“The level of CO2 in the atmosphere is currently so high that if we keep emitting greenhouse gases, we will face floods and extreme storms in the future.” This was supported by Professor in climate change Sebastian Mernild, Bergen.
But which technologies do we have available to prevent such disasters? “We have two options; either to clean our atmosphere or to help the cement, steel, and power sectors reduce their emissions” Philip Fosbøl stresses.
“CO2 emission is like waste water. We need to clean it before it is discharged into the ocean. We don’t want to pollute our seas. The same way, we need to clean CO2 out of industrial gas sources instead of emitting it into the atmosphere” he continues. “We do have technologies which can clean the atmosphere” he says, but do we want Geo-Engineering which manipulates our environment?
“We will need to phase out fossil fuels completely in the long run, and we can use old gas reservoirs for storing CO2” Philip Fosbøl explains, adding: “Eventually we probably need both industrial cleaning and atmospheric cleaning to reach negative CO2 emissions, which is necessary to preserve our environment”.
So why is this not already done? Philip Fosbøl answers: “There are two obstacles: the industry needs an economic driver, which could be a truly global CO2-tax, and we need our politicians to act. Currently atmospheric cleaning is a technology which still requires a lot of development. Therefore it is expensive.”
Philip Fosbøl sends a clear message to the politicians: “In Denmark we have taken the step away from coal over to biomass. We can reach negative emissions by using CCS on biomass combustion. But are our politicians prepared to make a similar investment in negative emissions by applying CCS on biomass power production?”.
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