dioxide our forests seas and streams suck the gas up acting as natural carbon sinks that

was until humans came along and tipped the scales if we

Continue to burn fossil fuels at ever rising rates

We could warm the planet by 7 and 9 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century and the impacts of that would be catastrophic

there have been various attempts to capture this harmful co2, but they've all come with significant compromise until

now

Five four three two, one igniter on

The reason this team is so happy is because they've just

Completed the first successful ignition of the first co2 powered turbine in the world's first carbon neutral

Natural gas power plant, their company is called net power

It'll be the first truly zero emission power plant in the world

in a traditional gas power plant

The burning gas creates steam which turns a power generating turbine creating a lot of excess co2 in the process

Previous attempts to capture that co2 have reduced efficiency and led to higher costs of production

Generally, it was thought that carbon capture on natural gas was not economic

So what we had to do was start with a blank sheet of paper

enter this man Rodney alum

He developed the system now referred to as the alum cycle. I set myself the objective of

Devising something which would remove hundred percent of the co2 from the fossil fuel with no increase in the cost of electricity

Rodney actually did most of his work on what's called quadrille paper

He has a point five millimeter mechanical pencil and a four function calculator

And booked tables to look up his data when a complex computer model was created to check Rodney's calculations

Rodney's pretty much right I

Selected co2 is the fluid in the turbine rather than the steam or air which we use

previously in steam systems or gas turbine systems

And it worked

We in effect turned the problem into the solution

In Rodney's design since the co2 is used to spin the turbine and as part of an entirely closed loop it never enters the atmosphere

It's captured by default

And because the co2 power system is just as efficient as traditional natural gas plants the cost per kilowatt hour is the same

We've designed a power cycle that is cheaper and cleaner rather than more costly

imagine when you have

economics driving a solution instead of policy aspirations

Although the co2 never enters the atmosphere the alum cycle still generates a carbon by-product

Which leaves us with the problem of what to do with all that carbon?

4,000 miles away engineers in Iceland have an interesting take on how to keep the captured co2 out of the atmosphere

Shoving it directly into the ground

Perfect is an R&D project that we started about 12 years ago with the objective of developing methods and technologies for

capturing otherwise emitted co2 injecting it into

basaltic formations

we know that certain chemical processes are already happening in nature for example in vicinity of

Volcanoes this year - dissolves into groundwater and forms new types of rock by interacting with themselves

And we thought why not try and accelerate this process at an industrial scale

Very simply carb fix takes the captured carbon and mixes it with water which

basically creates Seltzer

They then take the fizzy liquid and inject it deep into the earth where the carbon chemically bonds to the basalt rock

Instead of co2 turning into rock in hundreds to thousands of years

This would happen within the timeframe of a few years

Here we have an example of a vein

This is then a small fracture

Where we would have dissolved part of the Passats and then we fill it up again with the carbonates and that's where we see these

pores filling up with cold sites

If we take all passes available on earth, theoretically we could use it to

Permanently store much more than all co2 that we would emit from burning all fossil fuel available globally

But carb fix is still operating at a small scale and it would take

Serious interest from industries and governments to grow to a size that would affect climate change worldwide

In

The meantime net power won't be burying its co2 under the ground. They'll be selling it for cold hard cash

But cause for the first time we capture carbon dioxide it

very inexpensive prices

We open up whole new industries for reuse and recycling co2 that can be useful in building materials

chemicals plastics in a myriad of other applications

But one of the most common uses of industrial co2 is actually extracting fossil fuels from the ground

In the u.s. You're actually injecting over 20 million tons a year of co2 for enhanced or recovery at the moment. I

Think I think if you do if you're sensible about the way that hydrocarbons are used and you have a

integrated idea as to how you're going to how you're gonna

utilize that hydrocarbon in a clean way and that part is key if net powers excess co2

Essentially leads to more oil being extracted. It's not a stretch to imagine

It will mostly be used in traditional carbon spewing plants not clean ones like net power

It very much appears that you know, the age of fossil fuels is likely coming to a close

some of these technologies for

capturing a sequestering carbon

Might help provide sort of that bridge

It's gonna take a decade or two to to really make that transition in our global energy economy. I'm very optimistic

All the technologies there and we just need the will

That's really happening now

If we really want to succeed in in fighting climate change and we need to bring down the co2 levels in the atmosphere

There is no silver bullet. There is no one solution. We have to use all the methods available