Selling better air
out of the blue is a start-up with a mission to remove CO2 from the ocean in a safe, cost-effective and large-scale manner.
As a reminder, according to nearly all climate scenarios, CO2 removal is an inescapable technology, and billions of tonnes of CO2 will need to be removed from the environment in order to meet the Paris targets. CO2 removal from the ocean has the double advantage that it fights ocean acidification as well as climate change.
But once you captured (pure) CO2, where do you go with it next?
There are two ways you can go with the CO2: either you use it somewhere, or you store it somewhere safe. In this article, I want to explain why the last option has a bigger potential to tackle the climate crisis, and is also the focus of out of the blue.
1. CO2 utilization
One question I frequently get asked, is: can’t you do something useful with that captured CO2? Can’t you make a nice product?
And yes, you can. In the same way you can convert shit into useful products: a little dung is great to fertilize fields, but if you dump too much, it will poison the soil.
The problem here is that there is just too much CO2. Below is a comparison: every single year, over 40 billion tonnes of CO2 are released into the atmosphere, whereas the total market for CO2 utilization is just 100 million tonnes, less than a quarter of a percent (the circles are at scale). Of that CO2 demand, more than 75% is used for a process called “Enhanced Oil Recovery”, which pumps CO2 in dwindling oil reservoirs to repressurize the reservoir and pump up more oil (which in turn emit more CO2).
Nothing in the world is produced in the amount we produce CO2. Take for instance the list of the most produced chemical compounds. Say there would be a compound, Dreamium™️ (courtesy Prof. Berend Smit) which would magically bind in a 1:1 ratio to all the common chemical products: then the 100 most commonly produced chemicals would barely bind a couple of percent of the total CO2 emissions.
So even if there would be a magical compound that binds CO2, we could never store enough CO2 to make that problem go away.
Cement is not in the list, and is produced at 4 billion tonnes per year. It can actually store significant amount of CO2. However, in the production cement, a lot of CO2 is released, much more than it can store afterwards. In fact, cement production alone is responsible for over 3% of global CO2 emissions. Moreover, concrete has always captured CO2 from its environment while curing. So also here, the extra potential is also rather limited.
Another chemical not in this list are fuels. It is chemically possible to convert CO2 back into fuel, but this is extremely energy-intensive: into capturing and converting the CO2, you need to put in several times the energy you get when you burn the fuel again (that’s thermodynamics for you). If you then use energy that is not renewable or nuclear, you will release several times more CO2 into the air than you pull out of it. And don’t forget that in the end, the fuel will anyway be burned, and the CO2… released again.
There are some symbolical applications, that make for good advertisement, but little positive effects. You can make diamonds from air (I admit, as a chemical engineer, I actually find this pretty exciting)! But how many tonnes of diamonds do you usually buy per year? CO2 is also used as fertilizer for plants in greenhouses, but also there, the potential is limited, and most of the CO2 will be lost to the air. Moreover, is there something more ironic than using a greenhouse gas for use in a greenhouse?
CO2 is not a raw material, CO2 is a waste product.
And we are overdue to organise the waste treatment.
2. CO2 storage
I believe that if we put so much effort and energy into capturing CO2 from the environment, we need to store it somewhere permanently and safely — to make the problem go away for good.
Actually, given the enormous size, there aren’t many solutions: the last 250 years of CO2 emissions have shown that we can’t keep on putting more CO2 in the atmosphere, which leaves us with outer space (there’s an interesting entry into the Musk XPrize: a giant chimney), the deep ocean (although proposed , you can imagine I’m not a fan), or the underground.
I believe geological formations in the earth’s subsurface are the most logical option. The CO2 problem is essentially a fossil-fuel problem. Hence, using depleted oil and gas reservoirs to store CO2 at least shows a good match for the size of the problem. Moreover, we know that in these reservoirs, oil & gas have been stored for millions of years, so given some precautions, CO2 can also be stored in there for millions of years. Finally, there is plenty of infrastructure and know-how available to do this in a safe way. Technically, CO2 storage is perfectly feasible and understood.
Financially however, this is more complex. If you’re business is to store away CO2, what is your product then? What is it that you sell?
Essentially, this is selling better air.
Or, in the case of CO2 removal from the ocean: better sea and air. And while I do believe this is absolutely necessary, the next question is: who do you sell it to? Who is going to pay for this?
As long as the worldwide CO2 price is too low, there is little incentive for anyone to actually do something about it. Moreover, climate change and ocean acidification are global problems, which makes it very hard for small entities to have a significant positive impact. It raises questions such as “who should move first?” and “what about the free riders?”. And then there are loopholes, like overly cheap and ineffective CO2 offsets.
There is good news, in that more and more CO2 emissions are taxed at higher and higher rates. Although public CO2 markets don’t always allow CO2 offsets (yet), there is also a flourishing voluntary market, on which individuals and companies are buying CO2 offsets like those out of the blue wants to offer.
Conclusion
What is needed, is a long-term vision on effective CO2 removal.
Out of the blue wants to go for the big circle, it wants to tackle global CO2 emissions, and store them away permanently. Although that is a tough business case in the short run, it will be the biggest opportunity on the long term. We also believe that there is no time to lose, and that a clear focus is needed in order to scale fast enough to the goal that matters.
And yes, essentially, that will be: selling better air.
