GAIL’s tie-up with LanzaTech for CO2 capture is a big deal
On July 19, India’s premier natural gas company GAIL entered into a joint venture with Nasdaq-listed LanzaTech to capture carbon dioxide (CO2) and convert it into useful organic chemicals. This must be recognised as a paradigm-setting initiative to combat climate change. So far, the global discourse on combating climate change has been about reducing additional emissions of heat-trapping gases such as CO2, called greenhouse gases, rather than on taking out what has already been injected into the atmosphere.
But now it is clear that the strategy of reducing additional emissions cannot by itself bring global temperatures to within 1.50C of pre-industrial levels. There is increasing acceptance that carbon dioxide removal (CDR) must be an integral part of the solution. But CDR is tough and expensive.
Estimates say it would cost anywhere between $600-1000 to remove a tonne of CO2 from the atmosphere. The price of carbon in the European Union – where companies face a cap-and-trade system and must pay for CO2 emissions above a threshold – has been around $100 per tonne. There are two ways to remove CO2.
The first is to capture it from flue gases escaping plants where fossil fuels are burnt. The second is to remove it from the air through a process called direct air capture (DAC). The CO2 in chimneys is concentrated, so capturing it is simpler than capturing CO2 from the air.
One technique is to use powerful fans to suck air down to adsorbents that soak up the CO2 passing through them. They release the CO2 once heated, allowing them to be reused. The captured CO2 can either be used or stored.
Mere storage is pure cost. Using the captured CO2 would not just lower the net cost of CDR but also possibly earn a profit. Storage has
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