I met a fellow called Tim Kruger this week, who was keen to tell me about his idea for a process to suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. (NB: Kruger and I both used to work for Shell, and Shell has also provided some seed money to him.)

Here’s the thinking:

    * First, you heat limestone to a very high temperature, until it breaks down into lime and carbon dioxide.
* Then you put the lime into the sea, where it reacts with carbon dioxide dissolved in the seawater.

The important point is that when you put lime into seawater it absorbs almost twice as much carbon dioxide as is produced by the breaking down of the limestone in the first place.

This has the effect of reducing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It also helps to prevent ocean acidification, another problem caused by the increase in the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

If done on a large enough scale it would be possible to reduce carbon dioxide levels back to what they were before the Industrial Revolution.

Apparently, the pure CO2 produced in stage 1 is potentially a useful product - unlike the emissions from burning fossil fuels. And although the process is hugely energy-intensive, Kruger hopes to use “stranded energy” - flared natural gas, solar energy in desert regions, and other situations where energy is available but too far from civilisation to be much use.

Will it work? My natural scepticism says not: too many weak links in the chain. But it’s not absolutely impossible.

Why am I mentioning it? Two reasons:

1) It is always worth remembering that CO2 emission-reduction is not the only possible way to deal with climate change. This is a problem that will play out over the next century, and over the next century, our technology is likely to advance along the way. (But not necessarily in a helpful direction, unless we have a credible price on carbon emissions.)

2) I’m also intrigued by Kruger’s “anti-patent” space. He’s trying to mimic the open source software model for a non-software project. Reckon that part of the idea might work and/or catch on? I’ve no idea.

Other nutty-sounding methods for taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere are here.

July 25, 2008 8:21am in Grown up economics, Web/Tech | Comment