As students at the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur, India, Aniruddha Sharma and Prateek Bumb had one obsession: finding a cheaper, more efficient way to capture carbon emissions.
They began working on the problem in 2009, while still at university. The eureka moment came after numerous trials and errors that required restarting the process 16 times.
With no help from the Indian government, Sharma and Bumb tapped private investors. They also won prize money of £3.6 million (US$4.5 million) in a UK competition, giving them access to scientists and academics in the field.
“Carbon capture technology may have the single biggest impact on emissions reduction, but for it to be widely used, it’s very important that the technology be cost-effective” said Sharma, cofounder of Carbon Clean Solutions (CCS), now based in London.
India is the fourth-largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world. As a signatory to the Paris Agreement on climate change, it has committed to ensuring at least 40 percent of its electricity is generated from non-fossil fuel sources by 2030.
However, India — and other nations — also are looking for ways to reduce emissions from burning fossil fuels.
Capturing carbon dioxide produced by power plants is one way to cut those emissions, but while most previous technologies have focused on capturing the emissions and pumping them below ground, CCS’ technique is a capture-and-utilize one.
It uses a patented molecule that captures carbon dioxide from power plant emissions and uses it to make products like baking soda.
The technology can be retrofitted onto existing plants, and is cheaper and more efficient than existing methods, Sharma said.
Worldwide, technology to capture carbon dioxide emissions and store them underground has struggled to find traction.
The UK scrapped plans to spend up to £1 billion to commercialize the technology just days before the Paris climate meeting in 2015.
Nevertheless, countries and companies are still keen.
BHP Billiton Ltd last year gave US$7.4 million to China’s Peking University to develop carbon capture technology.
India offers no subsidies for carbon capture and instead focuses on increasing its “renewables” capacity to cut emissions.
“To encourage innovations like this, we would need more state backing, just as we have seen in the renewables space,” said Aruna Kumarankandath at the Center for Science and Environment in Delhi. “These technologies are hard to develop and scale.”
There is clearly a market: While Sharma and Bumb’s CCS has found takers in Europe, its biggest vote of confidence has come from India.
Tuticorin Alkali Chemicals & Fertilizers Ltd has used the technology at its plant in southern Tamil Nadu since October last year.
At the plant, carbon dioxide is captured from a coal-fired boiler and converted into soda ash, which is used in glass manufacturing, sweeteners and detergents.
The process is projected to save 60,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions a year, a world first, Sharma said.
The cost of capture is about US$30 per tonne — about half the cost of other technologies in the market, he said.
“The next wave of innovation will reduce the cost further, perhaps even by half, to the point where it’s almost equivalent to or less than the emissions tax,” he said. “Then it would make more sense to capture the carbon than to emit it.”
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