Noya: Unlocking the Hidden Potential of Cooling Towers
Direct Air Capture (DAC) has rightfully earned a place as one of the foremost carbon removal techniques on the planet and this has given rise to the speculation that DAC technologies can be deployed and commercialized to curb global warming. Pioneer DAC corporations like Climeworks and Carbon Engineering have successfully launched full-scale operations capturing a few thousand tons of CO2 yearly. While this is a positive development, it remains a rather minimal effort, considering the more than 2 trillion of CO2 already in the atmosphere and the question on many minds — Is it pragmatic to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in DAC to capture only a few million tons of CO2 annually?
In an effective counter to these lofty considerations, Noya, a San Francisco-based start-up has come up with an unconventional approach to reduce the upfront capital costs and time required to perform direct air capture. In a brief chat with Josh Santos, co-founder, and CEO, we discussed the cost implications of Noya’s technology, market reception of the idea, utilization possibilities for sequestered carbon etc.
Two Million Cooling Towers
Cooling towers are more common than you think and they are used whenever an elaborate cooling system is required, either for residential or industrial purposes. There are more than 2 million cooling towers are operating in the United States today and they span across multiple sectors from dairy agriculture, manufacturing to commercial real estate, mining, etc. Though they come in different shapes and sizes, cooling towers typically circulate big streams of water and air to remove heat from a building. However, Noya’s improvisation to this process involves adding a chemical solution that binds water to CO2 as well as a plumbing tee that diverts the CO2-infused water at the bottom tub of the tower into an exterior processing unit that separates the carbon dioxide, storing it in pressurized cylinders.
If Noya’s retrofit system is implemented in the two million cooling towers currently operational in the United States, 10 billion tons of CO2 can be captured annually. For a point of comparison, the United States emits 6–7 billion tons of all greenhouse gases into the atmosphere every year. Using Noya’s retrofitting system for its two million cooling towers, the United States will be able to achieve carbon negativity sooner than imagined.
Cost Implications & Market Reception
But who foots the bill?
Noya covers the total cost of retrofitting the cooling towers and also the cost of running the process, taking the CO2, and selling it for carbon credits. The proceeds from that sale are shared with host partners. It is indeed a symbiotic arrangement with Noya getting direct access to infrastructural facilities and host partners getting credits that they can utilize in their carbon accounting.
Due to the mutually beneficial nature of Noya’s approach, it is no surprise that market reception has been resoundingly positive so far. In Josh’s words, “Our approach has been well received so far and we have raised several rounds of funding, current investors include Fifty Years, LowerCarbon Capital and YCombinator. We are fortunate to have their backing and support. On the client-side, we have over a hundred locations that have signed up for our deployment waitlist and they are waiting for us to commence the technical implementation on top of their buildings”. Meanwhile, one deployment has been successfully executed and Noya’s scientists are working on a new version of the technology which they intend to scale up to the deployment phase within the next six months.
Carbon Sequestration & Utilization Pathways
Currently, CO2 is used as an industrial condiment across traditional sectors like mining, food & beverages, manufacturing etc and it is also becoming increasingly popular among startups who have the intention of utilizing it as an industrial feedstock to be repurposed into commodities like diamonds, floor tiles, furniture and even food.
Noya is looking to partner with local sequestration partners for now while exploring the development of its sequestration technology to remove CO2 permanently in the future. The approaches being considered by Noya at the moment include the infusion of carbon into concrete or the use of captured carbon in depleted oil and gas mines. However, Josh admits that as they scale their cooling tower technology across the country, certain geographies will lend themselves better to other sequestration pathways different from underground storage in depleted mines because he is deliberately trying to steer the company away from collaborating with oil and gas companies.
Carbon Capture Vs Emission Incentivization
I asked Josh to weigh in on this ethical debate considering that artificial carbon capture approaches are arguably the most criticized for several reasons including high deployment cost, possible greenwashing dalliance with fossil fuel companies and the incentivization of further emissions. In response, Josh made a distinction between post-combustion carbon capture and Noya’s cooling tower approach, stating, “I do not think our approach encourages further emissions as we are not doing post-combustion capture from smokestacks, the CO2 we capture is the cleanest source of CO2 available since it is gotten from the ambient atmosphere. Some of the companies that we are deploying our technology to do not directly emit anything outside of their scope asides from their connection to the local energy grid. So we are not furthering or encouraging the use of fossil fuels.”
He continues by emphasizing who the actual decision-makers in the energy sector are, “…I believe what is going to eventually drive us away from fossil fuels and make the biggest impact is the individual decisions that firms and consumers are making about where their energy comes from and what type of energy they are using. So, I think more than the carbon accounting of an organization that makes money from putting CO2 in the air, I think the way we get off of fossil fuels comes from the decisions we are making from the local and the state level.”
While the race to reduce global emission rates is important, the United Nations has also made it clear that we need carbon removal technologies as well to pull CO2 out of the atmosphere to push global temperatures down to a level that is out of the danger zone before time runs out. So, with or without incentivization, capturing carbon is already an important aspect of keeping climate change reversible and if we need the technology to be effective at scale 20 years from now then we need to start working on it now.
On Propaganda and the Climate Community at Large
When asked if climate propaganda distracts from actual work in the community, Josh replied by saying, “I think it is important we all speak from the same set of understanding. The most important thing that we could do is talk about science, talk about the sources of the problem, sources of CO2 emissions, and how to reduce them. I think anything outside of those discussions could be a distraction even if it is well-intentioned. People need to understand why certain actions are required and the scientific basis for it. I think all kinds of climate communication should arise and stay grounded in scientific facts. It is quite simple, we have two levers to reverse climate change — reducing carbon emissions and removing the carbon already in the atmosphere. Anything outside of those two levers should be given a hard look at.”
Future Outlook
It is difficult to tell at this point the crucial role DAC technologies may eventually play in the next decade as every hand is being called on deck to reverse climate change. According to David Izikowitz, the founder of Carbon Infinity, the successful adoption and deployment of DAC technologies to a scale that will significantly reduce the trillions of CO2 in the atmosphere will require “wartime-like mobilization of supply chains, manufacturing capacity, and innovation”. However, companies like Noya that can take advantage of the existing infrastructural facilities to mitigate the installation costs of carbon capture technology will probably be safer bets in the long run.
