“Occidental Petroleum is building what will be the biggest direct air capture plant in the world. “That is the trillion-dollar question in some ways because right now the scale is tiny. How much carbon can these plants take out of the atmosphere? And in the end, you have a stream of pure carbon dioxide.” But you have some sort of chemical reaction that pulls carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and bonds it into a chemical substance, and then you have a series of steps that you take to isolate just the carbon, the carbon dioxide, out of that substance. So it's a lot more challenging from a technological perspective just because the concentration is really low. “The key difference is that this is sucking out carbon dioxide that was previously released into the atmosphere and has dissipated out. “On the other hand, they really emphasize that it shouldn't be used as an excuse to fall further behind.” 3 questions with NPR’s Camila Domonoske “At this point, major groups agree that we will need this technology, essentially because we are so far behind on our climate goals that we can't meet them without having large-scale removal,” she says. But pulling carbon from the air is challenging, so experts warn the world still needs to keep cutting down on emissions, NPR’s Camila Domonoske says. This type of carbon removal uses technology called direct air capture, or DAC.

That’s why some scientists have endorsed carbon-removal projects to pull greenhouse gasses out of the atmosphere. A new report out Wednesday from the Global Carbon Project says carbon dioxide emissions were up this year despite the explosive growth in renewables and electric vehicles. Facebook Email A new report out Wednesday from the group Global Carbon Project says carbon dioxide emissions were up 1.1% in 2023.įind out more about our Reverse Course series here.Īt the United Nations climate summit in Dubai, more than 100 countries support a plan to triple renewable energy by 2030.īut it won’t be enough to fix the climate crisis.

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