Executive Summary - Air Miners Log 001
Stories from the front lines of the carbon removal revolution
The dream: a marketplace for atmosphere-derived products
Excess carbon dioxide in the air is destabilizing Earth’s systems. It is melting ice sheets and disrupting ocean chemistry. Carbon dioxide also happens to be a valuable ingredient for both life and industry.
As Air Miners, we seek to “bend the curve” of atmospheric carbon dioxide by supporting companies and projects who are proving that atmospheric carbon dioxide is a business opportunity.
The Committee to Prevent Extreme Climate Change (1) describes three levers to “bend the curve” of atmospheric greenhouse gas:
Decarbonize the global energy system with efficiency & renewables
Cut short-lived climate pollutants
Atmospheric carbon extraction
Our focus at present is on atmospheric carbon extraction.
Atmospheric carbon extraction is the process of removing carbon dioxide from the air, allowing it to be managed for reuse or storage. Carbon storage is often referred to as carbon sequestration.
Our greatest mission is this:
To remove one trillion tons of carbon dioxide from the Earth’s atmosphere, and to do it economically.
EXPLORATION
To begin addressing these questions, Impossible Labs spent the summer of 2017 mapping the landscape of companies working with atmospheric carbon dioxide.
We found over 100 organizations, including startups, university labs, research consortia, prize competitions, philanthropies, foundations, NGOs, policy groups, and nonprofits, who are either wholly or partially dedicated to atmospheric carbon extraction.
We spoke with 16 Air Miners, representing startups, nonprofits, and research and development labs around the world within universities, agriculture, and heavy industry.
Our focus at present is on startups and projects. We define a startup as an early-stage company building a new commercial venture. Projects may be within an academic lab, like the Center for Negative Emissions at Arizona State University (2), or they can be a field demonstration, like CarbFix (3) at a geothermal power plant near Reykjavík, Iceland.
LESSONS
Here are three of the recurring themes from our conversations with carbon sequestration leaders:
There’s a Business Opportunity Here
New ventures seek investors and financiers, in order to grow beyond government and philanthropy grant funding. Nearly every interviewee mentioned something like being “driven by the changing climate or renewable energy — but that’s not enough.” We heard over and over that solutions must make economic sense. As the cost of atmospheric carbon extraction decreases, emissions and atmosphere will be a viable source of material for concrete, bioplastics, fish feed, industrial chemicals, and synthetic fuels.
New Ideas Need Help Scaling
Early-stage projects need testing and validation resources. Geoffrey Holmes from Carbon Engineering (4) told us, “We know the technology works. Will it work well enough to convince a cohort of investors to bet on a first project?” We know that the testing resources exist. These projects simply need money and community.
A Wide Range of Languages and Goals
Organizations need help communicating goals and measurements to startups, sponsors, research labs, and policy groups. We heard a variety of terminology and wide-ranging goals, like “remove one billion tons,” “reduce emissions thirty percent,” or “manage one billion acres of land.” Only one organization precisely answered the question “How much carbon dioxide did you remove last year?” (Edda Sif Aradóttir from CarbFix: “10,000 tons per year.”)
JOIN
As we chart our course, we enthusiastically welcome partnership with economically viable air mining endeavors.
The goal of airminers.org is to facilitate collaboration among scientists, technologists, and business communities, and to support complementary methods for atmospheric carbon dioxide utilization.
Join our “Carbon Squad” mailing list here. You will receive:
- Stories from our expeditions
- Notifications about major changes to airminers.org
- Special insight into our evolving partnerships
ABOUT
The first version of airminers.org, launch date 15 Nov 2017, is a view of the activity in carbon sequestration through an economic lens. This supports our mission to scale carbon extraction projects, by connecting stakeholders throughout carbon capture, sequestration, and utilization, to increase the number of development projects globally.
Over the next six months, we will introduce leaders in carbon extraction through our blog (medium.com/airminers), website (airminers.org), and events near you.
Do you have an organization for us to assess? A comment on our approach? Reach out to contact@airminers.org and see how we might work together.
CITATIONS
(1) Ramanathan, V., Molina, M.J., Zaelke, D., Borgford-Parnell, N., Xu, Y., Alex, K., Auffhammer, M., Bledsoe, P., Collins, W., Croes, B., Forman, F., Gustafsson, Ö, Haines, A., Harnish, R., Jacobson, M.Z., Kang, S., Lawrence, M., Leloup, D., Lenton, T., Morehouse, T., Munk, W., Picolotti, R., Prather, K., Raga, G., Rignot, E., Shindell, D., Singh, A.K., Steiner, A., Thiemens, M., Titley, D.W., Tucker, M.E., Tripathi, S., & Victor, D., Well Under 2 Degrees Celsius: Fast Action Policies to Protect People and the Planet from Extreme Climate Change, 2017. Available at: http://www-ramanathan.ucsd.edu/about/publications.php and www.igsd.org/publications/
