The 20 Hottest Carbon-Capturing Technologies of 2016

Well, you can’t just capture carbon these days. That’s mundane. You have to use it, in a sustainable and novel way that makes carbon capture more affordable and cycles carbon more effectively through the industrial system.

As LanzaTech’s Jennifer Holmgren observed in a recent article by Peter Forbes in Aeon:

“Carbon is precious. This means we must learn to recycle it. If you can extend its life by reusing it in a fuel, you will keep that equivalent amount of fossil fuel in the ground. There should be no waste. There is no waste in nature.’

Which introduces a new idea into the discussion of waste. By wasting carbon as skyfill, says Holmgren — blasting it into the atmosphere after one use, instead of seeking to recycle — we condemn ourselves to extracting fresh supplies of carbon from their subterranean repositories.

It’s a one-and-done approach to carbon that has poured hundreds of millions of tons of CO2 into our atmosphere, and according to a scientific plurality, triggered a greenhouse climate effect that threatens our way of life.

And, now there’s $20 million on the line, because the first teams have registered in the NRG COSIA Carbon XPRIZE to develop breakthrough technology to help fight climate change through carbon capture and use.

Here, we profile our 20 Hottest Techs in CO2 utilization for fuels, chemicals, solids, intermediates. Now, keep in mind, we’re not declaring who have the best, or winning, technologies — for that, only time will tell. Rather, we’re focusing on companies that have so far achieved the highest degrees of visibility and credibility to date.