carbon removal

In the same way, there are two major things we need to do to address climate change. We need to cut emissions—for example, by slowing down our use of fossil fuels. That’s akin to turning off the water tap. Then we’ll need to mop up the spill—that’s carbon removal, processes that aim to pull carbon pollution out of the atmosphere.  There’s a problem with the second part of this plan: our box of cleaning supplies is a bit bare. Researchers and startups are working on it, building demonstration projects for direct air…

The residents of Nagla Tulai, a farming village in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, have always had to endure hot summers, but the past few years of punishingly cruel heat have tested their strength. This May it hit 49°C (120°F), the highest India has recorded in 122 years. Since then, local news reports have attributed more than 50 deaths to the record-breaking heat.At the end of April, when the daytime temperature crossed 45°C (113°F), most residents of Nagla Tulai sought succor in the winds blowing outdoors.…

The iron and steel industry produces about 4 billion tons of carbon emissions each year, accounting for around 10% of all energy-related climate pollution, according to a 2020 report by the International Energy Agency. Those figures have risen sharply this century, driven by rapid economic growth in China and elsewhere. The hefty emissions and increasingly strict climate policies in some areas, including Canada and the European Union, have started to compel some companies to explore cleaner ways of producing these…

In 2018, Reinhardt and three others cofounded Charm (a mashup of “char” and “farm”) to build a business around what they saw as a more promising approach. The initial plan was to gasify biomass, a similar process to pyrolysis but done at higher temperatures, to produce biochar and hydrogen. They expected the latter to be the real moneymaker. But the company found that picking up the biomass and transporting it to a centralized gasification facility was far too expensive, because biomass is “too fluffy.” It’s bulky,…