What is the field that Musk and Bill Gates, the two super rich people in the technology world, are interested in?
The answer is: carbon capture .
In April this year, the XPRIZE Foundation announced the winners of the "Carbon Capture Competition" Milestone Award. 15 teams stood out and each received a US$1 million award. The "Carbon Capture Competition" was established by the foundation after receiving a US$100 million grant sponsored by Musk last year.
On the point of carbon capture, Bill Gates took action earlier. On the one hand, he has invested in Carbon Engineering, a carbon capture company. On the other hand, his climate fund Breakthrough Energy Ventures has also invested in US carbon capture start-ups Sustaera and Verdox Inc.
Of course, the names of these two super-rich people are not the only ones on the list of people who are optimistic about carbon capture. In April, the digital payment platform company Stripe took the lead in launching the US$925 million Carbon Capture Frontier Fund project with Shopify, McKinsey, Facebook , Google and other companies, committing to purchase US$925 million from carbon capture in 2022-2030. Carbon credits created by technology.
A few days later, Stripe also separately partnered with venture capital firm Lowercarbon Capital to create a new $350 million carbon capture fund.
At this point, we can’t help but wonder why technology giants are betting on carbon capture? What exactly is it? what's the effect? How big is the future development space? Next, this article will try to talk about carbon capture from these dimensions.
What is carbon capture?
Carbon capture, often called "CCSU", is based on carbon dioxide capture and storage (CCS) with the addition of "utilization".
Generally understood, separates carbon dioxide from the air or factory chimney exhaust, and uses or stores it several kilometers underground, thereby reducing carbon emissions in the atmosphere.
Carbon capture process
So, how to capture carbon dioxide? At present, the method mainly focuses on three general directions: post-combustion capture, pre-combustion capture and nutrient-rich combustion capture.
Among them, capture after burning is the most common. That is, after the combustion chamber that burns fossil energy, an absorption separation device is connected, and some chemical methods are used to adsorb carbon dioxide like a vacuum cleaner . Capturing
before burning sounds a bit counterintuitive. After all, how can carbon dioxide be captured before combustion has started? The fact is that under the action of high-temperature water vapor, fossil fuels will gasify to generate carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, methane, hydrogen, and nitrogen. The first separated carbon dioxide can be captured by liquid solution Collect them.
Judging from the name, the most special one is oxygen-rich combustion . But in principle, it is somewhat similar to capture before combustion. It also pretreats the fuel. The difference is that oxy-fuel combustion pretreats the air to increase the oxygen content, thereby increasing the concentration of carbon dioxide in the burned gas mixture and reducing nitrogen at the same time. Emissions of oxides.
In addition to the mainstream capture methods, direct air capture technology that directly absorbs or adsorbs carbon dioxide from the air is also attracting attention.
Although direct air capture technology is classified as a 6 on a "technology readiness level" (on a scale of 1 to 9), this means it is still in the early iterations of the technology and is not yet ready for full commercial deployment. But in April this year, Swiss carbon capture startup Climeworks completed a new round of financing of $650 million - the largest amount ever raised by a carbon capture company.
Climeworks currently operates Orca, the world's largest direct air capture plant in Iceland , injecting captured carbon dioxide deep underground and storing it permanently, or converting it into fuels and materials.
China's current CCUS projects mainly focus on pre-combustion capture technology and post-combustion capture technology, and oxygen-enriched combustion technology is still in the verification stage.
2027html The market size is expected to be nearly 10 billion US dollars in 3 years
Carbon capture is not a new concept, but the scale has always been small. As of mid-2021, there are only about 30 large-scale projects in operation around the world, locking in 4 million tons of carbon dioxide every year, accounting for only 0.1% of global emissions.
So why is it attracting technology giants?
has to mention a key node here. In April this year, the United Nations Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change, referred to as IPCC) released a report "Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C". The report mentioned that in order to ensure the realization of " Paris The Agreement climate goals identify seven pathways to achieve them, only one of which does not include carbon capture.
The long-term goal of the Paris Agreement is to limit the increase in global average temperature to less than 2 degrees Celsius compared with pre-industrial times, and to strive to limit temperature increases to less than 1.5 degrees Celsius.
But targets are targets, the fact is that achieving it through emissions reduction alone would require cutting emissions in half by 2030 and creating no new emissions by mid-century, which is likely to prove unfeasible, then that would require Compensate by removing excess carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
The IPCC has made it clear that in order to keep global temperature rise below 1.5 degrees Celsius, tens of billions of tons of carbon dioxide need to be removed from the atmosphere. If there is demand for
, there will be a market. Some research institutions estimate that the global carbon capture, utilization and storage market size will reach US$2.9815 billion in 2022. The market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 19.93% to reach US$7,414.62 million by 2027.
Looking at the entire CCUS industry chain, it is mainly divided into several major links: capture, transportation, utilization and storage. Most of the foreign CCUS innovative companies focus on the two subdivisions of carbon capture and carbon utilization.
Some foreign carbon capture innovative enterprises (data source: public information)
Compared with foreign countries, the development of domestic CCUS projects is still in the stage of technology accumulation, especially the number of start-up enterprises. However, according to IEA (International Data Energy Foundation) data, China's CCUS emission reduction needs under the goal of carbon neutrality and are: 0.2-408 million tons in 2030, 6-1.45 billion tons in 2050, and 1.0-1.82 billion tons in 2060.
Not long ago, my country also issued the "Opinions on Completely, Accurately, and Comprehensively Implementing the New Development Concept and Doing a Peak and Carbon Neutral Work," in which CCUS was included as a major green and low-carbon technology.
At present, domestic carbon capture technology is mainly developed in the coal chemical industry. Followed by the thermal power industry, natural gas plants and methanol , cement, fertilizer and other factories. In terms of project types, demonstration projects are mainly power plant projects, with a small number of chemical projects.
Some domestic carbon capture demonstration projects (data source: CICC , public information)
On January 29 this year, my country’s first million-ton CCUS project - Qilu Petrochemical - Shengli Oilfield CCUS project was officially completed. Its operation process is to capture the carbon dioxide emitted from Shandong Qilu Petrochemical Production, then transport it through pipelines to the Shengli Oilfield 80 kilometers away, and store it underground for oil flooding to increase production.
solution or band-aid?
However, while carbon capture technology has received great attention, there are still many doubts. For example, is it a practical solution to prevent climate warming or is it just a temporary treatment "Band-Aid"?
After all, for many people, zero carbon refers more to deep and rapid decarbonization, weaning humanity from dependence on fossil fuels, but carbon capture plays a part in encouraging extended use of oil or coal. , to them, this waste disposal technology seems like a step backwards.
The International Environmental Law Center mentioned in a report released in July last year that even for industries that are difficult to decarbonize, carbon capture is not the answer. Especially since carbon capture may involve expensive modifications to the application industry itself, making it unsustainable.
In addition to the debate on different paths to achieve a zero-carbon vision, this view from the Center for International Environmental Law also touches on another very real issue in carbon capture: cost.
CICC has calculated in the report that the current average cost of CCS technology in the domestic chemical industry is about 403 yuan/ton, of which carbon capture, storage, and transportation costs account for 56%, 24%, and 19% respectively.
In addition, the direct air capture method is more expensive. Taking direct air capture technology company Climeworks as an example, the current cost is US$600-800 per ton. Although the cost of this technology is expected to drop to US$250-300 by 2030, it is less than US$50 per ton for most reforestation. Compared with the price, it is really expensive. Part of the reason why
is so expensive is that carbon capture technology is less popular and smaller in scale. High operating costs will hinder initial investment, and it will be difficult to expand large-scale carbon capture projects in the later period, delaying the large-scale commercialization of carbon capture technology.
Generally speaking, carbon capture technology only delays the release of carbon dioxide, and its risk factors are currently difficult to identify. Therefore, its best positioning should be an effective auxiliary means in the process of achieving carbon neutrality. We still need to further observe its development.
(This article was first published on Titanium Media App, author | Han Jingxian )
