Dr. Klaus Lackner — Airminers Log 007
“If you look at air capture technologies, we are probably the most aggressive in using unconventional technologies. That’s because of an unconventional problem. The more conventional you are, the less risk you have, but the more you are doomed to be stuck in a corner.”
Within the Air Mining community, Dr. Klaus Lackner is widely regarded as the inventor of atmospheric carbon extraction, or direct air capture technology. He is currently the Director of the Center for Negative Carbon Emissions at Arizona State University, where his group works on passive, low-energy methods for ambient carbon dioxide capture and management [1].
His line of inquiry began in the 1990s at Columbia University, when he considered the future of human-caused global warming and increasing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and concluded that management of carbon dioxide would be a necessity. His thinking is part of a legacy that goes back to the 1950s, when Dr. Charles Keeling started monitoring atmospheric carbon dioxide levels in Hawaii, and even further, to the industrial revolution of the mid-1800s, when people started identifying the potential for human-caused global warming, driven by fossil fuel combustion and land mis-use. By the way, Dr. Ralph Keeling, continues to monitor atmospheric carbon dioxide levels from the monitoring station on the Big Island of Hawaii from his office at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography [2].
In June 2017, Arizona State University held a conference to launch the New Carbon Economy Consortium with the Oakland, CA-based Center for Carbon Removal, Iowa State University, Purdue University, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory [3].
Our conversation was enlightening, enjoyable, and energizing, and we are happy to share some of Dr. Lackner’s wisdom with you here.
What do you think about the goal of returning to 300 ppm by year 2050?
I think it’s an extremely ambitious goal. I think we probably will have to do something like it, but I also think we will likely take a little longer. To put it in perspective, if you look at the current momentum, we will easily shoot up to 450 parts per million by 2050. If you try to slow things down around you, this will help. At the current rate, we will be there in eighteen years, which is long before 2050. It seems to me you have to take one hundred parts per million back in the next thirty years. This is more removal on an annual basis than current emissions.
How did you start working on carbon dioxide management?
The thing which got me started in carbon management was based in simple observation. We are creating excess mobile carbon in the system, which somewhat distributes itself between ocean and atmosphere, but it doesn’t go away. On a ten thousand year time scale, maybe. But on one thousand year timescale, it just distributes itself between ocean and atmosphere. On a one hundred year timescale, roughly half of it stays in the atmosphere. So early on, I came to the conclusion that it doesn’t matter where the pain threshold will be, we will cross it. So we need to figure out how to live in a net zero carbon economy. That requires that we either completely abandon fossil fuels, which are still dirt cheap, and are going to get cheaper as we get better at renewables, or the rule has to be, if you dig up carbon, you have to put it away.
Tell me about the technology that you’re working on now.
The planet has a lot of cheap photovoltaics right now. Our technology uses excess electricity when it’s available to split water to hydrogen and oxygen, or carbon dioxide to carbon monoxide and oxygen. Once you have carbon monoxide and hydrogen, you can make basically any chemical fuel and any organic feedstock you want. You can now make methane, methanol, dimethyl ether, ethylene, whatever you have on your agenda. Chemical processes to do this already exist. The trick is that you have the energy from a photovoltaic panel and the carbon dioxide from the air. So you do photosynthesis on steroids, in effect.
What would be a big win in the next five years?
To build a nearly public version of this thing. The problem I see with startups, the moment you ask questions they tell you we can’t tell you. I know why they do this. But if you want to see a brand new industry, some of it has to be public, because really what your goal is, twenty companies are starting to jump on it. I understand that if you’re making a better mousetrap, your Intellectual Property protection is everything. But the oil companies make plenty of money, even though drilling is not patent protected anymore. Details of it are patent protected. But the basic concept is not. And if you want to seed something this big, you have to have one thousand flowers bloom. You have to go out and get lots of people to do it and therefore you have to figure out how to get the basic structure visible to anybody. Part of the challenge in this field is everyone tells you it can’t be done.
ABOUT
Airminers.org, the index of companies and projects mining carbon from the air, launched on 15 Nov 2017, with 49 companies and projects listed. It is a view of the activity in carbon sequestration through an economic lens, with new projects and companies added regularly by the community [4].
Our mission is to catalyze growth in the new carbon economy by enabling access to economic opportunities in atmospheric carbon dioxide.
Check back to airminers.org and the AirMiners blog [5] for more interviews like this and to hear about the latest additions to our database.
This is the last Log Post we have on our plan for this year. Please direct all questions or comments regarding Air Mining to m@impossiblelabs.io.
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