00:00 I bet you've heard this term before and that it's an important tool in fighting climate
00:04 change but you might not know exactly what it means.
00:08 Carbon capture.
00:10 I didn't know either.
00:11 I mean, how do you exactly capture CO2 out of the air?
00:16 Turns out this technology not only exists but it's being implemented widely and it's
00:21 only getting better.
00:22 Mei Chia at Honeywell explained it to me.
00:24 [MUSIC]
00:31 We hear a lot about carbon capture technology these days but Mei, what exactly is it?
00:38 Carbon capture is really simple.
00:39 If you think about all of the industry and the plants that you see around you, to get
00:45 energy they burn fossil fuels or any kind of waste material that is burned and combust
00:54 and releases CO2.
00:57 That CO2 currently today goes up a stack and goes back into the environment.
01:02 Carbon capture is catching that CO2 and separating it from everything else that's coming out
01:09 from that stack and producing a pure CO2 stream that can go into utilization.
01:15 So essentially that's what it is.
01:17 It's like a big washing machine that you put on top of your stacks and cleans up that stack
01:22 separating the CO2 from everything else that goes back into the air.
01:27 This would seem to be a really important contributor to fighting climate change, no?
01:31 Climate change is a combination of a couple of different things, right?
01:36 You have changing to renewable power, wind, solar, converting to hydrogen and carbon capture.
01:45 So there are certain industries where they're called hard to abate industries such as steel,
01:51 power and cement where the lowest cost way of decarbonizing that particular industry
01:59 is carbon capture.
02:00 And how advanced is the carbon capture technology that we have today?
02:05 How easy is it to capture carbon?
02:08 So the technologies going into capturing CO2 are actually technologies that we've used
02:12 for many, many years.
02:14 Solvent technologies or cryogenic technologies.
02:17 It is just taking those technologies from where we were using it in the past and putting
02:24 it now to the back end of the plant and capturing CO2 with it.
02:28 Carbon capture can be expensive.
02:30 And what I keep thinking is, well, who's going to pay to just capture carbon and sequester
02:36 it somewhere?
02:37 So how is the economy of carbon capture supposed to work so that we're doing it and we're
02:44 actually pulling that CO2 out of the atmosphere?
02:47 So in countries like the US, there is something called the IRA, where there is a tax credit.
02:54 Those tax credits are designed so that they will cover the cost of CO2 capture.
03:03 In addition to that, the products that we have as consumers, we will want those products
03:09 to be as low carbon as possible.
03:12 In order to get to that place, you have to have a process within industry that's slowly
03:18 reducing the carbon content of everything that's produced over time.
03:23 May, entrepreneurs hear about new technologies and they always think, where are the opportunities
03:30 for me?
03:31 Where could maybe the next great business be built?
03:33 Are there a lot of entrepreneurial opportunities inside the world of carbon capture?
03:38 The main driver there is to keep reducing that cost of capture.
03:43 So as much as we can innovate and drive novel ideas, novel material, smaller sizes, and
03:51 reduce that cost of capture, there will be that opportunity for entrepreneurship within
03:58 that space.
03:59 It's taking a big problem like decarbonizing a power plant, but applying that to smaller
04:06 and smaller industries.
04:08 So not just the huge gigawatt power plants need to decarbonize, it's everyone along the
04:14 value chain.
04:15 So that sounds like amazing opportunities because there is so much need for this technology,
04:21 but also for ways to make it more efficient.
04:24 And making it more standardized, right?
04:27 If you have a current solution in industry that doesn't have a decarbonization bolt on,
04:33 what we think will happen going forward is that anything new will come out with carbon
04:39 capture built into it.
04:42 Because that's the only way that we would actually achieve the ambitions that we've
04:46 set out in terms of our net zero profit.
04:48 I'm curious what you see for the future here.
04:51 So obviously as time goes on and this technology becomes more widely adopted, we expect costs
04:58 to go down.
05:00 And then what?
05:01 What is the future in 5, 10, 20 years look like as we're thinking about carbon capture?
05:06 It becomes something that is built into any product that you bring out to the marketplace.
05:13 It's like if you're thinking of building something new, it is status quo that carbon
05:19 capture or fueling by hydrogen would be the pathway that you choose.
05:26 So it becomes your day to day.
05:27 It's no more something novel.
05:29 It's just a must have.
05:31 Well, thanks, May.
05:32 This is so interesting and really exciting to see how this technology is bringing us
05:36 into a more sustainable future.
05:37 Thanks, Jason.
05:38 Thanks, Jen.
05:39 Thanks.
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