The Need

The successful development and deployment of a system that captures and removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere will have far-reaching consequences in the battle to mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) levels. Coal-fired power plants are currently the major source of anthropogenic (man-made) CO2 emissions worldwide. Other significant industrial sources of carbon dioxide emissions include steel mills and cement kilns. All of these large producers of CO2 emissions have an important feature in common. They are fixed or stationary in location; in principle, their emissions can be captured onsite.

But the third largest source (over 20%) of worldwide CO2 emissions is not fixed in location: it is mobile. That source is the transportation sector. It has been estimated that in the United States alone cars, light trucks and SUVs exhaust almost two billion metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere annually. Retrofitting of existing coal-fired plants is expensive, but it can be done. And new technologies, including coal gasification, oxy-fuel and IGCC systems, are being developed that promise to reduce power plant emissions. But the fitting of literally millions of cars, trucks, ships, trains and aircraft to capture CO2 from their exhaust streams is simply not practical. Hauling a “trailer” behind a passenger car to collect exhaust emissions would not only exacerbate existing traffic congestion but would reduce gasoline mileage (mpg) with attendant increases in fuel consumption. A tank full of gasoline produces approximately 300 lbs. of CO2.

Absent substantive redesign of current transport technologies, a majority of carbon dioxide emissions from this sector are going to end up in the atmosphere. Unless absorbed in the world's oceans or by surface vegetation these emissions will remain in the atmosphere for hundreds of years. Only air-capture can remove this CO2 and future emissions not addressed by capture at stationary point sources.