American Airlines has signed an agreement to store 10,000 tons of carbon dioxide underground in the future. It's part of the airline's plan to limit the pollution that contributes to climate change and marks the first major deal for Bill Gates-backed startup Graphyte, which is developing cutting-edge technology to tackle the problem.
Similar startups are selling services to big brands that want to reduce some of the planet-heating waste gases they pump into the atmosphere. These companies are developing technology to filter carbon dioxide from air or seawater - devices that are expensive and cannot yet be scaled up enough to have a significant impact on carbon emissions.
Graphyte is unique in that it relies on a deceptively simple process to permanently store carbon underground, making its strategy more affordable than its competitors. With a giant like American Airlines as its first customer, Graphyte has a chance to prove whether its technology can overcome the challenges faced by other carbon credit programs.
Graphyte claims it can capture carbon for as low as $100 per ton. By comparison, the largest CO2 removal plants currently cost around $600 per ton to capture CO2 for companies such as Microsoft, Stripe and Shopify. Consider that U.S. airlines produced the equivalent of 49 million tons of carbon dioxide in 2022, and you can see how carbon removal costs can inflate.
Industry insiders typically target $100 per ton to make carbon removal technology affordable enough to achieve scale. How does Graphyte achieve this goal? The company says its energy consumption is significantly lower than its competitors. Without sufficient clean energy, running machines that suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere or oceans often requires large amounts of electricity, which not only drives up costs but even limits the impact of these machines on improving the climate.
Graphyte has a completely different strategy, which it calls carbon casting. Essentially, it's a way to mummify plant matter - preventing it from decaying, which would otherwise release the carbon dioxide the plant absorbed through photosynthesis while it was alive. The company starts by collecting biomass, in this case waste from agriculture and wood production. The plant material is then dried to remove moisture and microorganisms and prevent decay. The biomass is then tightly packed into bricks made of the material and encased in what Graphyte calls "an environmentally safe, impermeable barrier to ensure decomposition cannot restart." By burying the bricks in the ground, Graphyte says it can store the carbon dioxide absorbed by the plants over their lifetime for a thousand years.
American Airlines will conduct the first commercial application of this approach at Graphyte's facility in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. The company also received financial support from Gates' climate investment company Breakthrough Energy Ventures.
According to the agreement, Graphyte will capture and store 10,000 tons of carbon for American Airlines by 2025, and will receive corresponding carbon emission reduction credits for every ton of carbon removed. The credits are similar to carbon offsets tied to forest or tree-planting programs, which have been criticized for failing to actually reduce greenhouse gas pollution. Emerging credit markets for methods of removing CO2, such as carbon casting, must demonstrate they can do the accounting correctly. In other words, they must prove that the new project actually permanently captures carbon dioxide that would otherwise enter the atmosphere.
Furthermore, there is no benefit to a company solely relying on capturing carbon dioxide to combat climate change. Even at $100 per ton, trying to capture or offset tens of millions of tons of CO2 pollution each year is prohibitively expensive. And scientific research clearly shows that means such as decarbonization are only complementary to a real solution to climate change: starting with reducing fossil fuels and switching to clean energy to prevent pollution. U.S. airlines are also working to transition to sustainable aviation fuels and even reduce aircraft tailfins that contribute to global warming.
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