Welcome to brain stuff from How Stuff Works, Hey, brain Stuff. Lauren Vogue obamb Here's Fonte Arenas was a Swedish electrochemist who in eight predicted that man made carbon dioxide emissions would dramatically transform Earth's climate. You and I live in the future he saw coming. So far, the twenty one century has witnessed seventeen of the eighteen hottest years on record, and just as Arenas suspected, the main cause of this warming trend is all the CEO two we keep pumping
into the atmosphere. The scale of the problem is jaw dropping. In the year seventeen alone, human beings unleashed forty point five billion tons about thirty six point eight billion metric tons of this world altering greenhouse gas. Much of the blame Faulds on our transportation infrastructure. Around twenty of global CEO two emissions are made by cars, trucks, airplanes, and other vehicles, though just out of saying when cows and other farm animals up or fart, they're contributing to climate
change too. The methane and livestocks belches and flatulence makes up of all agriculture related greenhouse gas emissions, but back to carbon dioxide. Wouldn't it be nice if we could pull CEO two out of thin air and incorporate it into a new kind of vehicular fuel that's better for the environment. We may be ready to start doing just that. In June, the energy research journal Jewel published a study led by Harvard professor David Keith, an experimental physicist and
public policy expert. Keith founded the company Carbon Engineering in two thousand nine. The organization's mission is to quote develop and commercialized technology that captures industrial scale quantities of c O two directly from the air. With the help of Bill Gates and other investors, Carbon Engineering was able to open a nine million dollar direct air capture plant in tw Located in Squamish, British Columbia. The facility uses large fans to pull outside air through filters coated with the
liquid solution that traps carbon dioxide. Then the captured gas is converted into small pellets of calcium carbonate. Using these pellets, Carbon Engineering has made synthetic gasoline, diesel, and even jet fuel. The advantages of this air to fuel process are considerable, whereas naturally occurring fossil fuels are notoriously finite. These man made liquids are renewable, and since they're produced with recycled
c O two, they don't contribute to mankind's carbon footprint. Plus, our existing vehicles wouldn't need to be modified in any way to start running on these synthetic fuels. Over in Switzerland there's another carbon capture plant run by climb Works, a separate company which now sells recycled c O two. But if this technology is going to make a significant dent in our carbon emissions problem, will need a lot of new plants. So how cost effective is that going
to be? Last year, m I T engineer Howard Herzog estimated that it would cost an air capture facility a thousand dollars to generate a single US that's about point nine metric tons of usable carbon dioxide. Keith's new paper begs to differ. According to his calculations, the process costs a more reasonable nine dollars to two dollars per U
s ton. Keith said in a press statement, we can confidently say that while air capture is not some magical, cheap solution, it is a viable and buildable technology for producing carbon neutral fuels in the immediate future and for removing carbon in the long run. Today's episode was written by Mark Mancini and produced by Tyler Clang. For more on this and lots of other topics that will capture your attention, visit our home planet, how stuff Works dot com.