Can carbon removal become a trillion-dollar business?

Collector containers at the 'Orca' direct air capture and storage facility, operated by ClimeWorks. (Image: Getty)

Tue, 23 May 2023

“Today we see the birth of a new species,” declared Julio Friedmann, gazing across the bleak landscape. Along with several hundred grandees, the renowned energy technologist had travelled to a remote corner of Texas’ oil patch called Notrees at the end of April at the invitation of 1PointFive, a division of Occidental Petroleum, an American oil firm, and of Carbon Engineering, a Canadian technology startup backed by Bill Gates. The species in question is in some ways akin to a tree – but not the biological sort, now...

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