WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.150 --> 00:00:01.380 - This is Techmodo, 2 00:00:01.380 --> 00:00:03.390 a Gizmodo series where we take a dive 3 00:00:03.390 --> 00:00:05.220 into some of the most recent tech news 4 00:00:05.220 --> 00:00:06.900 with some expert guests. 5 00:00:06.900 --> 00:00:10.080 This week, journalist Molly Taft from Gizmodo talks to me 6 00:00:10.080 --> 00:00:12.840 about how carbon capture technology exists, 7 00:00:12.840 --> 00:00:16.140 but isn't the magic bullet solution to climate change. 8 00:00:16.140 --> 00:00:18.120 Hi, so the world's on fire. 9 00:00:18.120 --> 00:00:19.410 I don't know if you knew that. 10 00:00:19.410 --> 00:00:20.820 Between record-breaking heat 11 00:00:20.820 --> 00:00:22.560 across the world this past summer 12 00:00:22.560 --> 00:00:26.010 to vegetables getting more expensive as crops fail, 13 00:00:26.010 --> 00:00:29.760 climate change is continuing to make its presence known. 14 00:00:29.760 --> 00:00:32.430 But as humans and corporations continue to emit 15 00:00:32.430 --> 00:00:34.890 more and more carbon into the atmosphere, 16 00:00:34.890 --> 00:00:36.060 what are we supposed to do? 17 00:00:36.060 --> 00:00:37.050 Well, the obvious answer 18 00:00:37.050 --> 00:00:39.780 is to stop emitting so much damn carbon, 19 00:00:39.780 --> 00:00:41.850 but since we know that greenhouse gasses 20 00:00:41.850 --> 00:00:44.100 are trapping more heat in the atmosphere, 21 00:00:44.100 --> 00:00:45.150 what are we supposed to do with the stuff 22 00:00:45.150 --> 00:00:46.680 that's already up there? 23 00:00:46.680 --> 00:00:49.110 Well, I've heard about this tech called carbon capture 24 00:00:49.110 --> 00:00:51.240 or carbon dioxide removal 25 00:00:51.240 --> 00:00:53.310 that feels like it is ripped straight from the pages 26 00:00:53.310 --> 00:00:56.310 of a sci-fi novel, but I don't know much about it. 27 00:00:56.310 --> 00:00:58.320 I mean, is this technology the way out 28 00:00:58.320 --> 00:01:00.030 of the current climate crisis? 29 00:01:00.030 --> 00:01:03.450 Eh, Molly doesn't think so. 30 00:01:03.450 --> 00:01:04.380 Thank you so much for being here. 31 00:01:04.380 --> 00:01:05.220 I wanted to bring you in 32 00:01:05.220 --> 00:01:07.530 'cause Techmodo, we're talking about tech all the time, 33 00:01:07.530 --> 00:01:11.640 and one of the places that I think tech is intersecting with 34 00:01:11.640 --> 00:01:13.500 really interestingly is climate change. 35 00:01:13.500 --> 00:01:16.110 And as our climate change reporter and fellow Gizmodian, 36 00:01:16.110 --> 00:01:18.120 I thought you would be the person to talk to about this. 37 00:01:18.120 --> 00:01:20.220 - I'm excited you came to talk to me about it. 38 00:01:20.220 --> 00:01:21.360 There's a lot to say. 39 00:01:21.360 --> 00:01:23.490 - Yeah, well, so I want to pin down a little bit 40 00:01:23.490 --> 00:01:25.560 the idea of carbon capture. 41 00:01:25.560 --> 00:01:28.470 I know that there's kind of this abstract idea 42 00:01:28.470 --> 00:01:30.690 of carbon capture technology 43 00:01:30.690 --> 00:01:34.860 and I wanted to first just ask what the hell even is that? 44 00:01:34.860 --> 00:01:36.210 - It's a great question 45 00:01:36.210 --> 00:01:39.210 and there's a lot of different sort of facets 46 00:01:39.210 --> 00:01:41.820 that are involved in that answer. 47 00:01:41.820 --> 00:01:44.010 But basically, you've heard of it, 48 00:01:44.010 --> 00:01:46.110 people have heard of this phrase carbon capture, 49 00:01:46.110 --> 00:01:48.237 carbon dioxide removal. 50 00:01:48.237 --> 00:01:50.280 At its very basic element, 51 00:01:50.280 --> 00:01:53.820 it's basically just sucking carbon dioxide from the air. 52 00:01:53.820 --> 00:01:55.560 So scientists agree 53 00:01:55.560 --> 00:01:58.290 that we basically have done a little bit too much 54 00:01:58.290 --> 00:01:59.130 to pollute the planet 55 00:01:59.130 --> 00:02:03.000 to possibly reverse the damage we've done by just- 56 00:02:03.000 --> 00:02:03.833 - You don't say. 57 00:02:03.833 --> 00:02:04.666 - I know! 58 00:02:04.666 --> 00:02:06.480 Things aren't great, I don't know if you know this. 59 00:02:06.480 --> 00:02:07.472 - No, I know. 60 00:02:07.472 --> 00:02:10.470 - So, the leading scientists agree 61 00:02:10.470 --> 00:02:13.470 that we not only need to switch our energy sources, 62 00:02:13.470 --> 00:02:16.530 we're also gonna have to take some of the carbon dioxide 63 00:02:16.530 --> 00:02:19.020 out of the atmosphere that we've put in it 64 00:02:19.020 --> 00:02:23.850 in order to stave off the worst impacts of climate change, 65 00:02:23.850 --> 00:02:25.470 basically to avert disaster. 66 00:02:25.470 --> 00:02:27.120 There's a couple different ways to do that. 67 00:02:27.120 --> 00:02:29.283 The two main buckets are carbon capture, 68 00:02:30.120 --> 00:02:32.070 which is if you've got a plant 69 00:02:32.070 --> 00:02:33.630 that is producing carbon dioxide, 70 00:02:33.630 --> 00:02:36.150 like a power plant or some other manufacturing sector, 71 00:02:36.150 --> 00:02:38.670 you can kind of keep the carbon dioxide 72 00:02:38.670 --> 00:02:40.020 from leaking into the atmosphere 73 00:02:40.020 --> 00:02:41.670 and you sort of put it somewhere else, 74 00:02:41.670 --> 00:02:42.990 generally underground. 75 00:02:42.990 --> 00:02:44.100 Or there's also, 76 00:02:44.100 --> 00:02:47.280 which sort of the Bill Gates, the Elon Musks of the world, 77 00:02:47.280 --> 00:02:48.660 this is what they're really interested in 78 00:02:48.660 --> 00:02:50.460 is carbon dioxide removal, 79 00:02:50.460 --> 00:02:51.990 which is actually these big plants 80 00:02:51.990 --> 00:02:55.470 that basically suck all the carbon dioxide out of the air 81 00:02:55.470 --> 00:02:57.180 without producing anything new. 82 00:02:57.180 --> 00:02:59.610 They just basically solely exist as vacuums 83 00:02:59.610 --> 00:03:00.630 to get it all out of the air. 84 00:03:00.630 --> 00:03:02.340 So obviously it's a little bit 85 00:03:02.340 --> 00:03:04.197 more scientifically complex than that, 86 00:03:04.197 --> 00:03:05.790 but that's the main concept. 87 00:03:05.790 --> 00:03:08.460 - It sounds like, correct me if I'm wrong, 88 00:03:08.460 --> 00:03:10.590 we have something on Earth that already does that, 89 00:03:10.590 --> 00:03:12.210 and that would be trees. 90 00:03:12.210 --> 00:03:14.460 I'm very curious about this sort of startup-y 91 00:03:14.460 --> 00:03:17.370 kind of carbon dioxide removal tech. 92 00:03:17.370 --> 00:03:19.530 Is it more productive than trees? 93 00:03:19.530 --> 00:03:21.600 You mentioned we have to get carbon dioxide out 94 00:03:21.600 --> 00:03:22.530 as quickly as possible, 95 00:03:22.530 --> 00:03:26.730 but why are we engineering a solution like this? 96 00:03:26.730 --> 00:03:27.570 - That's a great question. 97 00:03:27.570 --> 00:03:30.210 So yeah, we are gifted on Earth 98 00:03:30.210 --> 00:03:33.450 with a lot of things that already suck carbon dioxide 99 00:03:33.450 --> 00:03:34.283 out of the air. 100 00:03:34.283 --> 00:03:35.116 It's not just trees, 101 00:03:35.116 --> 00:03:37.410 but there's other forms of carbon sinks, 102 00:03:37.410 --> 00:03:38.880 which is basically natural processes 103 00:03:38.880 --> 00:03:42.450 that can help get some of the CO2 out. 104 00:03:42.450 --> 00:03:45.630 And you might have noticed if you buy something nowadays, 105 00:03:45.630 --> 00:03:47.640 sometimes they'll have an offset option, 106 00:03:47.640 --> 00:03:49.410 where it's like, "we'll plant a tree." 107 00:03:49.410 --> 00:03:50.243 This is great. 108 00:03:50.243 --> 00:03:51.660 We should all be planting more trees. 109 00:03:51.660 --> 00:03:54.780 Unfortunately, there's really no way 110 00:03:54.780 --> 00:03:58.470 to kind of scale up the amount we'd actually need. 111 00:03:58.470 --> 00:04:00.600 We would need to plant, I think, 112 00:04:00.600 --> 00:04:04.230 to bring carbon dioxide down a reasonable amount, 113 00:04:04.230 --> 00:04:07.260 like dictated in some of these scientific reports, 114 00:04:07.260 --> 00:04:09.510 you'd need to plant forests the size of Texas 115 00:04:09.510 --> 00:04:12.000 and we just don't have enough space basically. 116 00:04:12.000 --> 00:04:15.150 So the thought with the tech that we're building 117 00:04:15.150 --> 00:04:18.990 is that we can help the trees basically, 118 00:04:18.990 --> 00:04:21.000 we could help the Earth's national processes, 119 00:04:21.000 --> 00:04:23.880 by building tech to sort of move it along. 120 00:04:23.880 --> 00:04:26.795 The thing with climate solutions is it's often not 121 00:04:26.795 --> 00:04:29.700 a one thing is better than everything else. 122 00:04:29.700 --> 00:04:31.860 We're at a point where we basically need to do everything. 123 00:04:31.860 --> 00:04:34.800 So we need to both plant more trees, 124 00:04:34.800 --> 00:04:36.120 stop cutting down forests, 125 00:04:36.120 --> 00:04:40.230 stop reversing and developing land 126 00:04:40.230 --> 00:04:41.790 that can be used as carbon sinks. 127 00:04:41.790 --> 00:04:43.410 We also do need to focus 128 00:04:43.410 --> 00:04:45.510 on building our own versions of technology 129 00:04:45.510 --> 00:04:46.590 to help the atmosphere out. 130 00:04:46.590 --> 00:04:48.150 And then, of course, also in the background, 131 00:04:48.150 --> 00:04:49.470 we need to stop using fossil fuels 132 00:04:49.470 --> 00:04:51.270 and transition to renewable energy. 133 00:04:51.270 --> 00:04:52.140 - Lots going on. 134 00:04:52.140 --> 00:04:53.400 - There's a lot there. 135 00:04:53.400 --> 00:04:56.553 - So then with these carbon dioxide removal systems, 136 00:04:57.510 --> 00:04:59.040 have any of them been built 137 00:04:59.040 --> 00:05:00.900 at a scale large enough to test them? 138 00:05:00.900 --> 00:05:02.712 Do they show any promise, do you think? 139 00:05:02.712 --> 00:05:04.830 - That's the golden question. 140 00:05:04.830 --> 00:05:09.360 So currently, there aren't that many facilities out there. 141 00:05:09.360 --> 00:05:10.680 The biggest one is in Iceland. 142 00:05:10.680 --> 00:05:13.470 It opened up in 2021. 143 00:05:13.470 --> 00:05:14.340 - Oh, wow, recent. 144 00:05:14.340 --> 00:05:15.660 - Yeah, it's pretty recent. 145 00:05:15.660 --> 00:05:18.660 It sucks a couple thousand tons of carbon dioxide 146 00:05:18.660 --> 00:05:20.670 out of the air each year, so it's operating. 147 00:05:20.670 --> 00:05:23.010 It operates on geothermal energy. 148 00:05:23.010 --> 00:05:26.820 The problem is that we're gonna need magnitudes more 149 00:05:26.820 --> 00:05:31.140 of that process than we currently do. 150 00:05:31.140 --> 00:05:35.340 And here's kind of where the thorny issue crops up. 151 00:05:35.340 --> 00:05:37.260 Basically, we don't really actually know 152 00:05:37.260 --> 00:05:40.320 how much of this tech we're gonna need 153 00:05:40.320 --> 00:05:41.610 because it depends on other factors. 154 00:05:41.610 --> 00:05:42.690 It depends on how quickly 155 00:05:42.690 --> 00:05:44.130 we're gonna be able to decarbonize. 156 00:05:44.130 --> 00:05:45.180 It depends on how quickly 157 00:05:45.180 --> 00:05:46.950 we're gonna get off of fossil fuels. 158 00:05:46.950 --> 00:05:49.200 There are different scenarios moving forward 159 00:05:49.200 --> 00:05:51.310 for how much of this tech we actually need 160 00:05:52.380 --> 00:05:54.483 and there are some interests, 161 00:05:55.380 --> 00:06:00.380 there are some tech leaders, industry people, oil companies, 162 00:06:00.480 --> 00:06:01.350 who are very interested 163 00:06:01.350 --> 00:06:04.050 in seeing the higher end of that scenario play out. 164 00:06:04.050 --> 00:06:05.400 They are very interested in a world 165 00:06:05.400 --> 00:06:08.550 where we don't actually change very much of the status quo, 166 00:06:08.550 --> 00:06:11.130 but we're able to ramp up this technology 167 00:06:11.130 --> 00:06:12.660 to a crazy degree 168 00:06:12.660 --> 00:06:15.210 and basically it's like spilling stuff on the ground 169 00:06:15.210 --> 00:06:16.890 and then vacuuming as you go. 170 00:06:16.890 --> 00:06:18.270 It's like you make the mess 171 00:06:18.270 --> 00:06:20.640 and then, in their version of the world, 172 00:06:20.640 --> 00:06:22.380 we can very easily clean it up. 173 00:06:22.380 --> 00:06:24.990 So there's competing visions 174 00:06:24.990 --> 00:06:26.080 of how much we're actually gonna need. 175 00:06:26.080 --> 00:06:28.759 - Okay, so I guess we'll see where it goes. (laughs) 176 00:06:28.759 --> 00:06:29.592 - Yeah, exactly. 177 00:06:29.592 --> 00:06:31.290 - Molly Taft, thank you so much for joining us today. 178 00:06:31.290 --> 00:06:32.790 - Thank you very much for having me. 179 00:06:32.790 --> 00:06:34.050 - So the tech exists, 180 00:06:34.050 --> 00:06:36.870 albeit on a small scale and more recently. 181 00:06:36.870 --> 00:06:37.980 And it could be promising, 182 00:06:37.980 --> 00:06:40.380 but it's guided by the vested interests 183 00:06:40.380 --> 00:06:43.020 of capitalism and billionaires. 184 00:06:43.020 --> 00:06:44.460 Uh-oh! 185 00:06:44.460 --> 00:06:46.500 As is tradition with the climate crisis, 186 00:06:46.500 --> 00:06:48.690 nothing matters until money talks. 187 00:06:48.690 --> 00:06:50.970 And while carbon dioxide removal technology 188 00:06:50.970 --> 00:06:53.820 could be a huge help in curbing our emissions 189 00:06:53.820 --> 00:06:55.650 and our route to a fiery doom, 190 00:06:55.650 --> 00:06:57.660 it cannot be the end-all, be-all, 191 00:06:57.660 --> 00:07:00.150 especially while it's being commodified. 192 00:07:00.150 --> 00:07:02.613 Check out more videos here on gizmodo.com.