Speaker 1: Welcome to brain stuff from How Stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff.
Speaker 1: Lauren Vogue obamb Here's Fonte Arenas was a Swedish electrochemist
Speaker 1: who in eight predicted that man made carbon dioxide emissions
Speaker 1: would dramatically transform Earth's climate. You and I live in
Speaker 1: the future he saw coming. So far, the twenty one
Speaker 1: century has witnessed seventeen of the eighteen hottest years on record,
Speaker 1: and just as Arenas suspected, the main cause of this
Speaker 1: warming trend is all the CEO two we keep pumping
Speaker 1: into the atmosphere. The scale of the problem is jaw dropping.
Speaker 1: In the year seventeen alone, human beings unleashed forty point
Speaker 1: five billion tons about thirty six point eight billion metric
Speaker 1: tons of this world altering greenhouse gas. Much of the
Speaker 1: blame Faulds on our transportation infrastructure. Around twenty of global
Speaker 1: CEO two emissions are made by cars, trucks, airplanes, and
Speaker 1: other vehicles, though just out of saying when cows and
Speaker 1: other farm animals up or fart, they're contributing to climate
Speaker 1: change too. The methane and livestocks belches and flatulence makes
Speaker 1: up of all agriculture related greenhouse gas emissions, but back
Speaker 1: to carbon dioxide. Wouldn't it be nice if we could
Speaker 1: pull CEO two out of thin air and incorporate it
Speaker 1: into a new kind of vehicular fuel that's better for
Speaker 1: the environment. We may be ready to start doing just that.
Speaker 1: In June, the energy research journal Jewel published a study
Speaker 1: led by Harvard professor David Keith, an experimental physicist and
Speaker 1: public policy expert. Keith founded the company Carbon Engineering in
Speaker 1: two thousand nine. The organization's mission is to quote develop
Speaker 1: and commercialized technology that captures industrial scale quantities of c
Speaker 1: O two directly from the air. With the help of
Speaker 1: Bill Gates and other investors, Carbon Engineering was able to
Speaker 1: open a nine million dollar direct air capture plant in
Speaker 1: tw Located in Squamish, British Columbia. The facility uses large
Speaker 1: fans to pull outside air through filters coated with the
Speaker 1: liquid solution that traps carbon dioxide. Then the captured gas
Speaker 1: is converted into small pellets of calcium carbonate. Using these pellets,
Speaker 1: Carbon Engineering has made synthetic gasoline, diesel, and even jet fuel.
Speaker 1: The advantages of this air to fuel process are considerable,
Speaker 1: whereas naturally occurring fossil fuels are notoriously finite. These man
Speaker 1: made liquids are renewable, and since they're produced with recycled
Speaker 1: c O two, they don't contribute to mankind's carbon footprint. Plus,
Speaker 1: our existing vehicles wouldn't need to be modified in any
Speaker 1: way to start running on these synthetic fuels. Over in
Speaker 1: Switzerland there's another carbon capture plant run by climb Works,
Speaker 1: a separate company which now sells recycled c O two.
Speaker 1: But if this technology is going to make a significant
Speaker 1: dent in our carbon emissions problem, will need a lot
Speaker 1: of new plants. So how cost effective is that going
Speaker 1: to be? Last year, m I T engineer Howard Herzog
Speaker 1: estimated that it would cost an air capture facility a
Speaker 1: thousand dollars to generate a single US that's about point
Speaker 1: nine metric tons of usable carbon dioxide. Keith's new paper
Speaker 1: begs to differ. According to his calculations, the process costs
Speaker 1: a more reasonable nine dollars to two dollars per U
Speaker 1: s ton. Keith said in a press statement, we can
Speaker 1: confidently say that while air capture is not some magical,
Speaker 1: cheap solution, it is a viable and buildable technology for
Speaker 1: producing carbon neutral fuels in the immediate future and for
Speaker 1: removing carbon in the long run. Today's episode was written
Speaker 1: by Mark Mancini and produced by Tyler Clang. For more
Speaker 1: on this and lots of other topics that will capture
Speaker 1: your attention, visit our home planet, how stuff Works dot com.