Source: Carbon Commentary newsletter
IKEA climate impact. I thought the company’s 2021 climate document was one of the best analyses I have seen. Specific, open and clear, and very little greenwash. Apparently honest as well, with some admissions of past errors in calculations. One of the most interesting statistics: just over half the emissions at IKEA come from the manufacturing of the goods they sell even though 73% of materials are either from renewable sources (principally wood) or are of recycled origin. In fact the glue used in making furniture (1.3 million tonnes) has twice the footprint of running all the stores around the world. The company plans to switch to biologically based adhesives to existing glues. The carbon cost of using its products at home fell sharply last year – even though sales rose substantially – principally because of an improvement in the efficiency of the LED lighting sold.
Basalt and DAC. The ability of basalt rock to absorb CO2 and turn into a carbonate may give us one of the easiest forms of permanent storage. The Climeworks direct air capture (DAC) plant in Iceland injects carbon dioxide into the basalt underneath the plant and achieves rapid carbonisation. A US academic made an interesting proposal to use surplus energy generated in the future wind parks off the East Coast to run DAC machines on the turbines, or nearby, and then store the CO2 by chemical absorption in the basalt underneath wind farm locations. Estimates suggest that 500 gigatonnes of CO2 could be turn into carbonate rocks by wind farms off the US coastline from Massachusetts to Maryland. That’s over ten years of today’s global emissions.
CO2 methanation. The French conglomerate Suez started construction of a waste water plant near the Spanish border. It includes two important innovations. First, the biogas coming from the plant (a mixture of CO2 and methane) will be converted entirely to methane. The methane can then be added to natural gas networks and combusted for heat. Because the CO2 resulting from this combustion is entirely of biological origin, there are no net additions of greenhouse gas to the atmosphere. Although methanation of waste water biogas has happened at other plants around the world, this is probably the first time the resulting gas been used commercially. The second advance is in the creation of biochar from intense heating of the sewage sludge. Biochar is near 100% carbon which will stay in soils for hundreds of years, often aiding fertility. This also saves greenhouse gas emissions. This new plant from Suez is a major advance because it will be closely integrated into the entire energy structure of the area, including supplying hydrogen, oxygen and heat.
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