A gigantic CO2 vacuum cleaner, or a giant extractor hood if you like: large installations are increasingly popping up that suck in the air, filter out the greenhouse gas CO2 and then store it. Carbon capture and storage or CCS, that’s what the technology is called in climate jargon.
Credits: Michaël Torfs Foto: Getty Images
Those CO2 vacuum cleaners are getting bigger and more powerful. Last week, the largest in the world opened in Iceland. You can see it in the photo above. And already a new installation is being built in Texas that will be even larger.
Ideal, because this way we can solve the climate problem. However? Unfortunately, you can also make a lot of comments about this new technology. For example, that it costs a lot of money and uses a lot of energy. And that the vacuum cleaners only “eat” a very small part of all the CO2 in the atmosphere. The installation in Iceland compensates for just a few seconds of what humanity emits in an entire year. To capture all those greenhouse gases, we would need about 1 million such installations.
And there’s another catch. The fossil industry can use the new technology as an excuse to continue using fossil fuels for as long as possible. In the US, for example, Occidental Petroleum, an oil and gas company, is behind the project. But in the current climate crisis, CO2 vacuum cleaners can only serve as an extra. First and foremost, we will need continued strong climate measures and strong nature with many trees that store CO2. And that as quickly as possible. The vacuum cleaners are mainly an extra asset in the longer term.
The victims of the climate crisis, recently in southern Brazil, Afghanistan and Mexico, among others, will certainly confirm this. Dozens of people died there due to floods and a heat wave.
