Researchers at Columbia University are going to raise a new debate for sure. Whether synthetic trees are better or the natural ones as far as carbon capture goes. They’re, in fact, working on a “synthetic tree” that will be 1000 times faster in capturing CO2 from atmosphere and will collect 90,000 tons of carbon a year. The demo units are actually capable of converting CO2 into liquid for easy storage via the plastic leaves.
synthetic tree
It’s real science, no paranoid fancy:
Is it “a scientific flight of fancy”, as CNN cunningly asks, or a concrete, realizable concept? Professor Klaus Lackner, Ewing-Worzel Professor of Geophysics in the Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering at Columbia University, says:
Each unit would take out a ton of CO2 a day — which would be the amount of CO2 produced by 20 average automobiles in the U.S.A. And the cost of each unit would be about the cost of a Toyota. So that would mean if you added a five percent surcharge on automobile purchases that money could go to building units to remove the CO2 those vehicles are going to create.
So, these fakes are worth planting, $30,000 apiece, to make along the highways and on rooftops where they could serve dual purpose of storage and decor as well.
Image Source: Gizmodo
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