Category: FAQs Mitigation_Capturing Carbon_NewTech

A: Traditionally, geoengineering has encompassed two very different things: sucking carbon dioxide out of the sky so the atmosphere will trap less heat, and reflecting more sunlight away from the planet so less heat is absorbed in the first place. More at MIT’s Technology Review

A: Companies like Carbon Engineering and Climeworks are searching for ways to capture carbon to tackle climate change. There is a great deal of pushback, expressed simply by 350.org: “To keep warming below 1.5 degrees or less, we first need to keep fossil fuels in the ground, period. Negative emissions of any kind, natural or technological cannot offset our current carbon trajectory.” More at Greenpeace

A: Carbon capture describes the removal of carbon dioxide from the air, which many think is our only hope for meeting climate goals like those established in the 2015 Paris Accord. The technology to do this is still in its infancy, but Climeworks launched their first carbon capture plant in Zurich in May 2017, which will pull carbon from the air and reuse it as fertilizer. Another hope for carbon capture is reforestation, or the expansion of natural forests, which act as natural carbon sinks and pull carbon from the atmosphere. More at Climate Central