Analyses of the Opportunities and Barriers associated with Electrochemical-Driven Decarbonization

The Climate Crisis has already caused increases in the occurrence of major weather events, such as heat waves, wildfires, and sea level rise worldwide. With less than three months left, 2023 is on track to be the hottest year in a 174-year record. 

The emission of carbon into the Earth’s atmosphere is driving this change and in 2022 CO₂ emissions reached an all-time-high of more than 36.8 Gt-CO₂. That is the equivalent of 368,000 fully loaded U.S. aircraft carriers, or put another way, 1 Gt is roughly twice the mass of all humans on the planet. In 2022 the world is further away from net-zero emissions than we have ever been before. 

In order to effectively address the climate crisis, we cannot rely solely on a transition to clean and renewable energy sources and reduction of carbon emissions, we are going to need effective methods to remove the carbon we have already put into the atmosphere to mitigate the increasing frequency of extreme weather events. The technologies need to achieve this are still emerging, and there are many aspects that are not fully understood. Two RASEI Fellows, Bri-Mathias Hodge and Wilson Smith have, over the past two years, been part of a series of studies that have applied rigorous analysis and modeling approaches to provide a thorough assessment of decarbonization and carbon capture technologies that outline the barriers, and opportunities, of a circular economy for carbon.

These studies have explored a series of different perspectives on how electrification and the electrochemical reduction of carbon dioxide can impact different sectors in our efforts to accelerate decarbonization. The scope of these studies has been broad, exploring impacts on the transport sector, chemical (this study also brought in RASEI Fellow Kyri Baker as a collaborator), and industrial complexes. This includes everything from more efficient and direct methods for heating, to replacing the carbon building blocks we pull out of the ground in the form of oil and gas with ones we can pull out of the atmosphere. 

The most recent article in this series, which was published this month in the journal Energy & Environmental Sciences, revolves around the use of direct air carbon dioxide capture (DACC), powered by renewable electricity, to generate syngas, an essential industrial feedstock for the production of fuels, plastics, advanced materials, and medicines. The electrochemical carbon dioxide reduction approach offers a more energy efficient strategy that can produce this valuable commodity while reducing the amount of carbon in our atmosphere.