feel like it would be more efficient that way, rather than having it out in the countryside.
The issue is that those industries would market themselves as offsetting their carbon emissions so that they don’t actually have to reduce how much they pollute.
I would also like to know how LOUD the system is. Is it practical to build in cities like Los Angeles or Pittsburgh where there are homes as well as factories/cars emitting CO2?
Since there are lots of fans for the high air stream needed, I think you would rather run it remotely. And also since the air is quite well mixed up, you do not need any proximity to the location of emission. But maybe it would be nice to have some sort of CO2 gathering directly from factories without something in between. I wonder why that is not discussed.
Perhaps we are thinking about this wrong. What are you going to do with the co2 once you have captured it? Just stuff it away somewhere? Don't plants need that? They make co2 generators for greenhouses except they use propane to produce it, essentially doing the opposite of what we want. What if someone could make a small direct capture device that you install in greenhouses that extracts the co2 from the air instead of the old fashioned way? Once the plants get a hold of it they essentially metabolize it into oxygen and the carbon goes into making fruits, vegetables, and flowers.
There was well enough CO2 on earths surface before we decided to take more from underground and pump it into the air. We won't have to worry about plants not having enough for a long time ... But you are right. Carbon capture is not the best solution for this problem. The best way to clean up a mess is always to not make it in the first place!
@@micraan1579 I'm not talking about the whole out-of-doors. I'm talking about in a greenhouses. It's obvious that you read the first 4 sentences of my post and moved on, bla bla bla. Ok. I've done that too. Guilty as charged. Plants in greenhouses consume the CO2 and then it gets low and reduces the productivity of the plants. So people who have greenhouses will buy units to burn propane just to generate CO2.
Plants need CO2 (carbon dioxide) for photosynthesis, remember that when they start eliminating CO2 out of the atmosphere and then wondering why the plants start dying. Trees and native grasslands is the best way to combat this "problem."
Just make diamonds with the carbon, would simultaneously fund the carbon capture and stop blood diamonds. The guy doesn't talk about how it'll be funded
But then the prices of diamond would go down so much that they become worthless. (Which they already are. There is just a company hoarding them to keep the price up)
I'm pretty sure if diamonds were that easy to make someone else would have founded stuff with it already. Your idea sounds good but you haven't thought it through or checked if it worked.
I have invented a solution to remove carbon dioxide from the air. Use the exhaust funnel from smoke stacks as an intake to cool down the exhaust. Redirect the exhaust via heat exchanger and then use the Coiled cooling pipe to change the exhaust smoke back into a solid. The coiled cooling pipe was invented in 1100 and relies on the theories of enthalpy and entropy of evaporation. I believe that cars have close to zero emmisions now? Thanks Catherine Crouse.
Reforestation requires land that is not already forested. Trees emit all the CO2 they ever captured when they die; some of it as methane. Unless you volunteer to have trees instead of a backyard or trees instead of food; you can only do this in places where trees are a main source of fuel and there is land that could be forested. Just planting trees is not even helpful.
CO2 concentration is more or less the same across the planet. It is higher only on the chimneys of coal plants, incinerators etc. There are different plants for that. This is meant on direct-air capture, so to remove what has been already emitted. It does not compete with the systems trying to prevent further emissions by absorb CO2-rich air. It is one of the tools which will be useful on large scale when we get close to zero net emissions and afterwards.
I recall during the covid pandemic, when world traffic had diminished. The ozone had repaired itself. I remember watching a news story about it. The problem isn't expensive solutions such as this, it's reducing our output so that the planet can repair itself.
There’s something unclear hear. If the CO2 density in the air is 420pp. There’s not a huge needs for this kind of machine right ? Furthermore, if we use that huge investment for tree planting, it will have more impact on the earth.
Carbon Dioxide consists of 1 Carbon atom and 2 Oxygen atoms. This system is removing 2 oxygen atoms for every carbon atom, unlike nature, through plants, remove 1 carbon atom and release 2 oxygen atoms into the atmosphere; not storing it away underground we we cannot use it. [breathing]. I worry about some of these "solutions".
@@902DawgS in what sense? i would agree that it is still only very little. But it achieves more effectivly what carbon capture is about. Its not a solution, just more cost efficient.
And what happens to the water that you mix with the CO2 and inject it hundred of meters underground? It doesn't seem that this process only has up sides....
@@davidj2473 I'm afraid... Because, I'm 100% sure there Will be people with a lot of money with the idea to build one of this massive plants to replace an entire forest with monocultures just because of the cost efficiency
@@davidj2473 Nah, these machines need energy which also needs a lot of space. Also space for making solar & the machines, transport everything, maintain, controlling, ..
A single redwood, planted, for $1. will remove 1,500 tons of CO2 from the air and build soil, reduce erosion, moderate temperature volatility, provide shade, and eventually useful building materials in 1000 years. For only $200. you can hire people to do much less than that. Naturally, we are ignoring our cheaper partner and spending lots of CO2 mining and making machines, as well as extracting oil.
How much CO2 being absorbed? Could we simply uss that 10M to install PV or other renewable? how much CO2 that is not emitted from other source may probably more significant towards CO2 reduction. How much CO2 emission was there to install the CO2 absorber?
9:24, Is it posible to dig hole 100m underground without emmiting more carbon to envirnment "to put CO2 stone" there. this feels so wrong, I feel like, we will save more carbon if we don't perform any action suggested by this video. As everybody suggesting, we should just focus on planting more tree
Is this really the way to go? Building relatively inefficient means of removing CO2, that produces CO2 during construction, and requires energy to operate from sources that either detract from the energy transition or is produced using fossil fuels?
Logic doesn't make sense. Because we have decades of pulling Carbon out of the place it has been locked away naturally for millions of years. Then pumping it into the atmosphere.
@@Sentrme Yeah...and we're still doing that, so by putting the energy that would normally feed this machine into displacing fossil fuel on the power grid, you'll come out ahead. There's also the matter of storing the CO2 you extract from the air. Also...bear in mind that the carbon that's been locked away for millions of years was initially in the air in the first place, and life was thriving.
Stop tilling fields would capture as much CO2 as millions of these ORCA together. And it is feasible here and now, with the existent technology, without affecting agricultural output... well, stop tilling would increase agricultural output in the medium and long term.
Im guessing its ok now to cut down all the trees and put a bigger tax on carbon coz of the machines rather than planting more trees and stopping deforestation Edit, these machines are an atrocity to humanity
It is *not*. And this project as well needs carbon taxes to be economically sustainable. We do not have enough space to plant all the trees that have been promised. Planting trees in some areas could even worsen climate change, because of the change of albedo. Much money have been spent in planting monocultures of trees that then died from diseases or fire, because forest cannot survive. We need to stop deforestation, and plant trees where it makes sense, to preserve species and restore environments that have been disrupted, but plants are not meant for carbon storage. They also require a lot of time to absorb CO2, and there is no guarantee that over tens of years they would have effectively locked CO2 permanently. We need carbon capture done efficiently and correctly. It is part of the solution, not a substitute.
BREAKING NEWS: There is already a CO2 collector that is totally free, and that does not even cost anything to run. It's called trees. All we have to do is stop cutting them down at the appalling rate that we do now.
I have questions about this system? Of all the things that can be done with the carbon why is it buired? Surly if you were to grant it to steel manufacturing plants it would be appreciated? Why are such small fans used an not a wind tunnel?
If you give it to industries that burn it, it goes back into the atmosphere. If the air and oceans have the right amount of CO2 that's exactly what they will start doing, but until then it must go to industries that build with it. I imagine this pure source of carbon will soon be put to use as a source for nanotubes; buildings are pretty good long lasting carbon sinks.
That would be quite counterproductive. The plane has, for now, CO2 emissions of its own. So that would greatly reduce the efficiency of the system. Moreover, air pollution is called that because it gets dispersed in the air, obviously, so no need to bring the device closer to the source when you can just tap the atmosphere in general. Finally, why not think of putting the Orca or some other capture device directly on a smoke stack?
Probably not that much or close to zero especially the direct air capture in Iceland is powered solely on geothermal and hydroelectric from nearby dams
@@samuelzev4076 that’s one country , the rest of the world relies heavily on gas and coal as the primary source of energy . Iceland is a small country with a small population, it’s easy for them . if we were to adopt the technology in the US to offset our CO2 it will be gas and coal operating these facilities
@@joejoey7272 its not necessary anymore to use gas and coal as an excuse to power these things any longer especially since there was a recent breakthrough in nuclear fission, we can utilize that as a power source.
No, there are better methods for CCS at the place of concentrated emissions like oil refineries and coal plants. This is for CO2 that is already quite dilluted. The best way to reduce future CO2 is to not emit it. Coal power is a no-brainer; you just replace it with nuclear and you are done. Oil is harder; hydrocarbons will always be very useful. If we didn’t have oil we’d have to make hydrocarbons some other way. Burning them for transportation is kind of stupid and will slowly end; but for chemical uses we’ll use oil for the next few centuries.
Removing carbon from the atmosphere after it has been added is counter-productive and shouldn't be used as a solution to climate change. Keeping the excess carbon out of the atmosphere in the first place is much more cost effective and efficient.
How much electricity it requires to run for one day ?
What is the carbon footprint of the electricity used ?
He said it ran off renewable energy.
@@shlnglls i think if that renewable energy which is used to power this massive machinery can be used to replace other polluting energy generation, we can still save a lot of carbon going into atmosphere
@@akash4043we can do both.
@@akash4043 Yes and no. This does not have to be a zero sum thing. It would be better to have such technology than not. You can perhaps install new renewable plants right next to it and run it remotely somewhere. There are always way more options than appear at first. Most problems are in part a framing problem.
@@akash4043 While that might be true, it's a matter of getting companies to accept the change in technology. For the biggest offenders, they would have to be compelled by law and/or someone else would have to pay for it. Either way, not the easiest thing to accomplish on a large scale.
Isn't it just incredibly insane that we allow companies to dump carbon dioxide into the atmosphere for free and then we pay other companies hundreds of dollars per tonne to remove it?
When you put it like that yes. Part from that, not really.
what a dum, ignorant take, companies wont pay for it, you will pay. costs are always forwarded to the customer. Whats actually insane is that we care about 'carbon dioxide footprint' instead of actually using that money to produce something useful or help the poor etc.
That’s capitalism for ya
glad people are not falling for this BS anymore
yes, companies that dump carbon dioxide should pay for fix the atmosphere, i agree with you
The simplest and most effective way to store carbon has been around since the beginning of times: TREES
Trees store carbon, retain water, keep soil in place esp. on slopes, provide shade == cool the ground down, provide food, provide building materials for humans and animals; It is extremely low-maintenance etc.
Instead of building machines to 'fix' the carbon problem, plant trees 1.000.000 trees; Choose 'local varieties', mix them up. Plant them wherever you can. Look after them for ~5 years. After that they can look after themselves for the next 200 years. If after 1.000.000 trees planted, we humans are still around... plant another 1.000.000 trees.
If you want to 'build machines', build machines that can plant 1.00.00 trees; They need to be simple, cheap and available for free...
KISS: let mother nature do what she does best: Look after us all.
Thank you!!! I'm sitting here thinking about how they are trying to store carbon, and losing my mind a little bit. I get that this is a great effort in trying to reduce CO2 emissions, but Good Old mother nature has always proven time and time again that she works best.
Preserving Forests, planting trees, and cleaning up the ocean in my mind should be the number one most important thing.
We will curtail the climate crisis pretty quick by just allowing nature to naturally restore balance.
I'm always trying to find the most natural way to restore our Earth.
Trees grown in the global south actual create more CO2 and warm the climate faster. CO2 removal isn't the answer, cooling the planet is. Look into the MEER Reflection technology. It is cheap, scales, and works very fast.
The speaker did mention the need for forests, but there is inadequate space for enough trees to make a difference to our current creation of carbon d.
Yeah, humans just like to over exaggerate things when all solutions are to be found in nature.
@@izziebon we can turn most deserts into forests
The irony of it being called a 'plant': makes you realise just how amazing 'real' plants are. What have we done.
Yeah plants need CO2. This seems dumb. Maybe we should just have more actual plants. Occams Razor.
Are you kidding? Where do you people come up with this stuff? What have 'we' done?
Why is it irony? It's serendipitous and a rather beautiful accidental analogy. Of course real plants are amazing; we can counter desertification by planting trees, making swales and reducing grazing on average through more intensive herding (mega-herds). And of course it's devastating that we cut down primal jungle forest for quick profits instead of the deep ecological and economical services they can provide with sustainable stewardship. But how does artificial CO2 removal degrade or add from those things?
Often innovation is based on what nature already discovered and this is nothing new; we just sort of replicated trees. On Iceland there is not the environment to grow trees like in the Jungle, but they can use geothermal and solar energy to capture CO2. It's a green solution to reduce emissions for companies that really won't unless someone else started; the fossil fuel industry which itself is not only cause of CO2 emissions (the consumer ultimately chooses, but they sure do 'lobby'), but also of direct environmental impact.
This technological solution for capture does not solve those other issues by other human activities, but it does help with CO2 pollution (more CO2 is great for plants, but not when the change is greater than species can handle in their natural migrations, for instance away from more invasive species given the new parameters - that's a big reason why plants go extinct or are endemic in the first place). In combination with sustainable stewardship for natural spaces, technology like this can lead to a societal change where we can actually demand from big industries and nations that they become more and more sustainable.
Finally the capture capacity of these devices is far greater than nature, at least at first (so for most emerging ecologies). Imagine putting these in the middle of the Sahara, not many trees will grow there, but these devices would capture CO2 nevertheless. Point is, wherever you can invest in nature recovery to capture CO2 that's a great first step, but wherever the potential of this technology outweighs that of nature itself, it sure can help a lot!
It would be cool if they could downsize the filters and place them over exhaust pipes for commercial producers of CO2, or even cars. That way the CO2 would be more concentrated and they wouldn't require filtration of so much air.
Interesting, we’ve had these machines for millions of years. They are called plants seems like it would be much cheaper just to stop chopping down all the trees.
Seems like it, but they have been trying to prevent that unsuccessfully for years, because money. How do you reckon it's cheaper when any attempt to suade people from stopping sustenance farming is causing poverty, or how is it cheaper when you have to fight illegal timber companies that employ violence to continue their evil trade, how easy is it for a country that relies on cutting down the forest for income to quit doing that? Cheaper maybe, but not easier. The best solution is land renewal nearby logging and farming operations so that you can actually stop the activities, but it's probably neither the cheapest nor the easiest.
Can be used in cities, where less space for trees
Let's pose some questions; how much energy would it take to operate this plant? You said it "could" be powered by renewables, Is it now powered by rewnewables? Is that sustainable? I have hard time believing we don't have the land to plants trees, the best carbon capture. We have millions of hectares of savannas and deserts that can be reforested. Some TED talks have had speakers discuss this. So what is more cost effective solution? Reforestation or making machines that would be powered by large land areas of solar panels covering the very soil that would have plants to capture the carbon?
Island. More than 80% renewable.
So i guess the answer is very close to yes
Iceland geo thermal
fill the vast oceans with algae and allow nature to recapture much more feasible and sustainable. this is a solution looking for an answer.
Only a research plant would be powered by the grid, which in Iceland is mostly thermal. "We have millions of hectares of savannas and deserts that can be reforested.". But do YOU have those, or do other people live there or own those? Are you and others really OK spending money somewhere it doesn't make you money in return, or are you far more comfortable spending it near you, where your local ecology and economy can blossom? On Earth there is plenty for "all", but who gets to define who is part of this "all"?
"So what is more cost effective solution? Reforestation or making machines that would be powered by large land areas of solar panels covering the very soil that would have plants to capture the carbon?" False dichotomy. You can place these over the ocean. Both options are not completely mutually exclusive at the very least. Moreover, since some levels of sunlight permit solar arrays to be interspersed with agriculture or plants that can help regrade the soil.
This is actually a very simple concept and very practical. I think it's one of the best ways of reducing CO2.
So many here in the comments complaining about "why not just plant trees?" and such. The issue with that is that you need both a lot of time and a lot of space to plant a forest and get results. These is pretty much a technological forest that can be up and running in a much shorter time with a much smaller footprint. While they have all of them clustered around the same building here, imagine a city where every building has one of these running on the roof. Each one might not pull a lot of CO2 each, but having so many would be a massive force multiplier.
And like he said, the more you build the cheaper the whole thing becomes and the more the technology develops the more efficient the system will become. He talked about turning the captured CO2 into stone underground, there's already a company who has figured out how to turn captured CO2 into bricks for buildings. Just imagine where combining these two technologies together can lead.
Wow... Astonishing
An 18.6% increase in permaculture (responsible land management) would sequester 9.3 gigatons of carbon by 2050; the sequestration these machines do is microscopic by comparison.
@@teejatron9849 that is by 2050 sir
If you plant trees:
Wood for living
Wood for selling
Plants for food
Solving problems related to population through turning deserts green
Balancing "CO2 disasters'
Giving more life for animals/people overall
Constant production of supplies which can be monetized and further re-invest in the same process
@valerkis8280 that's right. What timeline did you think we were talking about??
We have to mine all those materials probably creating more CO2. Should just plant trees. We don't have to power trees and a bi-product of Oxygen.
Planting trees is not a solution. It's just another way to pawn the problem off on something. No amount of trees can undo 100 yrs of unbalanced C02 emissions.
You seem to be missing his point about TIME and how we don’t have much of it.
It’s always good to listen to the whole talk before giving a comment, he mentions why trees is not the complete solution.
Place these units in urban industrial areas where trees cannot be planted .
It would probably net neutral in a few years, being it can sequester 10,000 units of CO2 per day. Plus it sounds like they can be ran by biofuels or even solar power.
Trees take a long time to be able to pull large amounts of carbon. So this in general is a net win and really exciting, as the technology will only get better.
this is the perfect moment to watch the movie the Lorax
A book every child should have
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Great timing! I've been looking for ways to contribute (even on a personal scale) to the fight against climate change. I'll research more but I like what I hear, go science! 👏
1. Forget human-made machinery.
2. Prevent forest from cutdown.
3. Go plant forest.
Find your local regenerative farmer and buy his/her produce. They do much more for CO2 capture than any industrial solution.
go plant a tree.
i wonder how i didin´t know about these machines until now. Furthermore, this TedTalk only has 100k even though he is talking about an incredible improvement for the whole society. People are slept.
If you consider what it took to build (steel concreate etc.) and what it takes to run (electricity from coal), what is your net carbon footprint as of today? I get that it will get better but like perpetual motion, my gut feeling is your best case scenario is break even.
You do realize that he mentioned island?
Island has 80% of its electricity from renewable sources
@MrMurgen yes, but he talks about scalability. So these are good Qs. Looks like they know these are blockers
@@austindenotter19The gain outweighs the upfront and one time cost.
@@lloyd7273 it actually doesn't , if you scale up the production and distribution infrastructure. The absolute carbon cost is concerning. Also think about the wider social implications of the market signals in this approach.
@@Bigobe244When you scale up it isn’t just the carbon costs of shipping and installing that goes up,the rate that you remove carbon goes up exponentially. Its just a matter of how fast it can cancel out the carbon it made to set it up, then after it reaches that milestone anything after is pure reduction in carbon.
This can only be a viable option if cost goes way, way down and volume goes way, way up. I hope you can do it.
For the moment I'm quite sceptical since all other attempts (mainly by fossil fuel giants) have failed miserably.
One of the challenges he mentions if the volume of air that needs to be processed cause of the low concentration. I'm sure that problem wouldn't be much of a problem if they where built in the middle of a city.
yeah i agree Iceland is already quite clean in terms of air condition. maybe in the highest concentration of co2 maybe india/bangladesh/etc?
Or connected to some fuelburning industry
This wouldn't work in a city since it relies on a collosal amount of renewable energy.
Growing trees is simplest solution, low cost.
Wouldn't all of the dust ruins/block the sorbent layer anway? Especially when we have to run a lot of air through the material and cities air aren't very dust-free apparently
we are building machines because we are destroying our planets natural mechanisms for removing carbon - lol
How else will they sell housing in residential areas with these built-in to the top 1%.
Every city should invest in one.
Instead of building machines to suck up carbon, we could just.. Ya know, _plant some fucking trees_
That isn't fast enough. I also heard that Bill Gates himself is investing in Infinium, which hopes to suck in CO2, and then put it to good use!
Plants?
I'm maybe wondering the same thing to other people, but why don't we put these "solvents" at the dead source of CO2? The source must have higher CO2 density too, so I expect it'll be more effective.
How about planting more trees 🌲, instead of destroying huge amount of forest 🌳 around the world 🌎
He talked about it in the video
They cut absolutely thousands of trees down for wind turbines
Minute 5:58 speaks about "mother nature" providing us solutions.
He barely mentions forests - simply says planting alone will not be enough. Conserving existing forests is more important than planting them. Also, grassland (not lawns) is very efficient at carbon capture if memory serves.
How about redesigning our tech for energy efficiency and durability? The amount of gadgets that now need batteries is astounding - even those who a couple of decades ago did not have batteries. We have largely stopped using mechanical tech (like scales, thermometers) and now use battery driven instead. The car and energy industry is developing without any consideration of what to do with the batteries at the end of service life (you must plan for that in the design phase).
The service life of tech/gadgets/appliances is now remarkably short. Much shorter than before. Just look up 'planned obsolescence'.
The industry purposefully makes things hard/impossible to repair, thus maximising ewaste.
*Tech will not save us. We must reign it in if we wish to live in any kind of modernized lifestyle.*
There is a guy called Andrew Millison (botanist) who through his videos is teaching how we can support or destroy our planet's ability to thrive naturally (and actually HAVE freshwater. He shows how to *work with nature, support it* with methods, some of which have been known for centuries (Native Americans were good at this for example).
I love trees. We should plant more, agreed. I also think we should tech less. We don't need to - and we shouldn't - wait for any tech to save the day.
The electricity required for these machines to run will create more carbon than removal
Symbiosis > Technocracy
Forgive my ignorance. How many tons of COs and other GHG would be produced in order to construct the Orca?
Far less than it can capture during it lifetime operations. As a comparison, solar panels emit about 25 times less carbon dioxide equivalent per kilowatt hour than coal-powered electricity. If the production energy mix was fully green that would be even less, however, solar panels still get made using fossil fuel energy.
Quick math, it would cost like 100 trillion to get all CO2 emissions/year. So If they can get the cost down 10 times then it would become a good solution.
I'm amazed at just how far the humans' greed and idiotism can reach.
This is exactly the case.
Most notable moment mentioned - is actually, low concentration of co2 in atmosphere! so it's mean - better not to pollute, either later invest millions, or if no other options: capture in the same place with the emissions.
Awesome 👍 We need to build them globally instead of Mars Moon mission s and evil wars..
Nobel prize for this!!
I would note many urban areas industrial regions trees cannot be planted in mass.
No, these are stupid because the build process and the energy use also emits CO2, so at the end of the day it emits more carbon than it captures. Carbon capture machines are the pinnacle of greenwashing
No we don't need yet another freaking machine. This is pure idiotism.
We need to restore biosphere and particularly forests if we care about the balance of atmospheric gases!
Thanks so much
And where do all the resources for the plants come from and where does the energy to run them come from? How much CO2 is released again as a result?
think the best starting place for them to put these plants would be near those companies that dump the carbon into the atmosphere. This way before it has spread to the atmosphere, larger amount may be caught by these machines
The basalt with the CO2 is fascinating.
Leprechauns and Unicorns .
How much energy does it take to take one ton of CO2 out of the air? How much energy does it take to make the “plants”.
Can they make machine that removes Vinyl chloride from air and water?
We can definitely buy time
informasi yang sangat bermutu dan penting
ALTERNATIVE TITLE:
*Fossil Fuel Industry* : The Massive Machines PUTTING Carbon IN Earth's Atmosphere
We would need 10 million of these machines that cost $10 million each in order to remove the CO2 that we make per year :). Here is a crazy idea instead, stop making so much CO2 in the first place.
As a country uk does not produce the amount of co2 that they go on about, instead they crippled uk industry and now China etc produce the goods and co2
The co2 is already in the air. He addressed that in his talk.
@@theone-jn4zq No, we add every year 40 billion tons more. Lets remove some of those by not adding them instead of removing 10 tons per day for 10 million dollars :D
@@nqkoi159 we can do both?
@@nqkoi159 also it's an early prototype. Not an example of what it will cost in the future.
Excellent engineering! Ultimately however, the problem is the prevalence of human activity. Approximately 60% of a human organism consists of water, which becomes increasingly unsustainable when deviating from that core value. The same may be suggested of the planetary organism, which is veritably drowning in human activity.
Could you not find a way to attach this to the industries releasing this kind of pollution? I feel like it would be more efficient that way, rather than having it out in the countryside.
The issue is that those industries would market themselves as offsetting their carbon emissions so that they don’t actually have to reduce how much they pollute.
The concentration of CO2 in the ocean is much higher (+ acidification) - any decarbonisation efforts happening there?
I would also like to know how LOUD the system is. Is it practical to build in cities like Los Angeles or Pittsburgh where there are homes as well as factories/cars emitting CO2?
Since there are lots of fans for the high air stream needed, I think you would rather run it remotely. And also since the air is quite well mixed up, you do not need any proximity to the location of emission.
But maybe it would be nice to have some sort of CO2 gathering directly from factories without something in between. I wonder why that is not discussed.
Probably about as loud as the cars that produce the CO2 in the first place ...
Perhaps we are thinking about this wrong. What are you going to do with the co2 once you have captured it? Just stuff it away somewhere? Don't plants need that? They make co2 generators for greenhouses except they use propane to produce it, essentially doing the opposite of what we want. What if someone could make a small direct capture device that you install in greenhouses that extracts the co2 from the air instead of the old fashioned way? Once the plants get a hold of it they essentially metabolize it into oxygen and the carbon goes into making fruits, vegetables, and flowers.
There was well enough CO2 on earths surface before we decided to take more from underground and pump it into the air. We won't have to worry about plants not having enough for a long time ...
But you are right. Carbon capture is not the best solution for this problem. The best way to clean up a mess is always to not make it in the first place!
@@micraan1579 I'm not talking about the whole out-of-doors. I'm talking about in a greenhouses. It's obvious that you read the first 4 sentences of my post and moved on, bla bla bla. Ok. I've done that too. Guilty as charged.
Plants in greenhouses consume the CO2 and then it gets low and reduces the productivity of the plants. So people who have greenhouses will buy units to burn propane just to generate CO2.
Plants need CO2 (carbon dioxide) for photosynthesis, remember that when they start eliminating CO2 out of the atmosphere and then wondering why the plants start dying. Trees and native grasslands is the best way to combat this "problem."
Just make diamonds with the carbon, would simultaneously fund the carbon capture and stop blood diamonds. The guy doesn't talk about how it'll be funded
But then the prices of diamond would go down so much that they become worthless. (Which they already are. There is just a company hoarding them to keep the price up)
I'm pretty sure if diamonds were that easy to make someone else would have founded stuff with it already. Your idea sounds good but you haven't thought it through or checked if it worked.
Teach me how this is gonna cost less energy than was produced when the CO2 was released
Put it on the vent on factories.
Will this technology help to make black oil trade green and sustainable?
For rest of the world, planting trees is good enuf. Just that they don't claim energy credits or rope in the govt funding
It's always about climate never about environment
Here's a crazy idea: how about not putting massive amounts of CO2 *into* the atmosphere?
I have invented a solution to remove carbon dioxide from the air. Use the exhaust funnel from smoke stacks as an intake to cool down the exhaust. Redirect the exhaust via heat exchanger and then use the Coiled cooling pipe to change the exhaust smoke back into a solid. The coiled cooling pipe was invented in 1100 and relies on the theories of enthalpy and entropy of evaporation. I believe that cars have close to zero emmisions now? Thanks Catherine Crouse.
Just search for the MEER Reflection and Dr. Tao presentation entitled "Climate Honesty - Ending Climate Brightsiding"
HEMP🌿& TREES🌲
How many trees can you plant with 10 million dollars?
Reforestation requires land that is not already forested. Trees emit all the CO2 they ever captured when they die; some of it as methane. Unless you volunteer to have trees instead of a backyard or trees instead of food; you can only do this in places where trees are a main source of fuel and there is land that could be forested.
Just planting trees is not even helpful.
@@soylentgreenb Thanks for helping debunk this concept. Once again corporations manipulating the truth. Even I had to come to this realization.
Why can you not just have the sorbents on things that already move and then have a drop off location where they heated up?
Forests are less expensive and are betters
why is that machine in green fields? Shouldn’t it be next to coal plants and in center of cities?
CO2 concentration is more or less the same across the planet. It is higher only on the chimneys of coal plants, incinerators etc. There are different plants for that. This is meant on direct-air capture, so to remove what has been already emitted. It does not compete with the systems trying to prevent further emissions by absorb CO2-rich air. It is one of the tools which will be useful on large scale when we get close to zero net emissions and afterwards.
It seems we're pushing really hard for that cyberpunk dystopia.
I recall during the covid pandemic, when world traffic had diminished. The ozone had repaired itself. I remember watching a news story about it.
The problem isn't expensive solutions such as this, it's reducing our output so that the planet can repair itself.
There’s something unclear hear. If the CO2 density in the air is 420pp. There’s not a huge needs for this kind of machine right ? Furthermore, if we use that huge investment for tree planting, it will have more impact on the earth.
How many is "needed"?
@6:00 arguments against trees is just wrong. China has had major success in planting mega forests
Trees do this for free. Winston Churchill had said that one day they would tax even the air that we breathe
Or maybe trees take years to decades to reach maturity, so not great for addressing immediate climate issues
@@fed562 cut less trees before growing more
Carbon Dioxide consists of 1 Carbon atom and 2 Oxygen atoms. This system is removing 2 oxygen atoms for every carbon atom, unlike nature, through plants, remove 1 carbon atom and release 2 oxygen atoms into the atmosphere; not storing it away underground we we cannot use it. [breathing]. I worry about some of these "solutions".
Can somebody tell me how much percentage of emitted CO2 is collected by this technology per year?
want to be more cost efficient? plant trees and convert old trees
Planting trees doesn't work.
@@902DawgS in what sense? i would agree that it is still only very little. But it achieves more effectivly what carbon capture is about. Its not a solution, just more cost efficient.
turn comments on on your Sue Klebold video
And what happens to the water that you mix with the CO2 and inject it hundred of meters underground? It doesn't seem that this process only has up sides....
Trees make the same for free. Trees store carbon in wood
AdamSomething would like to have a word
I thought trees do that already and for free
@@davidj2473 I'm afraid... Because, I'm 100% sure there Will be people with a lot of money with the idea to build one of this massive plants to replace an entire forest with monocultures just because of the cost efficiency
Yes they do, but the World Economic Forum would rather fund this idea over planting trees and stopping airplane ✈️ pollution.
@@rickdeckardbladerunner2049 ... We don't deserve the Earth ;-; men! We are monsters 😂
Minute 5:58 speaks about "mother nature" providing us solutions.
@@davidj2473 Nah, these machines need energy which also needs a lot of space. Also space for making solar & the machines, transport everything, maintain, controlling, ..
A single redwood, planted, for $1. will remove 1,500 tons of CO2 from the air and build soil, reduce erosion, moderate temperature volatility, provide shade, and eventually useful building materials in 1000 years. For only $200. you can hire people to do much less than that. Naturally, we are ignoring our cheaper partner and spending lots of CO2 mining and making machines, as well as extracting oil.
How much CO2 being absorbed? Could we simply uss that 10M to install PV or other renewable? how much CO2 that is not emitted from other source may probably more significant towards CO2 reduction.
How much CO2 emission was there to install the CO2 absorber?
Is the co2 at ground level having any effect on climate change ?
9:24, Is it posible to dig hole 100m underground without emmiting more carbon to envirnment "to put CO2 stone" there.
this feels so wrong, I feel like, we will save more carbon if we don't perform any action suggested by this video.
As everybody suggesting, we should just focus on planting more tree
If only there was a self replicating thing that could be used to capture carbon... We could plant them everywhere..
He mentioned that and the issue with that exact thing...
I mean, it’s not the ONLY solution, but planting more and not chopping down the ones we do have sounds great.
You can't patent that, and it makes too much sense along with stopping the jet planes from clouding up the skies.
Is this really the way to go? Building relatively inefficient means of removing CO2, that produces CO2 during construction, and requires energy to operate from sources that either detract from the energy transition or is produced using fossil fuels?
The air would have less carbon in it if the power used to run the machine was just put onto the grid.
Logic doesn't make sense. Because we have decades of pulling Carbon out of the place it has been locked away naturally for millions of years. Then pumping it into the atmosphere.
@@Sentrme Yeah...and we're still doing that, so by putting the energy that would normally feed this machine into displacing fossil fuel on the power grid, you'll come out ahead. There's also the matter of storing the CO2 you extract from the air. Also...bear in mind that the carbon that's been locked away for millions of years was initially in the air in the first place, and life was thriving.
What is the implications (for human beings) if we remove Carbon Dioxide from the Atmosphere?
Carbon Good. Humans are Carbon based!
Can the co2 removed from the atmosphere be turned into a liquid?
Stop tilling fields would capture as much CO2 as millions of these ORCA together. And it is feasible here and now, with the existent technology, without affecting agricultural output... well, stop tilling would increase agricultural output in the medium and long term.
Im guessing its ok now to cut down all the trees
and put a bigger tax on carbon coz of the machines rather than planting more trees and stopping deforestation
Edit, these machines are an atrocity to humanity
It is *not*. And this project as well needs carbon taxes to be economically sustainable. We do not have enough space to plant all the trees that have been promised. Planting trees in some areas could even worsen climate change, because of the change of albedo. Much money have been spent in planting monocultures of trees that then died from diseases or fire, because forest cannot survive. We need to stop deforestation, and plant trees where it makes sense, to preserve species and restore environments that have been disrupted, but plants are not meant for carbon storage. They also require a lot of time to absorb CO2, and there is no guarantee that over tens of years they would have effectively locked CO2 permanently.
We need carbon capture done efficiently and correctly. It is part of the solution, not a substitute.
Geoengineering in my view is weather control? Causing all kinds of storms.
TREE TECNOLOGY is free
This is great! There's real hope here to reverse climate change over the long term. Let's hope the technology is effective.
There is not enough carbon in the atmosphere for the sake of the plants, global warming is BS!
We need to find a way to reverse brain damage caused by climate crisis cult.
@@henryknetsar3677 better safe than sorry 😁
It's more effective to plant a tree and cheaper.
Hm. We're gonna need a bigger boat...
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BREAKING NEWS: There is already a CO2 collector that is totally free, and that does not even cost anything to run. It's called trees. All we have to do is stop cutting them down at the appalling rate that we do now.
4,000 tons is unfortunately a drop in the ocean. even 40,000 tons won't even move the needle.
I have questions about this system? Of all the things that can be done with the carbon why is it buired? Surly if you were to grant it to steel manufacturing plants it would be appreciated? Why are such small fans used an not a wind tunnel?
If you give it to industries that burn it, it goes back into the atmosphere. If the air and oceans have the right amount of CO2 that's exactly what they will start doing, but until then it must go to industries that build with it. I imagine this pure source of carbon will soon be put to use as a source for nanotubes; buildings are pretty good long lasting carbon sinks.
Brilliant effort ! We could attach those orca sponges on plane and flew it over city and industrial area as well =)
That would be quite counterproductive. The plane has, for now, CO2 emissions of its own. So that would greatly reduce the efficiency of the system. Moreover, air pollution is called that because it gets dispersed in the air, obviously, so no need to bring the device closer to the source when you can just tap the atmosphere in general. Finally, why not think of putting the Orca or some other capture device directly on a smoke stack?
How much carbon is produced in supplying the energy to operate this clunky machine?
Probably not that much or close to zero especially the direct air capture in Iceland is powered solely on geothermal and hydroelectric from nearby dams
@@samuelzev4076 Iceland is an exception, the rest of the world uses gas or coal as a primary source for energy
@@samuelzev4076 that’s one country , the rest of the world relies heavily on gas and coal as the primary source of energy . Iceland is a small country with a small population, it’s easy for them . if we were to adopt the technology in the US to offset our CO2 it will be gas and coal operating these facilities
@@joejoey7272 its not necessary anymore to use gas and coal as an excuse to power these things any longer especially since there was a recent breakthrough in nuclear fission, we can utilize that as a power source.
@@samuelzev4076 it’s not necessary but it’s what’s being used , we’re decades behind in adopting clean energy
Why not pass industrial gasses through these plants. CO2 ppm will be higher then.
Cant we use these carbon sponges at the source of carbon mission to remove the carbon before it ends up in the atmosphere?
No, there are better methods for CCS at the place of concentrated emissions like oil refineries and coal plants. This is for CO2 that is already quite dilluted. The best way to reduce future CO2 is to not emit it. Coal power is a no-brainer; you just replace it with nuclear and you are done. Oil is harder; hydrocarbons will always be very useful. If we didn’t have oil we’d have to make hydrocarbons some other way. Burning them for transportation is kind of stupid and will slowly end; but for chemical uses we’ll use oil for the next few centuries.
Removing carbon from the atmosphere after it has been added is counter-productive and shouldn't be used as a solution to climate change. Keeping the excess carbon out of the atmosphere in the first place is much more cost effective and efficient.
You are right about reducing CO2 emissions, these carbon capture machines will sell carbon offsets to companies that will keep producing CO2