Carbon capture startup 280 Earth recently developed a new technology that could revolutionize data centers. According to The Verge, 280 Earth began in Google's "moonshot factory" X, which takes far-out ideas to help humanity and turns them into reality.
Data centers are already one of the largest consumers of energy in the world, with their energy consumption expected to skyrocket in the near future.
With that energy consumption comes carbon pollution. Microsoft's carbon pollution has reportedly risen 30% since 2020. Google's carbon pollution is up nearly 50% over the last five years, thanks in part to the integration of artificial intelligence.
There's also reporting that the official carbon pollution numbers given by companies such as Google, Microsoft, Meta, and Apple are grossly underestimated, so the numbers could be much higher.
280 Earth's Direct Air Capture technology can remove carbon dioxide from the air, run on waste heat, and produce fresh water that can cool the servers in the data centers.
The company recently signed a carbon capture deal worth $40 million that's part of a larger initiative called Frontier, a $925 million commitment by a group of big names in tech and consulting, including Stripe, Alphabet, Meta, and Shopify, that launched in 2022.
DAC facilities already exist, but 280 Earth believes its technology will be more efficient than current carbon capture methods. The current methods involve capturing carbon in absorbent materials called sorbents, then when the sorbent has become saturated, it's heated so the CO2 captured can be released and collected.
The company claims that its method works by continuously moving the sorbent between two chambers rather than repeatedly heating, cooling, and changing the pressure in a single chamber, which causes energy loss.
According to CEO John Pimentel, the method will also capture water vapor, as much as 2 to 4 tons of water for every ton of carbon dioxide captured, and that water can be repurposed. That's especially pertinent in the case of large data centers, which can use as much as 5 million gallons a day.
"When we started 280 Earth as a moonshot at X, our vision was always to find a radically effective, affordable, and scalable way to remove billions of tons of carbon from our atmosphere," Astro Teller, captain of moonshots at Alphabet's X, said in an emailed statement. "We're excited to see this momentum with Frontier buyers."
This technology will not only benefit the surrounding areas where it's used by removing carbon from the air and reducing water usage at data centers, it will benefit the planet as a whole. Carbon pollution leads to the overheating of the planet, which contributes to extreme weather events and threatens the global food supply.
Construction on Earth 280's pilot project in Oregon wrapped up in May, so there's no knowing yet if the tech will be used on a larger scale.
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