“CarbonEngineering:“Commercialization of Direct Air Capture (DAC) technology that captures CO2 directly from the atmosphere at an affordable price.”

By Linn Smith

According to NASA, in a report from June 2019, CO2 in our atmosphere reached 412ppm (parts per million) which hasn’t been seen in human history. CO2 is the gas that we humans are rapidly releasing into our atmosphere, trapping heat similar to a greenhouse. It is a result of burning fossil fuels such as coal.

Coal and Oil Formation

The Rise in Earth’s Temperature

Earth’s average temperature has risen 1.62 degrees F since late 1800’s, with most of the rise in temperature occurring in the past 35 years. The 5 warmest years have occurred since 2010! At this point in history the answer to survival of life on our planet is multifaceted. We must work to not only offset our personal CO2 emissions, but also seek ways of CO2 removal from our atmosphere before it’s too late
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Carbon Offsets

A carbon offset is an action everyone can take. It means compensating for your emissions in one part of your life by working to cut CO2 emissions somewhere else or contributing to programs that are working to combat global warming.

Unless you’re driving an electric or hybrid, an average car can emit about 5 tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere each year. Can you plant enough trees in your yard to offset your car pollution? Probably not.

There are many online sites that will calculate your CO2 footprint with recommendations to offset emissions, such as planting trees, or you can go to the EPA website and use their carbon footprint caluculator to calculate the carbon footprint of you and your family.

Clean Energy: Make It a Priority!

Planting Trees to Offset Your Carbon Footprint

According to http://www.urbanforestrynetwork.org, “On average, one acre of new forest can sequester about 2.5 tons of CO2 a year. Young trees absorb about 13 pounds per tree each year. Trees reach their most productive stage of carbon storage at about 10 years, at which point they are estimated to absorb 48 pounds of CO2 per year.”

An MIT study states that the average CO2 emissions emitted per person per year in the U.S.. is 20 metric tons, compared to the world average of 4 tons.

CO2 is turned into clean fuel.

Carbon Engineering

Jennifer Wilcox states in her TedTalk that we have the technology to clean up the atmosphere, but it has been too expensive until now. Companies are currently working to bring down this cost. One company, Carbon Engineering, www. carbonengineering.com, is focusing on “commercialization of Direct Air Capture (DAC) technology that captures CO2 directly from the atmosphere at an affordable price.” They do this in a “closed loop where the only major inputs are water and energy and the output is a stream of pure, compressed CO2 that can be stored underground or converted into fuels using AIR To FUEL technology.”

“AIR to FUEL uses CO2 captured from the atmosphere to synthesize clean transportation fuels. It uses renewable electricity to generate hydrogen from water, and then combines it with CO2 captured from atmosphere to produce hydrocarbon fuels such as diesel, gasoline and Jet-A, all with little or no fossil carbon emissions to the atmosphere. Individual facilities can be built to capture one million tons of CO2 per year which is equivalent to 250,000 average cars per year.”

Cleaning our atmosphere

Combating global warming

We all have a responsibility to do our part with no more excuses! We can’t wait for someone else to do it. For survival on earth, we need to stabilize the ppm (parts per million) of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere. The outcome of doing nothing about our changing climate is mass extinction of species, including our own, caused by extreme weather and our changing climate.

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Climate Change