In view of the recent report on the drop in nutrients in crops, this report from Science Magazine doesn’t seem like such a good idea:
The world’s first commercial plant for capturing carbon dioxide directly from the air opened yesterday, refueling a debate about whether the technology can truly play a significant role in removing greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere.
The Climeworks AG facility near Zurich becomes the first ever to capture CO2 at industrial scale from air and sell it directly to a buyer.
Developers say the plant will capture about 900 tons of CO2 annually — or the approximate level released from 200 cars — and pipe the gas to help grow vegetables.
Unless the veggies are fixing the CO2 in the ground rather than incorporating it into the plants themselves, as indicated in the initial post on this thread, this strikes me as little more than running in place. Of course, maybe they envisage burying the plants after growing them … sorry, no. They will think they can sell them and turn a profit while doing good.
Looks like fixing the environment will be harder than that. This sort of shallow thinking just isn’t going to cut it:
[Christoph Gebald, co-founder and managing director of Climeworks] and Climeworks co-founder Jan Wurzbacher said the CO2 could have a variety of other uses, such as carbonating beverages.
Kimberly Mok on Treehugger.com provides this video.
