Sunglasses, laundry detergent, auto parts, and even a sustainable aviation fuel, according to carbon recycler Twelve, which claims to cut jet emissions by 90%, are all made from waste items that would otherwise contribute to global warming.
That gasoline is not inexpensive. The International Air Transport Association estimates that a gallon of environmentally friendly aviation fuel costs almost twice as much as conventional aviation fuel. The cost of carbon recycling technology generally restricts the acceptance of these kinds of systems, which can therefore restrict their development and uptake.
With the establishment of a $100 million grant program targeted at supporting carbon recycling buys by state and local governments as well as public utilities, the Biden administration took a move to address that chicken-and-egg issue on Monday.
The Energy Department is leading the initiative, which will provide funding for a number of technologies and initiatives that recycle carbon waste, attempt to lower greenhouse gas emissions, and create a circular economy, which is an economic system based on producing goods from items that have already been produced.
According to Geoff Cooper, CEO for the Renewable Fuels Association, the financing will also contribute in boosting demand and improving the competitiveness of these technologies.
According to him, the program will drastically reduce the price of these products for state, local, and public utilities, which will grow the market for recovered carbon.
Grants are used to pay for carbon recycling devices that turn waste emissions into useful resources in cities and communities. According to the Energy Department, towns can apply for funding to support initiatives that divert waste or lower carbon emissions in the future. These initiatives may involve recycling materials that might otherwise wind up in landfills.
According to Noah Deich, deputy assistant secretary for carbon management, “We’re finding out how to extract carbon out of our garbage emissions or even straight from the air and convert it back into the concrete or the plastic or another valuable useful thing.”
Even potentially useful materials, such as aviation fuel or different kinds of fossil fuel, can be produced today straight from CO2 emissions, according to Deich.
One of the technologies that could set people on a path to reduce the effects of global warming is one that can trap pollutants and reformulate it into other materials. Carbon capture, utilization, and storage were among the solutions the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change listed for reducing atmospheric carbon in 2022.
The industry is producing a significant number of innovative and promising technologies every day, but they are frequently more expensive to develop and more difficult to deploy on a big scale. The cost of producing electricity using carbon-capture technology is higher than that of conventional technologies, according to a recent report from the Institute for electricity Economics and Financial Analysis.
When submitting bids for municipal projects, many industry providers claim that the cost of employing sustainable energy technologies is a barrier they must overcome. The Energy Department program, according to Andrew Stevenson, vice president of project development and partnerships at Twelve, helps level the playing field.
The expansion of green manufacturing and clean energy jobs will be further fueled by this support, he claimed. “This support helps instill confidence in the expanding market for carbon transformation, an essential component as the industry scales,” he stated.
According to the Energy Department, the industrial sector in the United States is accountable for one-third of all carbon emissions in the nation. It anticipates that through funding carbon-capture initiatives for local governments, it will be able to convincingly show how these technologies cut greenhouse gas emissions while simultaneously generating new employment.
“And what it’s really opening is this completely new way of thinking: ‘What if we didn’t construct with these basic fossil fuels? What if we used the garbage that fossil fuels have produced as a building material? said Deich.
Companies who specialize in carbon capture will be required to submit their technology to the National Energy Technology Laboratory of the Energy Department in order to demonstrate that their goods truly reduce carbon.