The carbon casting process condenses the plant matter into 50 times its original density, easing transportation and underground storage requirements. The company plans to source raw materials from timber and agricultural operations that generate millions of tons of unused biomass yearly. Graphyte’s carbon casting feedstock is waste plant matter diverted from decomposition, avoiding competition with food production or land use. Biomass for energy production with carbon capture at $100-$200 per ton is more affordable but relies on unsustainable biomass supplies that preclude scaling beyond hundreds of millions of tons per year. Startups working on direct air capture, like Carbon Engineering and Climeworks, have raised hundreds of millions in investment, but costs remain prohibitive. Direct air capture, which uses giant machines to separate CO2 from ambient air, costs $600-$1200 per ton. Rightly so, Gates has been outspoken about carbon removal technology’s critical importance in addressing climate change.Īt $100 per ton, Graphyte’s carbon casting approach reaches a cost target that could enable the large-scale carbon storage required. The investment firm was started by Bill Gates and a coalition of private investors to fund transformational energy breakthroughs. “We’ve bet the future of our planet on our ability to remove CO2 from the air,” Chris Rivest, a partner at Breakthrough Energy Ventures told the Washington Post. Most scenarios limiting warming to 1.5☌ involve massive scaling of carbon removal alongside rapid emissions cuts. Some sectors like aviation, steel and cement are extremely difficult to fully decarbonize with renewable energy. Projections by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change consistently show the need to remove 5-10 gigatons of CO2 yearly by mid-century, around 12-25% of current emissions. This is a reverse-extraction of sorts, interring carbon underground rather than exhuming fossil fuels.Ĭarbon removal is considered essential to supplement emissions reductions and decarbonize the global economy. Devoid of microbes that cause decomposition, the blocks can remain intact for centuries without releasing their stored CO2. The dried, compressed plant waste contains stable carbon extracted from the atmosphere by natural photosynthesis. Graphyte’s carbon casting process compresses plant matter like wood chips and rice hulls into solid blocks, wrapping them in an impermeable barrier before burial underground. If Graphyte can scale up effectively, its natural method of capturing and storing carbon could play a pivotal role in reaching global net zero emissions. Carbon casting costs around $100 per ton of CO2 removed, a long sought-after milestone for affordable carbon removal technology. The startup, incubated by Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures, revealed a process for turning plant waste into carbon-storing blocks that can be buried underground for thousands of years. It’s crucial to understand what getting there will cost.Reading Time: 3 minutes Bill Gates-backed Graphyte is scaling up its carbon casting process to make solid blocks from waste plant material.Ī new company called Graphyte says it has developed a startlingly simple and inexpensive process it calls carbon casting to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Ultimately, we need that premium to be so low that everyone everywhere can choose the clean alternative. Moving our immense energy economy to net-zero solutions will cost something-but with the right policies and focus, we can lower the Green Premium. But the regular burger doesn’t reflect the true cost of emissions generated in its production (usually in the form of methane released by livestock.) The Green Premium for a zero-carbon burger is the difference in cost between the two, or $1.97. Right now, clean solutions are usually more expensive than high-emissions ones, in part because we don’t factor the true economic and environmental costs of existing options like fossil fuels into the price we pay for them.įor instance: The average retail price of ground beef is $3.79 per pound, while a plant-based burger is $5.76 per pound. The Green Premium is the additional cost of choosing a clean technology over one that emits more greenhouse gases. But to figure out what to do first, we use a calculation our founder, Bill Gates, calls the Green Premium. The Five Grand Challenges tell us where we need to act.
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