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The Quest to Trap Carbon in Stone--and Beat Climate Change

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Vince Beiser

Backchannel
12.28.2021 06:00 AM

The Quest to Trap Carbon in Stone--and Beat Climate Change

On a barren lava plateau in Iceland, a new facility is sucking in air
and stashing the carbon dioxide in rock. The next step: Build 10,000
more.

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    .

Orca Plant
Climeworks' direct air capture plant, dubbed Orca, scrubs 4,000 tons
of carbon per year from the air and is the largest test of the
technology to date. Photograph: Tanya Houghton

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It was undoubtedly the most august gathering ever convened on the
uninhabited lava plains of Hellisheidi, Iceland. Some 200 guests were
seated in the modernist three-story visitors' center of a geothermal
power plant--the country's prime minister and an ex-president,
journalists from New York and Paris, financiers from London and
Geneva, and researchers and policy wonks from around the world.
Floor-to-ceiling windows looked out on miles of moss-carpeted rock,
luminously green in the September morning sunlight. Transmission
towers marched away to the horizon, carrying energy from the power
plant to the capital, Reykjavik, half an hour's drive away.

Vince Beiser (@vincelb) is the author of The World in a Grain: The
Story of Sand and How it Transformed Civilization. His last feature
for WIRED, in issue 29.03, was about a $500 billion biofuel scam.
Contributor

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Topicslongreadsenvironmentclimate changecarbon emissions
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