Climeworks has just opened the world’s largest direct carbon capture plant. It can suck around 36,000 tons of CO2 from the air each year, burying it underground.
I mean just looking at the amount of concrete in that picture, I get pessimistic. When will this particular site have dug itself out of the carbon “hole” created by its construction?
As for trees: That is really, really hard to measure and even harder to know in advance. Some factors appear to be:
different tree species store different amounts of carbon
tree plantation or actual forest?
prior use of the site (e.g. meadows do store carbon too)
development over time (most trees need to grow a couple years before they start storing significant amounts of carbon)
failure of sites due to being planted in a bad way (e.g. a lot of Chinese Green Wall sites and quick-buck billion tree projects seem to be affected by this)
I mean just looking at the amount of concrete in that picture, I get pessimistic. When will this particular site have dug itself out of the carbon “hole” created by its construction?
As for trees: That is really, really hard to measure and even harder to know in advance. Some factors appear to be: