*Bill Gates joins investors in new technology

By Ikenna Omeje, Daniel Terungwa

Orca in Iceland is able to capture the equivalent of the annual emissions made by 790 cars. Image: Climeworks

From the melting ice in the Antarctica region to rising sea levels, flooding, and desertification in various parts of the world, we are all victims of the negative impact of climate change.

 

Reducing global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to net zero by 2050 is consistent with efforts to limit the long-term increase in average global temperatures to 1.5˚C and international institutions have lent their voices to this cause. 

 

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), “The energy sector is the source of around three-quarters of greenhouse gas emissions today and holds the key to averting the worst effects of climate change, perhaps the greatest challenge humankind has faced.” 

 

However, inclusive energy transition is key as the 2050 net-zero goal gathers momentum, to ensure that no country is left behind. And Carbon Capture Utilisation, Storage technology will play a big role in this regard.

 

 

Africa’s biggest fear

Though energy transition intends to make the earth more habitable and conducive, it is the biggest fear of most African oil producing countries. The global energy transition is expected to have profound effects on Africa’s economy. This is because nearly 50 percent of sub-Saharan Africa’s export value is composed of fossil fuels.

 

According to the United Nations fact check on climate change, Africa is the continent most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. It noted that the continent is already experiencing temperature increases of approximately 0.7°C, and with predictions that temperatures will rise further, it said that Africa is facing a wide range of impacts, including increased drought and floods. It projected that in the near future, climate change will contribute to decreases in food production, floods and inundation of the continent’s coastal zones and deltas, spread of waterborne diseases and risk of malaria, in addition to changes in natural ecosystems and loss of biodiversity.

Muhammadu Buhari

“Africa is not a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions. Africa accounts for only 2–3 per cent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions from energy and industrial sources. According to the World Resources Institute, Africa’s per capita emissions of carbon dioxide in the year 2000 were 0.8 metric tons per person, compared with a global figure of 3.9 tons per person. Nevertheless, African countries can and are pursuing win-win policies that can minimize their greenhouse emissions while tackling urban pollution (with its high health costs) and introducing solar energy and other innovative and cost-effective technologies,” the United Nations said.

 

Africa is making more finds in oil and gas, hence making it imperative for African oil profucers to take their destinies into their own hands and pursue the development of local capacities to operate the oil industry successfully and use energy to fuel the national, sub-regional or continental economies. Utilisation of its hydrocarbon seen by analysts as the best approach the continent has to address the issues of poverty, epileptic power supply, and drive   infrastructural development and build stronger economy. This  makes it critical that an inclusive energy transition goal is adopted.

 

 

Game-changing carbon capture technology 

University of Delaware researchers recently achieved a milestone that could bring more environmentally friendly fuel cells closer to commercialization.

 

The University Engineers demonstrated a way to effectively capture 99 percent of carbon dioxide from air using a novel electrochemical system powered by hydrogen. The research team, led by UD Professor Yushan Yan, reported their method in Nature Energy recently.

 

Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) or carbon capture and sequestration is the process of Capturing Carbon dioxide (CO2) before it enters the atmosphere,  transporting it, and storing it (carbon sequestration) for centuries or millennia. Usually the CO2 is captured from large point sources, such as coal-fired power plant,  a chemical plant or biomass power plant, and then stored in an underground geological formation. The aim is to prevent the release of CO2 from heavy industry with the intent of mitigating the effects of climate change.

 

Fuel cells work by converting fuel chemical energy directly into electricity. They can be used in transportation for things like hybrid or zero-emission vehicles.

 

Yan, Henry Belin du Pont Chair of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, has been working for some time to improve Hydroxide Exchange Membrane (HEM) fuel cells, an economical and environmentally friendly alternative to traditional acid-based fuel cells used today.

 

But HEM fuel cells have a shortcoming that has kept them off the road, they are extremely sensitive to carbon dioxide in the air. 

 

Essentially, the carbon dioxide makes it hard for a HEM fuel cell to breathe. This defect quickly reduces the fuel cell’s performance and efficiency by up to 20%, rendering the fuel cell no better than a gasoline engine. Yan’s research group has been searching for a workaround for this carbon dioxide conundrum for over 15 years.

 

The UD research team’s spiral wound module takes in hydrogen and air through two separate inlets and emits carbon dioxide and carbon dioxide-free air after passing through two large-area, catalyst-coated shorted membranes. 

 

According to an assistant professor for research in chemical and biomolecular engineering and paper co-author, Brian Setzler, the researchers realized this disadvantage might actually be a solution — for carbon dioxide removal.

 

“Once we dug into the mechanism, we realized the fuel cells were capturing just about every bit of carbon dioxide that came into them, and they were really good at separating it to the other side,” 

 

While this isn’t good for the fuel cell, the team knew if they could leverage this built-in “self-purging” process in a separate device upstream from the fuel cell stack, they could turn it into a carbon dioxide separator.

 

“It turns out our approach is very effective. We can capture 99% of the carbon dioxide out of the air in one pass if we have the right design and right configuration,” said Yan.

 

 

How it was done

The team found a way to embed the power source for the electrochemical technology inside the separation membrane. The approach involved internally short-circuiting the device.

 

“It’s risky, but we managed to control this short-circuited fuel cell by hydrogen. And by using this internal electrically shorted membrane, we were able to get rid of the bulky components, such as bipolar plates, current collectors or any electrical wires typically found in a fuel cell stack,” said Lin Shi, a doctoral candidate in the Yan group and the paper’s lead author.

 

Now, the research team had an electrochemical device that looked like a normal filtration membrane made for separating out gasses, but with the capability to continuously pick up minute amounts of carbon dioxide from the air like a more complicated electrochemical system.

 

In effect, embedding the device’s wires inside the membrane created a short-cut that made it easier for the carbon dioxide particles to travel from one side to the other. It also enabled the team to construct a compact, spiral module with a large surface area in a small volume. In other words, they now have a smaller package capable of filtering greater quantities of air at a time, making it both effective and cost-effective for fuel cell applications. Meanwhile, fewer components mean less cost and, more importantly, provide a way to easily scale up for the market.

 

The research team’s results showed that an electrochemical cell measuring 2 inches by 2 inches could continuously remove about 99% of the carbon dioxide found in air flowing at a rate of approximately two liters per minute. An early prototype spiral device about the size of a 12-ounce soda can is capable of filtering 10 liters of air per minute and scrubbing out 98% of the carbon dioxide, the researchers said.

 

Scaled for an automotive application, the device would be roughly the size of a gallon of milk, Setzer said, but the device could be used to remove carbon dioxide elsewhere, too. For example, the UD-patented technology could enable lighter, more efficient carbon dioxide removal devices in spacecraft or submarines, where ongoing filtration is critical.

 

“We have some ideas for a long-term roadmap that can really help us get there,” said Setzler.

 

According to Shi, since the electrochemical system is powered by hydrogen, as the hydrogen economy develops, this electrochemical device could also be used in airplanes and buildings where air recirculation is desired as an energy-saving measure. Later this month, following his dissertation defense, Shi will join Versogen, a UD spinoff company founded by Yan, to continue advancing research toward sustainable green hydrogen.

 

Increasing investment in new technologies

There is growing interest by billionaires to invest in new technologies that will help curtail carbon emission. Verdox, a startup, has raised $80 million from investors in just less than three years that the company was founded. The company, which its technology captures carbon dioxide directly from the air has attracted investment from Bill Gates-led Breakthrough Energy Ventures.

 

According to Bloomberg,   Verdox’s technology is still only operable at lab scale. But Chief Executive Officer Brian Baynes says that a recent breakthrough with the key material used to trap the greenhouse gas has given investors confidence to invest such a large sum at an early stage in the startup’s development.

Bill Gates.

The majority of current technologies use liquid solvents that attract CO₂ like a magnet. When the liquid solvent  captures the gas, it is heated to a temperature that enables the CO₂ to be released. At this stage,  the CO₂ can then be compressed and injected beneath underground for long term storage. However,   these steps consume lots of energy, which contributes to making the technology expensive. This for long has made scaling up of this conventional approach challenging. Taking this into consideration, Verdox has a different approach that it claims to be more efficient and therefore cheaper. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology spinoff has developed a special type of plastic that can selectively pull out CO₂ from a mix of gas — in air or exhaust — when charged with electricity. Once trapped, a change in voltage releases the CO₂. Verdox said its material could cut the total energy used in direct air capture by 70 percent or more. The startup will have to rely on low-carbon electricity to power the process. 

 

OPEC’s position

Mohammed Sanusi Barkindo 

Against outright exit from the use of fossil fuels, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) has been advocating for the adoption of Carbon Capture Utilisation, Storage technologies as part of measures to curtail carbon emissions.

 

In his speech at the Nigeria Oil and Gas Conference and Exhibition, which held in Abuja last year, former OPEC Secretary-General, Mohammad Barkindo noted that oil and gas investments in 2020 dropped by more than 30 percent, occasioned by the impacts of COVID-19 pandemic, even worse than the dramatic declines seen during the 2015-2016 industry downturn.

 

This, he said, portends danger as the energy security risk that would result from too little investment would heavily affect both producers and consumers alike. Oil-producing developing countries, particularly in Africa, would be most impacted, Barkindo explained. This is because history has shown that energy insecurity brings about economic insecurity and geopolitical instability.

 

“Achieving net zero emissions by 2050 is already a great challenge for advanced economies, some of whom have expressed their doubts about the reality of achieving this ambitious goal. And thus, for developing nations, it is even that much more daunting, particularly as they are occupied with ensuring their basic needs are met day in and day out. Each day is a challenge to simply put food on the table and earn a decent living wage,” Barkindo further said.

 

“In terms of scale and timing, the 28-year period from now until 2050 is not adequate to achieve net-zero emissions, considering the scale of investments required, the availability of land, the required massive expansion of the electricity grid and a host of nearly 400 milestones that would need to be reached to achieve the net-zero goal. The last transition took nearly 200 years to cycle through, and now we want to achieve an even more ambitious transition in less than 30 years! This is simply not realistic.

 

“Additionally, a swift transition to clean energy sources would be highly reliant on the steady, robust supply of critical minerals such as copper, cobalt, lithium, nickel, and aluminum, many of which are produced in a geographically centralized area. We must also consider that the amount of mineral material needed to produce energy is higher than with fossil fuels. For example, a typical electric car requires six times the mineral inputs than that required to power a conventional vehicle with fossil fuels, and an onshore wind plant requires nine times more mineral resources than a gas-fired plant of the same capacity. Furthermore, lengthy lead times on mining projects, which can surpass 16 years, could inhibit the sector from responding to increases in demand,” he said.

 

 

Conclusion

Tackling climate change demands a collaborative approach. There must be a balance in trying to cut down carbon emission and addressing the issue of energy poverty in developing countries, which are mostly in Africa. However, investment and adoption of Carbon Capture, Utilisation, Storage technologies can help to curtail carbon emission and address issue of energy poverty. 

 

To achieve a sustainable outcome, policies and views on the energy transition should reflect global energy and economic realities surrounding both oil-producing and consuming nations, said the Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Mele Kyari.

 

In an op-ed titled, “Perspective on Energy Transition” in the Atlantic Council’s “The 2022 Global Energy Agenda”, released recently, Kyari argued that the oil industry is a key contributor to the global economy as it guarantees energy supply to industrialized nations and serves as a source of revenue for countries like Nigeria.

 

He noted that beyond lowering global carbon footprint, the oil industry must also sustain energy security and drive prosperity, particularly in developing countries where rapid population growth remains a concern.

The NNPC boss stated that as a national oil company, the NNPC believes inclusive policy actions that guarantee access to finance and low-carbon technology are key to sustaining global energy security and equitable growth as the world transits to a carbon-neutral economy, adding that its strategy for achieving carbon neutrality is centered around three principles: adoption of low-carbon technology across our operations, deepening natural gas utilization to reduce energy poverty, and investment in clean energy technology and products.

 

The recent energy crisis that was witnessed in Europe in the tail end of 2021 is a reminder that fossil fuel will still be relevant in decades to come. So, instead of total exit from fossil fuel, the goal of policymakers should be on more investment on technologies that will help reduce carbon emission and address energy poverty. This way, it will be a win-win for all.