In a deal that aims to reduce industrial emissions and convert CO2 into new products for reuse, Veolia and Carbon Clean Solutions (CCSL) have partnered for the large-scale rollout of CCSL’s carbon dioxide separation technology.
The partnership will “help companies lower their carbon footprint in a cost-effective and sustainable manner,” said Aniruddha Sharma, CEO of CCSL, in a statement.
It also improves the “prospects for the circular economy around carbon capture and its use by industry,” said Laurent Auguste, executive vice president innovation & markets at Veolia.
CCSL recently commissioned its flagship project in Tamil Nadu, India, where a coal-fired power plant has become the site of the first industrial installation to re-use all its CO2 emissions. The project will capture 60,000 metric tons of CO2 each year and convert it into soda ash, a chemical compound that is commonly used in glassmaking.
Privately financed, the site captures all the CO2 at a cost of $30 per metric ton, half the cost of existing technology, CCSL says.
While it has yet to take off in the US, carbon capture and reuse proponents say the technology can enable companies to profit from their CO2 emissions, while also reducing air pollution and enabling a circular economy.
Global Thermostat — the company’s technology captures CO2 from the air, as opposed to being attached to a coal-fired power plant — says its plants can be integrated with manufacturing facilities. And once the CO2 has been removed from the surrounding air, it can then be sold to other corporations for use as a power source or feed stock, thus turning pollution into profit.
In an earlier interview, Global Thermostat’s Ben Bronfman said there’s a $1 trillion annual market for CO2, which is used in multiple industrial processes. A different study puts the global carbon fiber reinforced plastic market alone at nearly $28 billion by 2024, growing at an annual rate of 12.5 percent.
“When you take CO2 out of the air and sell it for any of these materials — synthetic fuel, turn it into carbon fiber, sell it to food and beverage companies — we can take it out of the air for less than it costs to sell it,” Bronfman said.
Bronfman wouldn’t say how much a GT plant will cost, but said the technology will cost less than the sale price of carbon.
