The company said it wants to tap into underground shale gas resources in the region, using the gas as fuel to generate carbon-free electricity. It's then re-pressurized and stored as a liquid until a truck removes it.A company that wants to use carbon dioxide to drill for natural gas in the Southern Tier has been met with pushback from environmental activists who argue the company is exploiting a loophole in New York’s ban on fracking.Īround 6,500 landowners in Broome, Tioga and Chemung counties have received letters from Southern Tier Solutions. Once the remaining gases (mostly nitrogen and oxygen) are removed, the carbon dioxide comes back out. The remaining gas is then pressurized and exposed to a solid material that selectively retains the CO 2. It diverts exhaust gases from these systems to a cooler and dehumidifier that pulls out the water. The CarbonQuest's system is designed to work with any hardware that burns natural gas, which can include boilers and combined heat and power systems. "While we're waiting on this journey for 100 percent renewables, the conversion of electrification, we can take buildings and make a significant impact in their carbon footprint right away," Shane Johnson, the company's CEO, told Ars. CarbonQuest's business is based on performing that service. ![]() The fines are agnostic about how emissions were reduced, however, allowing for the continued use of recent hardware as long as enough of its carbon is kept from reaching the atmosphere. And those are decades that New York City's climate goals will not allow.Īs a result, the city passed Local Law 97, which sets emissions-based fines starting next year and ramping up over time. While the long-term goal would be to switch everything to electric so emissions will go down with grid improvements, it will take many decades for some of this equipment to reach its end of life. So while dense urban housing has lower per-capita emissions, individual sources in New York remain considerable and difficult to decarbonize quickly. There are also steam systems that boil water at a central facility and distribute it through pipes to many buildings. These co-gen plants can be quite large if they service one of the city's college campuses or major hospitals. All of the major buildings need significant hardware to provide heat and hot water, and many use co-gen facilities that generate on-site electricity and use the waste heat for these purposes. Carbon cityīecause of its vast number of large buildings, New York City has a dizzying variety of fossil fuel-burning hardware tucked away in basements or hidden behind facades. CarbonQuest, the company that installed it, already has commitments from several more buildings, and New York City's law is structured so that the inducement to install similar systems will grow over time. ![]() Thanks to a local law, it's likely to be the first of many. ![]() And the Biden administration recently announced its intention to fund several large capture facilities.īut I recently visited a very different carbon-capture facility, one that's small enough to occupy the equivalent of a handful of parking spaces in the basement of a New York City apartment tower. That situation is beginning to change, though, as some commercial ventures start to either find uses for the carbon dioxide or offer removal as a service for companies with internal emissions goals. That makes developing carbon-capture technology essential, both to bring atmospheric levels down after we overshoot and to offset emissions from any industries we struggle to decarbonize.īut so far, little progress has been made toward carbon capture beyond a limited number of demonstration projects. Global emissions have continued to burn through the carbon budget, meaning each year brings us closer to having put enough CO 2 in the atmosphere that we'll be committed to over 2☌ of warming.
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