Climate change: Icelandic firm turning CO2 to stone in bid to fight greenhouse emissions

A agency in Iceland is pioneering cutting-edge expertise that turns CO2 into stone – promising a lift to the worldwide battle in opposition to local weather change and its devastating penalties.

Carbfix takes the greenhouse emissions from industrial crops and dissolves them in water, which is then injected deep underground into porous rock formations comparable to volcanic basalt, the place it mineralises, filling the voids.

The firm describes the method as “Mother Nature’s way” of carbon storage, offering a protected and everlasting pure depot for the polluting fuel.

Carbfix is now seeking to considerably increase its operations highlighting the potential worldwide.

The UK’s local weather is warming together with the worldwide common and final yr noticed 40C for the primary time on report – grassfires destroyed dozens of properties and there have been greater than 3,000 extra deaths in the course of the heatwaves.

Speaking to Sky News, Carbfix’s head of enterprise improvement Kristinn Ingi Larusson described the method as “relatively straightforward and simple”.

He mentioned: “What we do we dissolve CO2 in water and inject it back into the bedrock where it actually mineralises and stays for millennia.

“So we’re due to this fact contributing to the local weather battle difficulty that each one of us are going through.”

Mr Larusson pointed out basalt, one of the three “elements” wanted together with CO2 and water, made up 5% of the world’s landmass and 70% of the ocean ground.

He mentioned: “The simple analogy is you are using the water as the means of transport.

“Water is the practice and the CO2 is just the passenger on the practice.

“The water carries on, but the passenger jumps off the train and stays in the bedrock.”

Holding up a bit of bedrock following the method exhibiting white dots, Mr Larusson mentioned: “These are actually solid carbons that have been mineralised and will stay there forever.

“It is Mother Nature’s means of storing.

“Over 90% of all stored CO2 on earth is actually in the ground below us.

“So what we’re doing, we’re merely replicating what Mother Nature has performed for hundreds of thousands of years.

“The only difference is that we are speeding the process up. We’re not not adding any chemicals or substances. This is simply water and CO2.

“So it is 100% protected, everlasting storage of CO2.”

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He added: “We have an answer. We do not declare that is the silver bullet, nevertheless it positively is a expertise that we should always take a look at.

“Our objective, is to scale up and commercialise the idea.”

Stressing the urgency of the scenario, he mentioned: “We don’t have time. We have to act now, otherwise we are in a very catastrophic scenario.”

The UK’s greenhouse fuel emissions have fallen by 46% from 1990 ranges, primarily due to the elimination of coal from electrical energy technology.

The authorities has pledged to cut back emissions by 68% by 2030 however a local weather watchdog this week branded the tempo of motion as “worryingly slow”, elevating considerations over the speed of decarbonisation in trade, transport, buildings and gasoline provide.

The Climate Change Committee (CCC) mentioned for the reason that UK authorities was ordered to be extra clear about its web zero plans the much less possible it appeared it will meet the legally-binding environmental goal.

Lord Deben mentioned his final replace as chairman of the CCC was “not a report that suggests satisfactory progress” and accused ministers of losing time by shying away from taking troublesome selections.

Watch The Climate Show with Tom Heap on Saturday and Sunday at 3pm and seven.30pm on Sky News, on the Sky News web site and app, and on YouTube and Twitter.

The present investigates how world warming is altering our panorama and highlights options to the disaster.