Can you tell me about it again? So this is basically where it all started. This is where car fixed was developed. This was the initial pilot injection. Well, now we're using it to inject seal two coming from climb Works, this direct air capture plant. So essentially this is an oversized soda stream machine making carbonated water awesome. But the important thing here is this kind of system it can work in other industries as well, not only geothermal power.
It can work in you know, cement manufacturing, or or production of steel, or coal fire power plants. Wherever you have like a very highly concentrated source of CEO two, you can actually capture it in water and injected if you're lucky enough to be sitting on top of a favorable bedrock like we are. Okay, here I am outside the hellish d Geo thermal plant in Iceland, just outside recC.
It's dark, it's cold. What you just heard it was the sound of our guest today, Kari Helgason, the head of research and innovation for carb Fix, who tell us about their CEO two storage technology where they'll take CEO two from any source and injected underground where it mineralizes or turns to rock under the subsurface in Iceland here fascinating topic. Really enjoyed our conversation. Stay with us as always beat up to stop, provide investment of strategy advice.
You can hear the full disclaimer at the end of the show. Mark Taylor from a rock field in Iceland and you're listening to switch on to Being f podcast. Hey Coudy, so thank you so much for joining us. This is really awesome. We're standing here at the injection site for the first car fixed project that started back in two thousand and six. How about we just start with the project itself. Can you tell us a bit about carb fix and where it kind of came from.
It originally came from a scientist in the United States called Wally Broker. He came here and he was one of the guys who sort of raised awareness about climate change being a threat, like back in the seventies. He came here to Iceland talked to icelandic scientists to actually see whether this natural weathering of producing minerals in bus salts to curb climate change would be an actual, you know, viable. It started in two thousand and six the Carpet Project
as an academic and industry collaboration. So really just as an idea that stemmed into a science project. Really people didn't know whether this would work or you know, if we did it, how fast it would work, because you know, naturally, and this is what happens naturally, is that you know, nature keeps a lot of carbon in rocks, CEO tourists, salt in rainwater, it seeps through the bedrock and it
turns into minerals on a very long time scales. So the question is would we be able to speed this up to actually make this relevant to carbon capture and sequestration technology. That's where it started doing the academic work, modeling, simulations, etcetera. When finally we put it to the test and injected CEO two into the Icelandic basaltic bedrock, we found out that this was actually happening quite fast, and we are mineralizing all the CEO two that we injected in the
matter of under two years. And this was quite a bit faster than people had expected. And this is sort of how it all got started, and then it only took a few more years for it to be implemented in the power plant we're actually sitting in right now. This is a geothermal power plant, which is green energy,
but it's still amids CEO two. It accumulates right here to around forty tho tons of CEO two per year, and we are currently taking of that CEO two using the carfix technology and injecting it, and we'll be scaling that up in the next year to make this a you know, full scale carbon capture and storage decombronized plant. Let's go back though, just for a second. Was there
was there an aha moment? Did you know before you started injecting c OR two under the underground here in the lab did you see that it was going to mineralize or did you know what was going to happen before you did it? Well, back then, I wasn't working for the company, so I put out I can, but I can I can speak to the p for for the people that were here. For example, at at the CEO of the Carpicks company, she hadn't run models that actually indicated that this would be quite fast. People didn't
necessarily believe the models. And I don't think we should always believe models, for sure, they're just to inform. But her models we are actually quite a bit accurate. When you compared it to the experimental data that you know, after the pilot injections. I think the aha moment or the real breakthrough was that, you know, when we actually demonstrated and verified the mineral storage of CEO two being this efficient. So we had actually succeeded in accelerating nature's
way of storing carbon. That's really cool. So how did the project itself materialize? You started off with the CEO two from the geothermal plant and then came along the direct air capture idea from from climb Works or how did that whole arrangement happen. We started with the power plant or decombronizing the power plant. That was what was
implemented on industrial scale in twenty fourteen. Then we, you know, were introduced to these guys at climb Works, which is a Swiss company that has this direct air captured technology and they were, you know, looking for a place to
test their pilot unit. They had been developing this technology in Switzerland and we in I think it was in twenty seventeen when they actually shipped their pilot unit here and so they exposed Moosted to the harsh conditions in Iceland, the weather, the corrosion, the the you know, the hydrogen sulfide and all the geothermal gases that surround us and and put it, you know, through a stress test for
several years. And they actually just scaled up this year commissioning the first commercial direct air capture and storage plant. So so their pilot had been running for at least three years before they decided to scale up. But now this has become the first with the world's first commercial direct air capture and storage chain. So we take the seal two out of the atmosphere and we injected into
the bedrock where it turns into stone. Okay, so I don't want to spend too much time on direct air capture, but to me, like I've been wanting somebody to tell me I'm wrong about this, that I think direct air capture is really interesting because two things. One is location, right, because in carbon capture and storage often you don't have the point source of C two emissions near the storage location or the sink for the U two, So that's
a big problem. The second issue is verification, right. It's a it's the value of a ton of C O two stored or offset, and so there's going to come a point when well, we can't verify all the grass growing in the tundra to to offset the missions through forestry or something like that, or you know, forester burning for various parts of the world, and so you're gonna need to to be able to verify a ton of
c U two stored. So I think, you know, direct air capture plus what car fix is doing is really cool. So am I crazy? No, You're You're absolutely right in that everything is measurable to the graham of c O two, and it's very traceable, and it's very transparent, and you you know, you know exactly what is happening, what is being captured, what is going into the ground, and you're doing this in real time. With forestry, there are big uncertainties.
It takes a long time for the carbon to be sequestered, and you need a lot of land space. But you know, don't get me wrong. I mean, we do need these natural solutions as well. We do need to plant a lot of trees, and we also need these technological solutions. We need direct air capture technologies to be at the gigaton scale by mid century. I mean that is, if we are to meet our climate goals. That is what we need to do, so we need to do both hand in hand. At the same time, we also have
to be comfortable with some uncertainty. You know, if we know that we are sequestering Sale two, we don't know to the Graham, but we just have to do it nevertheless. But this is also what all this research is about, you know, just getting more knowledge and understanding of our natural system in order for us to know better what we need to do and to prioritize what solutions we should fund and which once we should not. So just
to make sure we got it. We talked about it briefly at the site, but let's just make sure we got it. Can you explain really how the technology works. You mentioned that you take the CEO two and you combine it with water, and then you combine it with some other chemicals I believe, and injected in the ground or no, no, we just use seal two in water. There you go. So it's just like nature, but accelerating it.
We dissolve the seal two in water we injected into the bedrock, and when it enters the formation, the seal two is completely dissolved. So it's like you know, a bottle of soda. Right, you don't see any bubbles until you open it. And deep pressure as it well underground, there is pressure and it keeps the CEO two in solution, so it doesn't want to leak up, It doesn't want to go anywhere, and it actually has the tendency to sink rather than to rise because the fluid is denser
than the surrounding water. So we kill the buoyancy that way.
And what happens when the acidic fluid, because this is essentially carbonic acid, just like you know sparkling water, what happens is that it starts attacking the rock and dissolving the rock because it's acidic, and the icelandic bad drop or basalts in particular, are very rich in metals such as calcium, magnesium, and iron, and it releases these metals into the fluid and then the chemistry starts happening, that the mineral starts forming, and we start forming magnesium carbonates,
calcium carbonates, and iron carbonates. So this is what we mean when we say we turn CEO two into stone, we are turning them into solid carbonate minerals. And once we have verified that these minerals do form then we can simply walk away and we don't need to monitor anything else in the reservoir. That's really cool. Years ago, I was a carbon capture analyst, and the big concern everybody had was that once you injected the CEO two, you had to monitor it for a hundred years to
make sure that the CEO two stayed under ground. It seems like you don't have that issue. We do not have that issue because we kill the buoyancy as a set by dissolving in the water, and then when it's solid, we don't have to do anything, So you just have to verify that it happens. But we are also in a different position as the conventional c s c S or or corporon capture and storage projects in which they are injecting actually supercritical seal too very very deep into
depleted oil or gas reservoirs. These are typically not located, these geologies are typically not located where basalts and reactive rocks like we are using are located. So actually we think of it as car fix is actually just unlocking a lot of areas in the world where carbon capture storage hasn't even been considered. We've had instances where we're talking to emitters and they just simply don't know that they're sitting on top of a very favorable bedrock for
you know, storing CEO two. So we're just trying to get the word out there, and we have like an mineral storage atlas on our website where people can actually just go and and look where are these favorable regions.
We'll give us a rundown likewise, so we know Iceland you mentioned all the world's emissions could be or in Iceland, but where else for example India, Japan, West Coast, United States, and a lot of the sea floor as well that's mostly bussolved bus salts and and these reactive rock formations are found in every continent. They cover around five percent of all the landmass on Earth, so it's the most common rock type on Earth, and it's found in many,
many countries. The list goes on. But the important thing is also it's not only that it's widespread, it's also that this also works in industries outside the geothermal and direct air capture. So we could hook up to cement manufacturing, steel manufacturing, and even fossil fuel fire power plants. So wherever you have concentrated stream of CEO two. You can
capture it dissolving in water and inject for storage. Is the idea for car picked as a company, not a science project as it was back in you know six. Is it to go to emitters in India, Japan, South Africa, Ethiopia, wherever and take their CEO two and inject it right under their feet, or is it something else? This is
always the most economical way to go. I think it's important that we have demonstrated it here that you know, we're we're running this whole CCS chain at about twenty five dollars per ton, and that is actually very economical. It's way lower than the current e t S emission allowance is selling for and it's lower than the tax credit in the US. That's right. But I will give
you these are somewhat idealized conditions where we are. But this is always the most economical way to go, and it lowers the entry barrier into CCS because really CCS up till now has only been done by governments and big oil and gas. But now you can actually you know, go to a medium sized enterprise which is you know, producing cement for example, and implement this technology there. So
that's one pathway. Another pathway is direct air capture like we're demonstrating here, and for that you only need the
bedrock and the energy that it demands. And the third, and I think this will be the most important halfway for CCS, is you know, establishing these storage hubs or industrial clusters where you have a lot of injection capacity and where you can actually ship the CEO two either by ship or pipeline, so that you know you you have these concentrated clusters where either we have to build up transport network to transport the CEO too to the favorable storage sides, or we simply have to build the
industries next to these storage sides. I mean, I think the future will be a combination of both. For example, here in Iceland we are starting to demonstrate this storage hub concept by a project called the Cota Terminal and we are planning to ship in liquidized CEO two on tankers from northern Europe for operation in so quite soon. Yeah,
it's relatively soon. We have a lot to do still, um but I think once we have demonstrated the mineral storage hub concept here in Iceland, then it will be ready for applications in strategic locations around the world where they have actually much more emissions than we do here in Iceland. In Iceland, we really, you know, we're lacking the Seal two. We have the rocks, we have the water,
but we don't have the Seal two, right, right. But but this is where really where you know, carbon capturing stories can reach these climate relevant scales by building up these hubs. And we're by no means the only ones doing it. In Europe. There is you know, Project Longship in in Norway. There are other CCS projects, and the European Union is dead serious when they're saying that we are building up these carbon transport networks and we simply are going to be one note in this network. We
need to transform our infrastructure. Right in Iceland, we transformed the infrastructure in relation to geothermal like in the district teaching. We used to be an oil country. So now we need yet another transformation of infrastructure to actually transport CEO too.
We need oil in reverse. But and people always tell me when I tell them about this code terminal project in which we are you know, shipping Seal two from Europe, it sounds sci fi, right, capturing Seal two, liquidizing it, putting on our ships, shipping it all the way to Iceland for you know, this economic permanent storage. But you know how sci FI is the oil and gas infrastructure. If you think about it, I mean, it's it's it's crazy infrastructure. You know, you're pumping up so much fossil
fuels from deep underground. You know, you're and you're you know, putting in our tank ships, and you're shipping it all its world on all these petrol stations inso different materials. Exactly, it is crazy infrastructure, and you're you know, you're you're shipping it like, you know, halfway across the world, and now we are shipping CEO two like from northern Europe
to Iceland. I mean, that's that's nothing. I mean, it's the point I'm trying to make is like it was crazy infrastructure that got us into this mess in the first place, and we need big solutions to get us out of this mess. So I realized the Code of Terminal has to be your big priority right now. But is there another country besides Iceland that you're looking for another demonstration or scale up project for another cluster hub? People tell us what the cold determinal is, like, you know,
can you get any bigger? So we're already you know, looking at the code de terminal two point though perhaps in Iceland. I tell you what sounds sci fi to me is is when you said when we were at the site that that Iceland, you know it's an island, right that you said it could house all of the CEO two you know, created by mankind. Like that number sounds just unfathomable to me, but I get it. If
Iceland can take it, then maybe that's the industry. Maybe the code of terminal two point oh three point oh is the answer. Maybe just ship it all here and becomes the the SINC for the world. It's gonna depend a lot on how economic we can make the transport link in the CCS chain. So I mean Iceland is you know, admittedly far away, but the economics work because
the storage is so cheap. We are doing it on shore as opposed to offshore, where things are usually ten times more expensive, and we are using low cost, low risk approach to you know, expanding. We're using multiple shallow injection wells instead of like one ginormous deep injection well, and they're not special wells are they You're not looking for a reservoir or anything, I assume, I mean you're looking for basalt. But basalt, I mean, you know, not
all basalt is equal. I mean, I mean we we prefer to be in like young, fresh basalts, you know, just to make things easier. And and you know, because we have demonstrated here there are older and more altered basalts that can sequest their carbon for sure. But when we're talking about these big scale projects that you know haven't been demonstrated before, we will start out in our
comfort zone for sure. Um, But for the cubs in the other places in the world, you know, that remains to be seen where where we can actually where we should actually place them. And it depends on many other things than geology. It's also politics, permitting, financing, interests, et cetera. That goes into the equation here. Well, let's go to that we talked about the source or the sink under
my feet. You just announced yesterday October and we're recording this that you're going to start storing CEO two from there. Was it I sell project, I sell aluminum plant in Iceland here? Yeah, So the real tinto aluminum smelters in Iceland. It's co located with the Cotal terminal. Okay, so they're actually sitting in the same location, and and they're actually sitting on the freshest and nicest basoft for carbon storage that you know you can find in Iceland with a
lot of fresh water. So so there's everything there. Oh wow, okay, I think what you know Real Tinto has just realized is that they are going to have an operating injection site in right at their doorstep, So it makes sense to develop carbon capture and storage here. Now, carbon capture and storage in the aluminum sector is not easy. The CEO two, you know, stream coming from from an aluminum production facility is very diluted, low concentration, very low concentration
of CU two. But they are working on modifying their processes getting the concentration up so that they will have a capturable source of CEO two by five. Do you deal with that part or do you just take the CEO two when it's ready for storage. We will, you know, facilitate in in carbon capture as as much as we can. Hearing minds with minds. Yeah, we are experts in carbon storage, but but we have our complete carbon capture and storage chain here. So at some point their CEO two concentration
will be good enough for us to take over. Maybe we'll have to have an extra module there in between, another technology that you know, opposite concentrations or purifies it or something like that. But this is you know, there are several options on the table right now. Okay, let's say, well, I mean, congratulations on that. It's really cool and that you say that's going to go on in likely? Is that right? That's what we're aiming for, and just for
really listening. That's part of Rio Tinto's seven point five billion dollar announcement they made last week to reduce Scope one and two emissions by sixteen point three million tons per year by so clearly they had this in mindment with there they made that announcement. That's an oddly specific number, sixteen point three million tons per year. Do you know what proportion or how much they plan to injector how
much this smelter emits. Well, this smelter emits a little over three hundred thousand tons per year, Okay, so it's it's a small portion of the sixteen point three million. You've got the point three, that's right. Yeah, yeah, so when when we're done, it's will be sixteen well hopefully more. Yeah, I mean, we'll we'll see how far we can go. I mean usually in most industries, these are demonstrated technologies.
You can just go and choose a company, choose a service provider, and you can just start doing it with an a woman smelter like I you know mentioned there is R and D involved. So we don't know exactly if they will be ready in five when we will start operating the Coulta terminal, but at least we will be there and the storage side will be operational, and we already one day already. Okay, I was going to use a you know, hypothetical company as an example, but
I'm going to use Rio Tinto. Ivan Vella, the CEO in a story you know, read from Bloomberg about this said quote, beyond this this project, we will look for opportunities to apply card fixes technology for decorganization across Rio Tinto's operations. All right, So they let's say they come to you with a project in Australia. You know, a plant in Australia they want to decarbonize, or a smelter
or something like that in Australia. Do you say, great, let's do the storage here, or do you say, okay, let me let me find you a ship and we'll take it to a hub, you know, at the coded terminal first we'll see if we can inject it on site. It's always the cheapest way to go and and and the most economical way to go. So if for some reason that turns out to be not favorable. And it's not only about the chemistry and of the rocks, it's also about the permeability. Can you get all this fluid
into the underground? Is there space for it? I mean this this is also a big concern. I mean Australia has a hot, dry rock. They keep talking about it,
right for at least a decade ago they did. Yeah, and but but the next step would be like, okay, is this emitter you know, uh in a position where it can you know, ship seal two or transported via pipeline or or shift two way favorable storage side This might be like mineral storage, but this could also be like conventional carbon capture and storage side, like the oil
and gas industry is doing. Um so, so that is the pathway Number two So the third pathway, and you should never do this with industrial emission is direct air captured. So direct air captured you only offset the emissions that you cannot be carbonized by other means. It's important to actually, you know, emphasize this point because people tend to think about direct air capture and and storage as you know, being a silver bullet, right. You know, oh you you
you omit this much deal too. You take this much deal too out in the atmosphere. You know, it's a zero zum game. But you know, the most important thing right now is that we need to stop emissions from these concentrated sources, Like concentrated point sources are like sevent of all the emissions. So we need to put a stop on that right now. And that's an urgent task for us to do now. Direct air capture needs to
be at scale by mid century. It's nice to start here in Iceland, to start the development here, and we've demonstrated it, which is, you know, very cool. I think in will look back and say, oh, this this big industry. Now it's started here. It's kind of cool. But but I mean, you know, this is a long distance run direct their capture stopping emissions. This is a sprint. We must start this right now. I couldn't agree more as a human. But let me ask you another question. So
let's say I'm not Rio Tinto. Let's say I'm I don't know Microsoft or Stripe, you know, both of which have a beyond or further than that zero, a net negative carbon emission goal. What would you tell them were they to come to you and say, hey, I'd like to offset my c O two, I'd like to inject a ton of c O two. You said you can measure it to the Graham right of c O two. That to me, you know, from my E S G targets,
that's really important. What what do you tell me? Yeah, when when it comes to carbon capture and storage, I
reiterate the importance of stopping emissions from point sources. Now it's not necessarily you know, Google's responsibility or Microsoft responsibility of you know, stopping emissions from uh, some industries emissions I mean and and you know, for example, in Europe there are you know, mandatory markets that these industries must comply to, which is for example, E T S emission allowances.
But typically Microsoft and and and these companies Stripe, they have like a portfolio of solutions, so they are you know, you know, hedging their bets and and they're really you know trying to you know, kick start you know, you know, some great innovations in climate science and in in curbing climate change. So this is what they're doing, not only with direct air capture, but but also other natural solutions
for example. And I think someone needs to do is because we know for sure that we will not meet our climate goals without going that zero. So I'm happy that someone is doing it. Yeah, Okay, okay, I mean that's kind of what I've been thinking just that that maybe, I mean, I know that we weren't going to talk as much about direct air capture, but like that seemed to be legit option for companies like that that have those targets. It has been a little bit like the
game of the Chicken and the egg. The industries they don't want to commit to capture, and unless they have a place to store things. The storage providers they don't want to do carbon storage if nobody's going to send them to you two. But I I think what we really need now is for governments to facilitate and kickstart this market. So so that we can deploy faster and finance this project faster because we need deployment of them. When you think about the number of tons we have
to avoid by mid century, it's a staggering amount. It's you know, one thousand gigatons something like that. And and you know, I know, people don't understand what a gigaton is.
It is, you know, one thousand million tons. If you've been to the Good for us, one of the biggest waterfalls here in Iceland, you have, Yeah, I mean, I mean we calculated that the average flow of good force and you you stand there, you see the power, you feel the power there, and so much water going down that the average flow of good force, that's the amount of CEO two we need to be putting under the ground on average until So that's just like when you
when you stand there, if I translate it to Niagara Falls better for for a lot of the audience, Yeah, two years worth of Niagara falls, that's the CEO two we need to avoid with carbon capture and storage. So that's that's that's like, you know, over one giga tons and by twenty six according to International Energy Agency, and and just imagine you just standing next to the Niagara Falls and you're just you're watching all this water, watching all this enormous power, and you stand there for two
years and you just watch the water coming down. Replace that we see you two. That's that's how much we have admitted, you know, and more into the atmosphere since industrial revolution. And that's that's what needs to come back. We need to reverse what we've been doing. I've never heard a better analogy for for CCS and and the
storage needs. That's that's amazing, that totally makes sense. Well on that, I do have one more question, and this is going to be after the fact, but there's a lot going on this week right in terms of the US Infrastructure bill, and there could be changes to the tax code for carbon storage or cc C O two storage underground. Next week is also the COPY Climate negotiations
in Glasgow. Are you looking for anything specific to happen in either one of those, you know, the improvements to the tax tax l in the US or money from countries from the cop meetings. In an ideal world, I would do ideal first and then we'll do yeah. In an ideal world, I would like to see a universal
price on carbon emissions. Okay, so I understand this is not going to happen at Camp twenty six, although we will you know, hopefully hopefully make significant strides, you know, like you said Article six, I'm I would say that, I'm I. I really just want these projects to get deployed faster um and and the way we do it.
I'm not an expert there. I don't want to say the word, you know, tax, but we you know, a carbon tax is you know, something that we know will be effective and it's it's demonstrated to be effective, but it's it's uh, and I understand it's politically tough, but I hope that we will, you know, have a more mature market for Carpon for for carbon because shipping CEO two between countries for storage, I mean, this is a big enterprise and it won't happen unless you have you know,
a solid market for it, and we need governments to help us create that market. If we don't, then carp fixes out of business. I'm going to disagree slightly in that you have all these companies and countries that are making net zero commitments, right, and you have E s G becoming part of investment requirements. Dcs, reporting regulations, things
like that. And so if anybody is serious about any of this, you're gonna have more companies like real tinto putting seven point six billion dollars into their net zero goals, right and part of that is going to involve moll CCS or CEO two storage, whatever you want to call it. Here, I think policies is really really critical, but in some ways could be nice to have. I don't know, I think the market could be taking over. I'm not sure with big industries. I mean, they are going to move
when the carbon price rises. That's that's that that that is for sure. And the e t S emission allowances has been you know, hovering around twenty euros per ton for a long time and they've done nothing, absolutely nothing. Now we're up to sixty and now we're seeing movement. So you see this goes hand hand in hand um and and and that is the big industries. And this is you know, the biggest slice of the cake really is when you get these big industries to move, then
you know you will get real action. So the number of calls you get is directly correlated to the carbon price. It sounds like, yeah, more or less cowdy. Thanks for joining us. Thank you much pleasure talking to you all right. We'll look forward to having you back when code is built. Very good you will be invited. Sweet oh, I look forward to it. Today's episode of Switched On was edited
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