Icelandic startup Carbfix has found a unique way to store planet-warming pollution with two of Earth's most basic ingredients: water and rocks.
The company takes carbon dioxide that is piped in from a nearby power plant, mixes it with groundwater, and then injects it into basalt rock. This strategy is condensing a process that normally takes thousands of years into just two, as Reuters reported. And it's all done in a small white dome that looks like little more than a glamping site from the outside.
Carbfix has been at it for nine years. Communications Director Ólafur Teitur Guðnason told Reuters that in that time, 95% of the CO2 it received was turned into a rock in the subsurface in under two years.
"Our technology speeds up processes that normally happen over geologic timescales," Guðnason told the news outlet. "Instead of taking thousands of years (to mineralize CO2 into rock), we make it happen in two years."
The startup is already gaining attention from world leaders like Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo, and a group of U.S. senators, who all visited the site in 2023. Meanwhile, 120 scientists, policymakers, and companies signed a statement in support of Carbfix's method.
As we continue to watch our planet's temperature rise, carbon capture and storage (CCS) has been one answer to help reduce pollution. Traditionally, this means capturing CO2 from industry and then transporting it to an area where it is stored deep underground in geological formations.
Per Reuters, Carbfix distinguishes its process from storing CO2 with traditional CCS methods — instead, the company claims to be permanently sequestering it as a mineral.
Of course, these types of CCS methods are not the only way that scientists are tackling our excess carbon. For instance, carbon farming is a way of managing agricultural land to help increase how much of the stuff is stored in soils.
Nature also helps do the job for us — seagrass alone provides around $88.3 billion worth of carbon storage services annually, while one mature tree can absorb 48 pounds of CO2 in one year.
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