within the chemical sciences department at ornl, postdoc neil williams describes his work as creative problem-solving. when asked in an interview why he took a position at ornl as a researcher, he replied, “i really like to solve problems. many scientists and engineers are this way. we can’t stand not having an answer to something.” his current energy problem to solve? climate change.

by the late 19th century, scientists had begun to argue that human emissions of greenhouse gases could, in theory, change our relatively stable climate. by the 1960’s, carbon dioxide, or co2, had been identified as a prime contributor to the warming greenhouse effect. due to sustained global fossil fuel use, atmospheric co2 has increased 45% since the greenhouse effect was first theorized 150 years ago, as reported by noaa’s earth system research laboratory. in response, scientists and ceo’s have recently shifted their focus from prevention to mitigation in the form of co2-capture technologies.

williams, under principal investigator radu custelcean, recently stumbled upon a unique form of this co2-capture technology, which he thinks will offer the market an energy-efficient, cost-effective alternative to technologies already on the market. using commonplace items like a household humidifier and a solar hotdog cooker, williams and his team were able to create a small-scale direct air capture (dac) mechanism which can capture, store, and release co2 from both co2-saturated industrial flue gas and air in the environment with relatively minimal energy consumption.

typical dac processes involve passing air over a solid or liquid co2-sorbing agent. the (usually alkaline or basic) co2-sorbing agent will bind with molecules of co2, effectively lowering the concentration of co2 in the air. before the co2-sorbing agents can be used again, they must be heated to release the co2 they’ve bound with. the released co2 can then be stored for commercial applications or permanently sequestered from the atmosphere. the process is cyclical and energy-intensive and commonly used to scrub co2 from industrial flue gas streams with high concentrations of co2.

custelcean and williams offer two potential major improvements on this traditional method of scrubbing co2 from both co2-laden flue gas streams as well as environmental air. their method introduces new, potentially less-corrosive sorption media in the form of aqueous amino-acid solutions and a new sequestration and release medium in the form of an organic salt called 2,6-pyridine-bis(iminoguanidine), or big for short. there have been relatively few new methods of dac introduced into literature in recent years, and existing methods require temperatures up to 800 degrees celsius (about as hot as a glowing lava flow), whereas williams and his team achieved co2 release between 80 and 120 degrees celsius (the temperature range of your average sauna).

on the team’s goal, williams said, “what we’re aiming to do is create a technology that can perform just as well as what’s on the market…that can remove co2 very effectively and rapidly, then store that co2 from the solution by scrubbing that solution with compounds we developed called bigs. where our technology is a great improvement on what’s already been developed is that we dropped the energy associated with recycling or regenerating the sorbents by introducing these bigs.” employing a household humidifier to wick co2 from the air and a solar hot dog oven to then release that co2 using the thermal energy provided by the sun’s rays, the team was able to produce consistent, scalable results that offer a completely new mechanism to the field of co2 scrubbing. their plan is to finesse the solutions using their benchtop pilot model before eventually experimenting at large-scale, industrial sites.

quoting a paper from the national academy of sciences, williams asserted that co2 sequestration will be vitally important for mitigating the effects of climate change in the future, claiming that even if we stopped emitting co2 from all sources, the amount of co2 already in the atmosphere would continue to drive up global temperatures on inertia alone. “so it’s important to not only focus on zero-emission standards but also to find a low-energy way to remove co2 directly from the atmosphere,” williams argued. “also, there are companies out there that need co2 for commercial purposes, and they’re saying, ‘if i can just pull it directly from air, i don’t need to pay people for it. i can just go do that myself.’ so streamlining this technology incentivizes companies to employ it in their factories and production facilities.”

there’s a quote attributed to isaac asimov on a magnet stuck to the filing cabinet in williams’ office: “the most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not, ‘eureka! i’ve found it,’ but, ‘that’s funny!’” down the hall, a colleague has a comic taped up outside his office door that says, “research is what happens when you have no idea what you’re doing.” global warming is a new foe in humanity’s fight for survival on planet earth, and co2 is the central culprit. if we are to stand a chance against the ill effects of rising greenhouse gas concentrations, our species will not be saved by a glamorous figure who makes a grand gesture that saves us all in one fell swoop. instead, our survival depends on scientists like williams, in labs like ornl, with household humidifiers and hotdog cookers in hand, taking a second look at data and saying, “that’s funny…”

washington — the university of michigan is investing millions of dollars to create technologies that capture carbon dioxide and turn it into commercial products, but some experts say this approach might not help reduce greenhouse gas or fit in well with the market demand.

the michigan program, which received $4.5 million in seed money from the michigan engineering school and other fundraising activities, aims to build technologies that capture carbon dioxide directly from the air and find ways to convert the gas into commercial materials that private companies can used, the university said wednesday. the goal is to extract the equivalent of 10% of current carbon dioxide emissions each year by 2030.

currently, some companies seeking to offset the high cost of carbon dioxide capture sell the gas to food industries as raw material for carbonated drinks and dry ice used in food preservation, said colin mccormick, chief technologist at valence strategic, a consultancy firm specializing in disruptive technologies and energy industries.

but carbon dioxide locked in those products evaporates after only a few days or weeks and cycles back into the air, which is contradictory to the conventional idea of storing greenhouse gas permanently.

“as you use [the captured carbon dioxide] and release it, you need to capture it and use it again; then it still helps,” said volker sick, a mechanical engineering professor at university of michigan. “but if it’s not bound for long, the effect for the atmosphere is not good.”

scientists have been exploring techniques to imprison carbon dioxide permanently in building materials such as concrete, said sick, who leads the michigan program, called the global co2 initiative. the program has worked on using the gas to make high-flexibility concrete that can be used to build roads and bridges in areas with high risk of earthquakes, sick said.

however, the concrete market may not be big enough to absorb the amount of carbon dioxide that can be captured, said justin ong, a policy associate at the clearpath foundation, a clean energy advocacy group.

he noted that technology companies are capturing carbon dioxide from power plants, which is cheaper than extracting the gas directly from the air.

“if we capture all of the power plant emissions from one coal power plant and turn that into concrete, it would pretty much meet the demand of concrete for the entire region,” ong said. “if you’re talking about capturing emissions from multiple power plants and turning them into concrete, you will have so much concrete, but it would be worthless.”

the current technology that extracts carbon dioxide directly from the air can cost companies about $300 per ton, he said. however, the federal tax credit for capturing carbon dioxide and putting it into other commercial uses is only $35 a ton.

even though some gas-to-product conversion technologies fail to remove carbon dioxide from the air permanently, they are still a good start, said klaus lackner, director of center for negative carbon emissions at arizona state university.

by making a sustainable profit from the products, companies have incentives to continue testing and perfecting techniques that capture carbon dioxide, which will drive down costs for the new technology, lackner said.

apart from reducing the cost for carbon dioxide capture technology, companies also can look into opportunities to convert the gas into high-value materials, sick said.

one possibility is carbon fiber, an expensive, lightweight material used in luxury bicycles and race cars. if automobiles and airplanes were made with carbon fiber-based materials instead of heavier steel and aluminum, they would require smaller engines and less fuel, sick said.

“if there’s an interest in using carbon fiber and selling it for a large profit, then the use of co2 actually becomes attractive,” sick said.

what will it take to reach this goal? the intergovernmental panel on climate change, a coalition of climate scientists from around the globe, have laid out the maximum amount of co2 that can be emitted into the atmosphere while still maintaining the 2°c increase in temperature. this threshold is called the carbon budget.

what is the carbon budget?

to understand the carbon budget that the ipcc has created, we must understand the timeline of carbon pollution.

according to the union of concerned scientists, the estimated total carbon released in the atmosphere between 1751 and 2014 was 1,480 gigatons. of this, 743 gigatons (or 50.2%) of all emissions came after 1988.

the mercator institute of research on global commons and climate change has estimated that we have about 760 gigatons left in our carbon budget as of 2017. they also estimate at present, the world is still emitting 40 gigatons a year. if nations around the world do not commit to the objectives in the paris climate agreement, we are looking at an exhaustion of our carbon budget in just 19 years.

the ipcc has estimated that we’ve currently spent over half of our carbon budget which stands at 2,240 gigatons of carbon, putting us on track to see over 2°c of warming within the next three decades if we stay on our current course.

using the ipcc model for the carbon budget, carbon brief has concluded that as of 2017, we only have 4 years left until we inevitably surpass 1.5°c of global warming. however, their analysis also showed that as of 2016, emission rates have been slowing down, suggesting signs of peaking.

why all the fuss about 2°c?

there is a common consensus within the scientific community that we must limit the remainder of our carbon budget to stay within 2°c in warming. when climate scientists were first figuring out the effects of co2 on the atmosphere back in the 1970’s – “early calculations suggested that if we doubled the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere over pre-industrial levels, the earth would warm somewhere between 1.5°c and 4.5°c,” according to vox.

the next question was: how much of this warming can humans tolerate with minimal danger to human life? temperature graphing has shown throughout human history, humans have lived within a temperature range that fluctuates between -1/1° celsius. it becomes increasingly worrisome to think of a world where temperatures are more than double the upper limit that humans have ever experienced.

the scientific community has a wide range of assessments calculating the risks global warming could pose to human life.

we’ve already seen the increased risks that our current carbon output has produced:

wildfires tend to be associated with hotter, drier weather, meaning that an increased climate is prone to producing more wildfires.

the oceans, at the current level they are rising, will put millions of lives at risk. as ocean surges continue to wreak havoc on our coastal cities, mass migrations are sure to ensue, causing political and economic turmoil for the more than 1 billion people living in low-lying areas.

increasing ocean temperatures have been linked to higher frequencies of more intense hurricanes. severe rainfall occurrences will increase along the eastern coast of the u.s  as a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture: “we think that harvey type of rainfalls will become noticeably more frequent as the century goes on,” said kerry emanuel, an atmospheric scientist at mit.

extreme droughts in areas like california and the midwest, are expected to increase as temperatures rise, resulting in severe agricultural damage and water shortages around the world.

these extreme weather related events already are becoming more frequent, and the earth hasn’t even reached the 1.5° c mark yet. if we can’t keep temperatures from surpassing 2°c, the risks to human life are only going to get worse.

we’ve got to make the budget but how?

“it is still not too late to limit the warming. staying below 2°c requires social, financial, and technical actions by 2020 on a global scale,” said veerabhadran ramanathan, chair of the committee and distinguished professor at the scripps institution of oceanography in san diego.

elsewhere in the united states, social action is being taken by governors, mayors, public officials, and educational and business leaders who have signed on to the we are still in pact. this agreement represents one third of the u.s. population and their mission is to meet the goals set out in the paris climate agreement, even if the federal government does not intend to.

and according to the new york times, the united states already has delivered $1 billion of the $3 billion in financial aid it has agreed to pay under the paris climate agreement, to assist poor nations in the fight against climate change.

technological action also is on the rise as negative emissions technologies, such as biomass energy with carbon capture and storage (beccs for short), are receiving increased attention in the climate science community.

ultimately though, we need global cooperation to combat climate change, and the paris climate agreement was a great first step. we have the means to reach the carbon budget, we just need the political will and global pressure to keep the earth on track to staying under 2°c.

they pockmarked hard rock with acid while storing earth’s carbon-dioxide-rich atmosphere into the ground.

years later, plants and bacteria followed — establishing themselves in the porous beachheads the fungi carved-out.

the three kingdoms became fast allies, and across a geological timescale of about 400 million years, have partnered in various ways to make earth the oxygen- and soil-rich world it is today.

but human activity is throwing off the storied balance the kingdoms have built — most notably by emitting carbon dioxide that warms the planet. thankfully, earth’s ecological system will step up to bat, and store or eat the problem greenhouse gases just as it always has. while the system can’t wholly make up for a human-induced imbalance of atmospheric carbon dioxide, scientists are finding ways for humans to resolve the crisis. the solutions, they say, are literally underneath our feet.

what about gas released from thawing ice?

methane, a greenhouse gas frozen by the megatons in earth’s melting ice, holds the potential to dramatically turn up the thermostat for the planet. but new research shows that a bacterial hero from earth’s soils and seas will keep the thawing gas at bay.

methane-eating soil microbes will prevent large plumes of methane from reaching the atmosphere as frozen deposits of it begin to thaw due to climate change, according to a paper in nature published by vasilii petrenko and jeffrey severinghaus of the scripps institution of oceanography at the university of california, san diego. while severinghaus doesn’t study microbes directly, he’s able to show their effect on past climates by going to antarctica and sampling ancient air.

scientists previously thought thawing methane deposits may have caused an abrupt 50% rise in atmospheric methane concentration during a rapid warming period at the end of the younger dryas, a cold period that ended 11,600 years ago. the prospect raised alarms to a potentially devastating climate feedback from methane, which, molecule for molecule, traps at least 25 times more heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide.

through 10 years of sampling ancient air, severinghaus, his graduate students and the rest of his team were able to show, however, that during the warming period, no detectable methane in the atmosphere came from thawed deposits.

they demonstrated this by looking at the radiocarbon content of 11,600-year-old antarctic ice, exhuming a ton for each measurement at a precise and narrow vein of ancient ice originally deposited by snowfall on younger dryas glaciers. they gathered a corresponding control of modern-day air, cleaned of carbon-14, for each measurement as well.

carbon-14 is a naturally occurring radioactive carbon isotope. it builds up in the air and in all living organic things, as cosmic rays bombard atoms in the atmosphere, and is used in carbon dating. 

the carbon-14 distinction is important because methane released from thawed deposits has no carbon-14 — it’s so old that the radiocarbon content decayed long ago. but methane released from natural sources such as wetlands is fresh, and does have detectable carbon-14. 

severinghaus said: “if that 50% increase in methane concentration was actually caused by the tundra getting warm and burping out all of this methane, then the concentration of carbon-14 relative to the abundant carbon-12 should have gone down by 30%. we should really see a huge signal if this idea is correct … and we don’t.”

he goes on to explain that methane-consuming soil microbes must have stopped most of the thawing methane from reaching the atmosphere — just as their oceanic cousins did when they ate 99.9% of the methane released during the deepwater horizon oil spill in 2010.

wetlands, which belch methane when it rains, and other natural sources were the main culprits for the rise in methane during the younger dryas warming period, severinghaus said.

“if it didn’t happen back then, it won’t happen now and it won’t happen in the future,” severinghaus said. “we can focus our attention back on carbon dioxide, which really is the problem, and not worry so much about methane. so check one thing off the list.”

but how do tiny soil microbes store carbon? 

pockets of soil with low oxygen levels are the key to slowing dead-plant-eating and carbon-dioxide-emitting microbes.

new research fleshes out the role these bb gun pellet-sized granules and clumps of dirt play in the global carbon cycle, concluding they help offset emissions from well-aerated soil. so-called “aerobic” soil contributes a third of annual carbon dioxide emissions, and that may grow as low-oxygen, “anaerobic” pockets get disturbed by warming and human activity, the authors report in their study published in nature.

study coauthor scott fendorf, professor of earth sciences at stanford, said, “your food might spoil faster at a higher temperature; that’s because the microbes are eating faster. so, in the soil, the same thing [happens], the microbes start decomposing the plant material more rapidly, and that means carbon dioxide is being made to a greater extent.”

fendorf and his team were able to show how the current understanding of soil is flawed. climate models that deliver temperature projections often treat all upland soil — literally soil at a higher elevation — as aerated. the team found that pockets of asphyxiated soil can and have existed in such environments — thanks to periodic flooding or any number of oxygen-depriving natural occurrences. 

fendorf and his coauthors found spots where old, carbon-rich plant parts still existed. in a 100% aerobic environment they wouldn’t be there, because energized-by-oxygen microbes would eat all the carbon and send it up to the atmosphere as a gas.

the team learned that when microbes have to use a different gas for air, they work far less efficiently — emitting carbon dioxide at a tenth of the speed than well-aerated soil would.

fendorf added that climate models are evolving to accurately portray the impact low-oxygen pockets have on the global carbon cycle.

“if the temperature and moisture content was all the same, then you could just calibrate models and you’d be fine,” fendorf said. “but when it starts shifting — if it gets warmer or it gets wetter or drier — then your model has to account for those changes” within both aerobic and anaerobic soils, allowing scientists to better track the resulting carbon dioxide levels.

the authors say we can help retain the pockets where microbes are less efficient — and help reduce carbon emissions — by tilling soil less. the fewer passes a tiller makes, the fewer pockets spill their uneaten bits of carbon to hungry microbes. an increasing number of farmers already have reduced tilling to help reduce their carbon footprints.

but the authors also warn of an increase in the range of dry conditions caused by climate change. anaerobic pockets surrounded by compacted and moist dirt will bake and turn aerobic, and that will lead to more emissions, as long as it doesn’t get too hot for the microbes to function efficiently.

‘re-greening’ could cover 37% of co2 cuts needed by 2030

carbon capture and storage technologies are being deployed in a piecemeal way, ensuring a negligible impact on the atmosphere and its growing concentration of planet-warming carbon dioxide. photosynthesis however is alive and well, storing billions of tons of carbon each year.

via giphy (nasa photosynthesis visualization from 2013)

a study published in october by the nature conservancy and 15 other institutions identified the cheapest ways humans can leverage nature to reduce emissions, factoring in a number of cost constraints, like not reducing food production. they found replanting forests and preventing their loss in countries like brazil and russia can have the greatest, cost-effective impact on the atmosphere. in other countries, the study identifies better agricultural practices and wetland preservation as major emission-reducing pathways.

all told, the pathways can account for 37% of the cuts needed to atmospheric carbon dioxide to keep the world from warming past 2 degrees celsius from pre-industrial levels.

“the vast majority of the scenarios that have been modeled by climate scientists include a very large contribution of what’s called negative emissions technology. carbon capture and storage would be an example of that,” said coauthor bronson griscom, an ecological accountant for the nature conservancy.

“natural climate solutions are the only mature negative emissions technology that we have right now, the only form of negative emissions that we can deploy globally, today, at a cost effective level,” he added.

the researchers assume a social cost for carbon dioxide pollution, and that carbon has value, as is the case in cap and trade deals. cap and trade is where government comes in and “caps” the amount of carbon dioxide a company can emit. if they want to emit more, all they have to do is buy carbon credits from another company.

for example, chevrolet paid the university of illinois at urbana-champaign $1 million in 2014 for 150,000 metric tons of carbon credits. the university has since used the money to invest in a grass-fed boiler to heat a greenhouse on campus, which used to be heated by propane.

locally sourced and grown fuel has a much smaller impact on the atmosphere. additionally, the feedstock used in the boiler, like the crop miscanthus, grows year-round and therefore the fields it comes from aren’t tilled nearly as often as a corn field.

tilling spurs microbes to emit more carbon, and if all corn in the midwest were changed to miscanthus, the region would turn from a net carbon dioxide contributor to a carbon storehouse. that’s according to a study published in 2011 that didn’t account for economic factors. they followed it up with another in 2016 that did.

“we considered including a pathway like grassland restoration, and at a global level, we concluded that it wasn’t likely going to be a sizeable pathway. because of our basic constraint that we maintain the current footprint of agriculture,” griscom said. “having said that, as countries start to look at their options, there are some countries that should be looking into grassland restoration as an important opportunity.”

griscom’s next study, likely to be published sometime this year, focuses on the united states, and one pathway they investigate is grassland restoration. he said the united states has a wide range of options available to it to help the earth system make up for an imbalance in atmospheric carbon dioxide.

“nature is often seen as a victim of climate change, but it’s also a huge part of the solution,” griscom said. “if you think of nature as a machine, it’s an incredibly powerful machine. it would behoove us to turn that machine on full power.”

— audrey batzer and avalon hoek spaans

to solve this problem, two scientists from columbia university’s lenfest center for sustainable energy took inspiration from trees and invented a plastic “tree” that absorbs carbon at a much higher rate than mother nature. the technology could also turn that captured carbon into a valuable energy source.

energynow! correspondent josh zepps looked into a new technology that pulls a thousand times more carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere than trees, and could one day power our cars and trucks.

“you can remove co2 anywhere you want, and it can deal with emissions from anywhere else on the planet,” said allen wright, a scientist at the lenfest center. “there’s no real major discovery or invention that has to happen that would prevent us from deploying that technology tomorrow.”

beyond just removing co2 from the atmosphere, the new technology could also turn it into a valuable commodity. “you can add hydrogen to those (captured) carbon atoms and re-create gasoline,” said klaus lackner, a scientist at the lenfest center. “it has a zero net impact on the environment because you’re taking the carbon out that burning the gasoline will put in.”

energynow! correspondent dan goldstein explored how innovative carbon capture and storage, or ccs, technologies could keep carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and help prevent the climate from changing.

“the same types of materials that are used in shampoo and conditioners were materials that we thought we could use in this particular instance to capture carbon,” said bob perry, a chemist with general electric. “with the co2 we’ve captured, we now have it in a confined space and can move that toward someplace for storage, for sequestration.”

ccs may be key to reducing carbon emissions, but installing it on america’s coal-fired power plants won’t be cheap. “the consumer is going to see an increase in the cost of electricity of 5 to 10 cents per kilowatt hour,” said gary rochelle, a chemical engineer at the university of texas in austin who has developed a technology to raise carbon dioxide out of power plant smokestack emissions. “that’s a 50 to 100 percent increase in what they’ll be paying for electricity.”

in july, c40 released a report developed in partnership with cdp that offered the first-ever public disclosure and analysis of self-reported ghg emissions data from c40 cities.

in this interview, nigel topping, chief innovation officer for cdp, discusses the opportunities for the c40 in relation to measuring carbon emissions. with 72% of the c40’s 58 member cities reporting in the first year of the analysis, topping is optimistic that in subsequent years all of the c40 cities will be able to join in disclosing emissions data to both capture the scope of the issue and to act.

“that rich set of data,” topping says, “can inspire learning and innovation.”

in a series of exclusive interviews during the event with mayors and experts from around the world, the c40 cities live blog team has captured some of the more innovative actions being taken by cities as they continue to take a strong leadership position in combating the impact of climate change on their cities and citizens.

in this video, dr. rohit aggarwala, key architect of planyc and now special advisor to c40 chair new york city mayor michael r. bloomberg, discusses a new focus at the c40 on data and accountability. that focus includes a groundbreaking partnership between c40 and iclei, first announced during the mayors summit. the two organizations are working to establish a global standard for tracking and reporting greenhouse gas (ghg) emissions at the local level. the standard will enable cities to develop robust and consistent ghg inventories, facilitating planning around actions to reduce emissions and combat climate change impacts.