CarbonGood is designed to buy us that time by converting fossil emissions directly to biomass or something more useful.
Anywhere, cheaply, simply, cleanly
HCCAS made semi-finalist in ClimateCoLab 2014...
AND...
HCCAS - now CarbonGood - was asked back by MIT to Solve 2016, making Finalist
My presentation to MIT at SOLVE 2016 is on YouTube, here.
HCCAS Ltd is proud to partner with Ecocity Builders. Let's make the world a better place.
Why do we need CarbonGood?
In 2022 global CO2 emissions hit a new record, reaching over 38.6 Gt. Emissions from coal made up 15.5 Gt - 40% - of that.
On the upside, coal emitters are mainly static so the logistics for carbon capture are straightforward.
On the downside, we
currently have no carbon capture solutions that can be rolled out
anywhere near fast enough, or at scale enough, to even begin to slow -
never mind reduce - coal emissions.
Conventional Carbon Capture & Storage - CCS - needs the right (rare) geology and large complex infrastructure. It's feasible in very few places, is costly to build and complex operate, and ultimately just hands our problem on to our kids to deal with. They'll be so grateful...
CCS also needs the CO2 separated from the bulk emissions >> more cost, complexity and energy.
Plus, conventional CCS needs lots of water - which global warming & drought makes scarcer...
Conventional CCS is a poor fit for the vast majority of emitters.
Other technologies are discussed below, but - as witnessed by the fact
that CO2 emissions continue to grow, fast, every year, none can yet do
what's needed.
CarbonGood instead proposes simple, cheap, flexible, scalable, failsafe, ethical carbon capture ANYWHERE as biomass or food. Without needing CO2 separation. Or much water.
Learn about what CarbonGood is and how it works
CarbonGood overview
Hydroponic Carbon Capture Anywhere, Simply - CarbonGood - combines simple current technology to convert CO2 directly - without separation - to biomass or even food, at the same time generating oxygen. The biomass has a myriad of useful applications, whether in industrial or other economies.
CarbonGood is:
- simple
- cost-effective
- failsafe
- clean
- rapidly deliverable
- rapidly deployable
- totally flexible
- totally scalable
- totally people-friendly, sustainable & ethical, solving our problem in our time - not leaving it for our children.
CarbonGood can be readily and quickly retrofitted to ANY fossil-fuelled infrastructure to deliver simple, cost-effective CCS/U and allowing that infrastructure to operate until it can be decarbonized or substituted.
CarbonGood can also operate as Direct Air Capture, less effectively than on a CO2 emitter but still offering good capture.
CarbonGood could even help deliver the Holy Grail of negative carbon, as the go-anywhere low-cost CCS needed for BECCS.
BONUS GIFT - FREE LAND!
CarbonGood doesn't need fertile soil, a sunny aspect, flat ground, the right rainfall, or much else. It doesn't need a nice neighborhood with good shops and schools that's handy for the airport.
And it's so simple and failsafe it doesn't need skilled support.
That makes CarbonGood ideal for arid or brownfield site that's unusable for agriculture and unsuitable for people, releasing greenfield so we can stop cutting down forest and losing biodiversity.
CarbonGood can use land up to 80x more efficiently than conventional open-field biomass production.
Best of all, CarbonGood works WITH our Earth's systems - not against them. We're just doing what nature does - but MUCH faster.Why capture CO2 at the emitter?
Because once
CO2 is out of the stack, it's gone. Earth's atmosphere is 11 km high, and CO2 diffuses right through. Far better to capture it at the much-higher concentrations found in emitter flue gases.
However, CarbonGood can also operate effectively as Direct Air Capture,
Playing fair: CarbonGood and emerging economies
Emerging economies around the world are asking how it can be fair that they're being asked to delay their own development to combat global warming that someone else has caused. Most of the man-made CO2 in our atmosphere came from the developed world, and continues to do so.
For millions in these economies too, the choice between climate action or feeding family is no choice at all.
Obtaining buy-in and action from these economies needs carbon reduction that works for them to improve their lives today - not something that offers no tangible benefit for decades and is about fixing someone else's problem, all on some vague promise that while things will still get worse, they might - hopefully - be a bit less worse at some vague point in the future.
CarbonGood instead offers these economies the means to convert their emissions directly and locally into high-value product they can use themselves to improve their agriculture, feed their people and raise their incomes. And because CarbonGood is so simple it can be readily understood, is transparent enough to trust, and is ethical enough to respect and encourage buy-in.
On top of which, reducing dependence on slash-&-burn agriculture keeps more of Earth's green lungs. And down the road, because well-nourished populations learn better, we're improving future lives too.
CarbonGood is the only carbon capture solution that can do all this.
Learn about CarbonGood:
Too good to be true?
We don't think so.
The basic concept is already in widespread use - many commercial greenhouses burn fuel to MAKE CO2,
which is taken up by the biomass to increase yield by 50%.
Turning that on its head, 50% more biomass has converted 50% more carbon into cellulose.
Cellulose doesn't lock-up carbon - the carbon is released again when the biomass is consumed or decays.
BUT - there is another way.
Hold on... isn't this just an excuse to keep on burning fossil fuels?
What about decarbonizing?
CarbonGood simply provides a way to buy us the TIME to decarbonize or substitute to allow essential infrastructure to operate until we've fixed it.
Decarbonizing is essential - to keep the one Earth we have, we must stop burning fossil fuels.
But, we can't do that overnight without crucifying our civilization and peoples.
Fossil fuel is so integral to our lives that we need time to work our way out of it.
CarbonGood simply provides the time that we need. Cleanly, economically, ethically and cost-effectively.
And when we no longer need CarbonGood on an emitter, we just dismantle it - with minimal cost and effort - and re-use or re-cycle it, as described on the Design page.
What about "negative carbon" then?
CarbonGood can't make a fossil-fuelled emitter negative carbon - doing so would need it to consume more CO2 than the emitter produced, which is impossible. But it could make the area negative carbon (and BECCS with CarbonGood may in fact offer true negative-carbon).
The area around us has its own natural carbon sink in the form of trees, shrubs and other biomass. That sink has a maximum uptake rate - as long as your emitter's carbon load exceeds that rate (net positive carbon) total emissions rise cumulatively.
However, by reducing the emitter load below this uptake rate, then to maintain biomass growth the sink starts absorbing additional carbon from the atmosphere - the area becomes carbon-negative.