The cheapest way to permanently sequester carbon involves ... fizzy water

In this episode, Ólafur Teitur Guðnason of Icelandic company
Carbfix discusses his company’s approach to carbon sequestration
by essentially making fizzy water and burying it deep
underground.


(PDF
transcript)


(Active
transcript)


Text transcript:


David Roberts


The idea behind the Icelandic company Carbfix is simple: pack
water full of carbon dioxide (literally carbonate it, like a
SodaStream) and inject it deep underground into Iceland’s porous
basaltic rock. Minerals in the rock dissolve in the water, where
they react with the CO2 to become calcium carbonates.


The carbon effectively becomes rock, which it will remain, for
all intents and purposes, permanently. Or at least thousands and
thousands of years. It is as long-term as carbon sequestration
gets.


The idea dates back to 2006, but pilot injections didn’t begin
until 2013 and it wasn’t until 2016 that a study published in
Science confirmed that 95 percent of the CO2 in the water was
mineralizing within two years — far faster than most had assumed
possible.


Since it started, Carbfix has sequestered almost 100,000 metric
tons of CO2 at its original site, but that is just a drop in the
bucket compared to what it believes is possible. It has plans to
make Iceland a major international carbon-burial hub and to
replicate its technology in other geographies, maybe even in the
shallow ocean.


When I visited the Carbfix operation in October and saw it in
action, I was extremely intrigued and had a million more
questions, so last week I got in touch with Ólafur Teitur
Guðnason, Carbfix’s head of communications, to talk about where
the company gets the CO2 it buries, where it plans to get it in
the future, whether burial can work in other kinds of rocks and
geographies, and exactly how much carbon Iceland can store.


All right, then, with no further ado, Ólafur Teitur Guðnason of
Carbfix. Welcome to Volts. Thank you so much for coming.


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


Thank you so much for having me.


David Roberts


So, Ólafur, I visited you guys when I was out in Iceland a few
weeks ago and was very taken with this idea. And I don't know how
I have been covering this stuff for so long without ever hearing
about it, but it sounds like you guys are sort of on the verge of
expanding. So I think probably a lot more people are going to be
hearing about you soon. So to begin with, for listeners who are
not familiar with your company, I'm going to run through the
process and tell me if I get anything wrong. So you get a source
of water, and we can discuss the source of water more later.


But you get water, you carbonate it more or less like a
SodaStream carbonates water. You pump carbon dioxide into the
water, and then you pump the water deep underground. And this
carbonated water is heavier than normal water, so it tends to
sink down to the bottom of the water table. And as it is sinking,
the carbon dioxide in the water reacts with minerals in the rock
to form calcium carbonates. Basically, the carbon dioxide in the
water gets transformed into a form of rock, where it will then
stay underground as rock for thousands of years. So you've
permanently sequestered the carbon.


Is that more or less an accurate description?


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


It's more than more or less accurate, I think. I'll give you a
ten out of ten.


David Roberts


Excellent. Good. Well, I have so many questions about this, but
the one thing I wanted to start with is the carbonation process
of the water. Is that your intellectual property here? Is that
your sort of main thing that you've pioneered here as a different
way of carbonating water, or is there something special about the
way you carbonate water?


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


Yeah, that's one part of it. There are several elements to what
we feel is proprietary or what we have solved — technology that
we have developed. One thing is the capture of the CO2 emissions
from the geothermal power plant, where we were kind of born as a
research project within the company that runs the geothermal
power plant, as well as universities both in Iceland and the US
and France. So that is one element, yes. The dissolving of the
CO2 with the water is another element, and the third element
would be the way to inject it. So, yeah, there are different
elements to this and at different stages of patenting.


David Roberts


Oh, I didn't realize that you were involved in the capture part
of this. I knew that part of the CO2 that you're burying is
coming from the geothermal plant, but I had kind of thought that
was separate. Is this something that you're going to export if
you try to export this model to other places or other countries?
Is capture part of what you're promising, or are you mostly, do
you think, going to be working with CO2 that someone else
captured?


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


Yes, mostly. Capturing is not our core field. It just comes from
the fact that we were born out of this proximity to the
geothermal power plant, so we needed a source of CO2, and we may,
and have and are collaborating with other companies that run
geothermal power plants, so our know-how is of use in that
situation. But we are definitely not primarily a capturing
company. There are other companies that focus on the capture
part, and that has different technologies for different streams
of CO2. So we're not too involved in that. We are mainly and
primarily focused on getting it into the ground and mineralizing
it and storing it.


David Roberts


So then when you carbonate the water, the physics of it, is it
basically the same thing that's going on in a soda stream? Is
there anything fancy going on, or is this just the carbonization
that we're all familiar with?


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


It's not too different, in essence. We have a stream of CO2, and
then we shower it with water and pressurize so that it is
completely dissolved. The difference is that we don't have the
bubbles that you have in the soda stream or the soda drinks,
mineral water that you drink, because these bubbles, they mean
that the gas is escaping the fluid, so we don't want it to
escape. So we are putting more of it into the water and making
sure it's completely dissolved so that it doesn't rise back to
the surface. And pressure takes care of that as well, as it
continues to ensure this trapping mechanism underground as well
when the solution gets into the ground.


So solubility trapping, as it's called, is kind of the first
stage of trapping and isolating the CO2 from the surroundings or
from the atmosphere. It's a pretty secure way of trapping CO2.
But then, fairly soon, mineralization comes into play, as well as
the second stage, and even more secure.


David Roberts


You know, when people think about what is basically a geological
process of a gas being transformed into a stable mineral. I think
of geological time frames. But your mineralization process, by
which the CO2 is pulled out of the water and becomes rock,
happens in two years, you say. Two years of the water being
underground, all of the CO2 will be pulled out of it and
mineralized. So how is that happening so fast?


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


Well, you need favorable conditions. You need favorable rock
formations that are highly porous and reactive. It was quite a
surprise when the scientific studies showed the extent and speed
of the mineralization. So that was indeed surprising to the
scientists at the time. A lot of it actually happens even sooner.
So the process starts very soon, within a few weeks. And when
we're talking about within two years, that is when almost all of
it has mineralized. But it doesn't wait for two years, and then
suddenly everything mineralizes, it starts sooner. So it's a very
rapid process. Yeah, and that was a surprising finding, and that
got a lot of attention back in 2016 when the results were
published internationally.


David Roberts


Yeah, right. We should mention that this is not a new thing. You
guys have been doing this for ten years now, have you been — ?


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


Yeah, eleven years. Celebrated ten years of continuous
mineralization last year and counting.


David Roberts


So there's been plenty of testing and monitoring?


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


Absolutely. The idea was born in 2007, and this research
collaboration started designing the way to capture, to dissolve
the CO2 in the water to get it into the ground, drill testing
holes, make mistakes, and so on and so forth. But the first
successful pilot injections took place in 2012, so that was only
five years after the project really started as an idea on paper.
So a fairly quick progress there. And since then, we have
continuously applied this method to sequester emissions from the
geothermal power plant. Now we have also added a second source of
CO2, which is captured from the atmosphere by our partners at
Swiss company Climeworks.


David Roberts


When you say the rock needs to be reactive, what does that mean
exactly? It just needs to contain the minerals with which the CO2
is going to react?


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


Yeah, it has to be rich in those minerals or metals, iron,
magnesium, calcium, that tend to come out of the rock, if we can
say — I'm looking for the right word in English — they get
dissolved, they get into the water, and then react with the CO2
to form these new minerals. So we are really dependent on those
types of sometimes called mafic or ultramafic rocks. We are
working primarily with basalts in Iceland. So it's a young
volcanic rock that contains high levels of these metals, about a
quarter of the weight. So they have the ingredients needed to
form the minerals.


By the way, important to mention that this happens in nature over
geologic timescales. It's one of the reasons why over 99% of all
the carbon on the planet is already underground in rocks. So even
though we have a crisis on our hands, it's less than 1% of the
planet or Earth's carbon that is in the atmosphere and oceans and
biomaterials. So, yeah, we can say it's nature's way, that we
have found a way to accelerate.


David Roberts


And so when this mineralization happens, it becomes rock that is,
for all intents and purposes, permanent. There's nothing that
could reverse that process.


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


Right. There is a debate on what counts as permanent in the
climate debate. Is it 100 years? Is it 1,000 years? Is it 10,000
years? But we are definitely above all of those and into the tens
of thousands of years. So even millions of years.


David Roberts


Interesting. Okay, so it says on your website that you have to
date buried 97,000 metric tons of CO2. So I want to ask a few
questions about the capacity of the land to absorb this. So you
have said, I remember you said it was very striking, and I
remembered it afterwards, when I came to visit that the amount of
porous reactive rock in the Iceland sort of bedrock in and of
itself could store all the CO2 that humans emit. Is that
accurate?


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


Yeah, it's even when we expand on that thought and say all of the
CO2 that would result from burning all remaining fossil fuels on
the planet.


David Roberts


No kidding.


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


And that's Iceland alone. But that is a theoretical figure, not
something that anyone is contemplating.


David Roberts


So theoretically, there's almost no upper limit to the amount of
CO2 you could store in here, but I presume there are practical
limits? So, like, say, in a particular injection well, you're
pumping water down and the CO2 is reacting and becoming a rock
and filling in those holes. The rock is porous, it's full of
holes. The rock is filling in those holes bit by bit. So I
wonder, in a particular injection well, do you reach saturation
in a particular area? Like, is that a limit on your pace here?


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


Well, in the end, we assume we will. But for the decade that we
have been operating the same well, we are not even close to it.
One of the signs would be that the well would become less
receptive to the water flowing in. But that is not happening. So
we don't really know exactly how long one well can last. But we
do know that for the ten years that we have been operating,
admittedly on a fairly small scale, but nevertheless, for a
decade and close to 100,000 tons, we estimated that we have used
less than 0.01% of the capacity of this area where we are
operating.


David Roberts


This particular well, so there's tons more headroom even in this
individual well?


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


Yes, absolutely. The empty space in the rock has such a huge
volume and we are depending on the empty space. In the first
instance, we are depending on it for the permeability of the
rock, for the water to be able to flow through, and then for a
part of this empty space, a small part of it to hold the newly
formed mineral that consists of the former CO2. As a rule of
thumb, if your listeners are interested, a cubic meter of
basaltic rock could hold approximately 100 kg. I'm using the
metric system, excuse me. So 100 kg in a cubic meter as a rule of
thumb.


And it is hard to wrap your head around how many cubic meters of
rock there are underground. When you go deep, when you have a
sizable area, these very quickly amount to huge amounts.


David Roberts


Right. So space for the carbon is not a limiting factor?


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


No.


David Roberts


I'm wondering, as you scale up, if more and more CO2 is coming to
you. I'm trying to figure out what the practical limiting
features are here. Is there at a certain point you max out your
flow, like at a certain point you're going to max out the amount
you can carbonate at a time. Right. There's presumably limits on
the flow of water that you can pump.


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


It depends on the number of wells you have. If you need more
flow, you can add wells. You just need to have a reasonable space
between them because each well is only using so much underground
area. So you can have another one 300ft away or 500ft away or
something like that. So scaling up means really adding more
wells, provided you have the appropriate conditions there as
well. I would say a major limiting factor is the access to CO2
that has been captured.


David Roberts


Right.


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


So the problem is not really storing it, the problem is getting
it in the first place and getting it not only capturing it from
emitters, but then also transporting it to a suitable storage
site.


David Roberts


Your only limiting factor is how much CO2 you can get your hands
on. Practically speaking, there's no limit to the speed and
quantity that you could handle if you can solve the problem of
getting it to you, basically.


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


Yeah. And I would also mention that, of course, we need water for
this process, so there has to be access to water as well.


David Roberts


Yes, I want to ask about that later too, but I want to start with
energy though, because a bunch of people, I was talking about
this on Twitter, this is the first question people have, which is
sort of how much energy are we using to do this? And presumably,
the energy you use to do it needs to be zero carbon, or else
you're just sort of like in a loop of creating carbon to bury
carbon. So this is all premised on zero carbon energy, right?


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


Yes, preferably. Or at least you need to be — well, in Iceland,
we don't really have that challenge. All of the energy is either
geothermal or hydropower. So it is green energy, definitely. But
still there is the question of displacing green energy for the
purpose of carbon capture. And it's a whole debate on that, or at
least some points to be made. But yeah, I mean, how net positive
do you need to be to be justified? That's an open question. But
in our case, the energy is completely sustainable and it is a
very low energy process.


David Roberts


Can you put numbers on that? Like, what do we mean by low energy?


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


It is negligible. I mean, it is running of pumps. Pumping water
doesn't require a lot of energy. So it is really almost invisible
in the big picture.


David Roberts


Theoretically, then even if you are using whatever natural gas
generated electricity to do this, do you think you still might
come out positive just because you're —


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


Oh, definitely.


David Roberts


just because you're not using much energy.


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


Yeah, it's so low compared to the amounts of CO2 that we are
getting rid of, irrespective of the fuel or power source. It
would be vastly net positive. But that's not the full value chain
of course. You need the capturing, you may need the transport.


David Roberts


Yes. Right.


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


And we will maybe come back to that. So we think for our biggest
project that we are preparing — next big project in Iceland as
well — transport will be most likely the major source of
emissions to be then, of course, fully accounted for and deducted
from the benefits that we are claiming to make.


David Roberts


Right. And so right now, you're getting your CO2 that you're
burying from two sources. One is the geothermal power plant,
which I think people think of geothermal as zero carbon. But it's
not really zero carbon, there are —


David Roberts


No, it's not zero. I think it's 1% of a coal fired plant,
approximately, but still —


David Roberts


Enough to capture it. And the other source of CO2, which Volts
listeners will be familiar with, is from Climeworks, this direct
air capture facility just down the road from you. With the big
fans that are pulling air over this absorbent that's pulling the
CO2 out. Presumably they are compressing the CO2 and putting it
in a pipeline that comes to you. Is that how it gets to you?


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


Yeah, they currently get it to us in liquefied form, so
compressed and liquefied. So they break it away from their
filters — I'm not the best one to explain their technology — but
basically it's filters that they then collect it from the filters
and compress it and send it to us.


David Roberts


And how pure of a CO2 stream do you need for your process to
work? Does it need to be super purified, or — is that a limit?


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


Not necessarily from the mineralization perspective, but from
other environmental considerations.


David Roberts


Right.


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


I mean, the European Directive on Geological Storage of CO2
stipulates that you shouldn't dump other things in there along
with the process. So you should have a pure stream of CO2. So I
think that's mainly an environmental consideration that makes
sense generally. But that wouldn't necessarily hurt our
mineralization process too much.


David Roberts


Are there other emitted gases that we don't like that we could
capture and bury and mineralize in this same way, or is this like
a carbon only kind of thing?


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


Hydrogen sulfite is emitted by geothermal power plants, comes
from the ground, just as the CO2 does. And in fact, Carbfix was
born as a twin project of Carbfix and Sulfix to take care of
hydrogen sulfide, which is, you could accurately say that that is
an even bigger threat to the local environment. It's dangerous in
high concentrations and really a harmful gas. So that was among
the key considerations, was to get rid of that as well. And as it
happens, the same process applies.


David Roberts


It works same way.


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


Yeah. So we get rid of the hydrogen sulfide as well, literally
improving the air quality of the vicinity of the geothermal power
plant and co-inject it with the CO2, and the same mineralization
process happens, producing another type of mineral. But —


David Roberts


Oh, interesting.


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


this is specific to geothermal power plants. So we are very much
focusing on CO2.


David Roberts


Let's talk about then getting CO2, because if you're going to
scale this process up to meaningful, sort of globally meaningful
levels, the big limiter is your access to variable CO2. So it's
easy enough to envision how this works in Iceland, where you have
lots of geothermal power plants creating gases that at this point
you're quite familiar with. You know the process. There's
suitable rock nearby. Talk a little bit about the Coda terminal,
because you guys have very big plans to import CO2 from other
places and bury it. So how is that going to work and how is that
going to pencil out in emissions terms?


Because obviously shipping uses energy and produces emissions,
compressing the CO2, et cetera, et cetera. There's energy all
along the chain there. So talk a little bit about how you're
thinking about how you're going to set up a system to import.


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


The big question was where should Carbfix scale up to the megaton
scale, get to a million tons or more, which is, that's the big
milestone that's ahead. Because I should add maybe for context,
just to back up a little bit for half a minute. It's true that
our focus needs to be on eliminating the use of fossil fuels. So
the criticism is often, "well, you're distracting us from that
mission." And it's true, it's a moral hazard to use carbon
capture storage as an excuse to continue with business as usual.
But the fact of the matter is, and the IPCC said that very
clearly in their report last year, we will not reach the climate
goals.


Even if we manage to do really well with the energy transition to
green and renewable power, we will need to capture other
emissions that will remain, that we know will remain. There are
industries that have emissions that have nothing to do with
energy. It's the part of the process of producing cement, steel,
aluminium and so on and so forth, where even if they're powered
by green energy, they still have the emissions, because the
emissions are process emissions. So how do we take care of those
as well?


David Roberts


You could also say that even if we could cut off all emissions to
zero tomorrow, you could argue that there's too much CO2 in the
atmosphere already to be safe. So you need to draw some of that
down, even if you're not emitting anything.


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


Right. So you need carbon capture, both from these hard to abate
industries, which is the reduction of the remaining hard to abate
emissions, and then drawing out of the atmosphere what we know as
carbon removal. So the IPCC says in its report — anyone can look
it up — even in their scenario, they have several pathways of how
we could reach the climate targets. They have a pathway that is
highly dependent on big successes in renewable energy. So it's
called the high renewable pathway. Even under that assumption,
they have calculated that by 2050, the annual amount of carbon
capture storage will have to be 3 billion tons.


David Roberts


So, that even makes looking like the million-ton milestone look
pretty small.


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


The global total today is about 40 million per year. So we need
to go from 40 to 3 billion until 2050. So that's why we can feel,
we can very confidently say we are a necessary complementary
action in addition to other efforts.


David Roberts


So, then it becomes the question of —


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


Where do we scale up, how to move it around? And we decided that
for scaling up and proving that we can do this on a megaton
scale, it would be most feasible to do that in Iceland, where we
are based, where we know the geology, where we know the
legislative framework and so on and so forth.


David Roberts


It does seem like ideal conditions for what you want to do.


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


Yes, it's ideal, both from a geological perspective, resource
perspective, and makes sense, because this is where we are and
where we know best. But then the challenge is, well, we don't
have millions of tons of CO2 in Iceland to inject into the
ground. The total emissions of Iceland, excluding land use, is
about 5.5 million, approximately. That's from cars and planes and
ships and so on. You won't be able to catch that. Industries in
Iceland are emitting a little bit over 2 million tons, I guess.
So even if we could capture all of that, which is not feasible in
the near future, we would not be really utilizing the potential
that we have.


So the idea with this project called Coda terminal is to be a
transport and mineralization hub for mineralization of CO2. And
this concept of a hub is really what is happening now, it seems,
around the world, when it comes to geological storage, at least
you have pockets or individual areas where you can geologically
store CO2, but you need to have a network to get it there.


David Roberts


Right. The big question here is how often do you want to build
the infrastructure to bury carbon, versus building the
infrastructure to carry carbon to the places where that
infrastructure already exists. Which of those is better,
carbon-wise?


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


Yeah, we won't be able to build a mineralization facility next to
every factory or emitter, next to every cement plant, every steel
plant. So that's just not feasible. The conditions are not there.
So in any case, even though transporting to Iceland from Europe
seems excessive, there will always need to be transport for
whatever distances other big projects are looking at storing
beneath the ocean floor in the North Sea that will have to be
transported somehow — ships, pipelines, whatever. So I think
there is a lot more focus on this now. How do we make sure that
we have the infrastructure in terms of the Coda terminal there
will be shipping from Europe.


Of course, it has to get to the ship as well before that. There
are discussions of pipelines. Can you use existing infrastructure
to some extent? Possibly, probably. But you also need some new
ones.


David Roberts


I think they're a little farther along in Europe in terms of CO2
pipelines, than in the US, is my understanding. Like there's an
actual plan there.


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


They are starting to at least look very seriously into it, and
adopting new legislation to make sure that we have the framework
about financing, access and so on and so forth. There is actually
considerable existing infrastructure in the US connected to the
oil industry that is piping CO2 over some distances as well. So
it is a known concept. It's not inventing anything new, really,
but on a larger scale. So the plan for the Coda terminal, is to
be able to receive and mineralize 3 million tons every year as of
2031, when we plan to have reached full capacity.


And some of that will come from Iceland, no doubt. We are
working, collaborating. The Icelandic government and heavy
industries in Iceland are collaborating with us to find ways to
capture and store the emissions. We have several aluminium plants
in Iceland using the green energy that we have a ferrosilicon
plant as well.


David Roberts


In Iceland, you can build one of these next to every factory.


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


Conceivably. Well, one of the plants is in east of Iceland, where
there are actually the least amount of basalts, but at least for
several of them, it is very feasible. And, in fact, the Coda
terminal will be built next to one of these plants. So it will be
fairly straightforward, once the technology is there, to capture
their emissions, to get it to us, because we will be located
right next door, and also there is a harbor there for receiving
ships from elsewhere. But this is definitely needed. The ships.
If we assume that the ships would run on traditional fuels, we
estimate that the emissions of shipping would be maybe
approximately 7% of the CO2 that's being transported for storage.


David Roberts


So significant, but not enough to wipe out the value, right?


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


Definitely not. But then, of course, as soon as greener fuels
become available for the shipping, those will be employed
immediately as they become available.


David Roberts


So ideally, these would be zero carbon ships carrying this stuff
from Europe to you.


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


Yeah. Or at least much lower than traditional fuels.


David Roberts


Right. Right. And this Coda terminal, is this a gleam in your
eye? Are there plans, is there money set aside?How real is this
plan for this big terminal?


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


It's very real. It last year got funding from the European
Innovation Fund for €115 million, give or take a third of the
total cost. So it was deemed by the European Innovation Fund to
be realistic, and the technological readiness level, as they say,
is very high. As we have been operating this technology already,
we're not inventing new things, we're scaling up what we already
know. So the plans are in full motion to secure environmental
impact assessments, permits, land and so forth and all moving
along quite nicely.


David Roberts


Is the idea that Carbfix would sort of have direct contracts with
big emitters in Europe, sort of direct contracts to off-take
their CO2?


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


Yes. The business case is, in part, and we could say probably the
biggest part of the business case is the fact that Europe has a
cap on emissions from industries. So the European trading,
emission trading system, ETS, is the driver for companies to take
care of their emissions. So those who know how the system works
will know that you get a certain amount of free allowances, and
it's a total cap on the continent. The free allowances are
reduced gradually, year on year, creating a kind of pressure on
industries to improve. And since the emission allowances are
quite expensive, there is a significant incentive to take care of
it, otherwise capture it and store it.


And the regulatory framework says, if you capture it and store it
in a regulated geological storage site that has the appropriate
permits, then you don't need to purchase the emission allowances.
So this is what creates the business case. And the flip side of
that is the economy of our method, which is a very economical
method indeed.


David Roberts


Yeah. Is this, as far as, you know, the cheapest form of
permanent storage?


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


I'm not sure I can say that with 100% certainty. But judging from
the look on people's faces when we discuss the costs, I'm
thinking that they must be. The mineralization cost itself is
very low, less than $20 per ton or something.


David Roberts


I want to talk about water, but first, actually, I got a bunch of
questions about land use. But I think we should just say that the
land use needs of this are really quite small. I saw one of your
little domes that you build to house the pumps, and it's just
like a little yurt. Like it's relatively tiny. I guess you have
to count the pipelines in some respect. But in terms of land use,
that doesn't seem like a kind of limiting factor. You're not
taking up a lot of space.


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


Definitely not for a single well. And even with the Coda of
terminal, where we will need many more wells, of course,
spreading out over a significant area, the actual footprint of
the actual infrastructure is quite small and can quite easily
coexist with other industries, facilities. It's not a delicate
operation. It doesn't emit noise, vibration, emissions. So I
think I would happily live next door to one of these injection
wells.


David Roberts


Yeah, like I could tuck one of those in my backyard. They're even
kind of cute.


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


It can easily cohabit with other industries, no question.


David Roberts


So right now, because you are in this symbiotic relationship with
the geothermal plant, insofar as you build next to geothermal
plants, you don't really have to worry about water, because
geothermal plants bring water up and then they pump water back
down. So all you're doing is kind of inserting yourself and
adding one additional step in that process. But the water loop is
basically the same as for a normal geothermal plant. But I'm
wondering, I have several questions about sort of the potential
to do this in other places, in other contexts. If you didn't have
a geothermal plant, how do you think about where to get water?


And do you view that as kind of a limiting factor on where you
can go and where you can establish one of these?


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


We do need water to be there, but there are many places where you
have access to groundwater. In fact, I read a report on
groundwater in the US that said that it is an underutilized
resource because it's only about 30% of the fresh water that is
used in the United States is groundwater. The rest is surface
water. So I think not everybody realizes the extent of water that
is stored in the ground and for one reason or another, hasn't
been extracted. It's certainly a precious resource. And that's
why it's important to note that we are not competing with
domestic uses of potable water. Definitely not going anywhere
near those kinds of reservoirs. We do return the water into the
ground, not having contaminated it in any way, added CO2 to it.


David Roberts


What you do to the water, does that render the water dangerous in
any way? Like, can it mess up groundwater or can it pollute
anything, or is there any risk to this carbonated water?


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


Well, it is mineralized water, mineral water. When you add carbon
dioxide into water, it raises the acidity, so you don't want to
mix it with the groundwater. And that's why we go much deeper
with the injections, isolate the pipes from the surroundings and
because, as you mentioned at the start of our talk, that once you
have added the CO2 to the water, it's heavier than the water
around it, it tends to sink and continue sinking.


David Roberts


So you inject it below the groundwater that people are drinking —


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


Absolutely.


David Roberts


and it sinks.


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


Yeah.


David Roberts


So theoretically, you could pump up the water yourself. I mean,
presumably that would add a little bit of cost, but you could
just pump up the water yourself out of the water table, carbonate
it and pump it back down with no need for an external water
source.


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


Right. Well, if the water is there at the site, yes, we, of
course, need relevant permits and everything like that. But yes,
the water use, because we are talking about fairly big amounts,
it adds up and it's easy to calculate big numbers. I was actually
looking into this a few days ago. What's the water footprint of
products? And I found a website from, I guess it's an NGO that's
concerned with water and water preservation and so forth. And it
takes about three tons of water to make a hamburger if you
calculate the life cycle of it. So, for us to take care of one
ton of CO2 requires about the same amount of water that it takes
to make nine or ten hamburgers or two smartphones.


David Roberts


But you're not really using up the water, right. You bring it up
and you put it back down.


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


We bring it up, put it back down. We do add the CO2. The CO2 then
gets released from the water again as it mineralizes. So then the
water is free of the CO2 that we added to it and it goes on its
way.


David Roberts


Yeah.


David Roberts


So it seems like in terms of large scale hydrological systems,
you basically have very little effect. You're just kind of
inserting yourself in the middle of a process that's already
happening. But you're not net subtracting water.


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


Well, it depends on where you take the water and where you put
it. Do you return it to the same place as where you took it? So
that will be different from site to site and will need to be
assessed. I would not be comfortable saying, well, we don't have
any effect at all. I think that wouldn't be fair. So it is
something that needs to be looked at, investigated, analyzed
properly, to make sure that we are not affecting. When you
extract water from one place, you can affect the hydrology of
surrounding area and so on and so forth.


But I would not say it's a zero concern, but I would definitely
say that with the proper designs, we can make it entirely safe.


David Roberts


Well, one almost inexhaustible source of water is the ocean,
which is sitting right next to you there in Iceland. So I wonder,
what about the prospect of carbonating ocean water and injecting
it underground? Because if you could do that, then you have all
the water you could ever want in the world. Is this something you
have been thinking about or trying to do?


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


Most certainly. We, a few years ago, started to look into this
very heavily. We have already demonstrated in controlled
conditions in the laboratory of the University of Iceland that
the physics work dissolving CO2 in seawater, exposing it to the
appropriate rocks, produces this mineralization process in much
the same way as using freshwater does.


David Roberts


Is there any reduction in performance or anything, or does it
work just as well?


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


It more or less works well, yes. I'm not sure exactly about the
details of the differences, whether you can dissolve as much or
more even, or what the effects are exactly. But what I do know is
that once you leave the controlled conditions of the lab and go
into the field, you tend to run into unexpected things. And
that's precisely why we have actually started — just a few days
ago, we finally injected the first CO2 that was dissolved in
seawater below the ocean floor using seawater. So the
installation is at the shore. It's not offshore; it's close to
the shore.


So we are extracting seawater and then pumping it or injecting it
under the seabed.


David Roberts


And this is like the shallow coastal seabed, right?


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


Yes, but we always go a few hundred meters down into the ground
and below it. So, yeah, that was a milestone for us that we have
been celebrating for the last couple of days at the company,
because it has such potential to be a game changer in terms of
opening up new geographies, new areas where it might otherwise
not be feasible.


David Roberts


Right. And definitely removes any worries about the availability
of water.


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


Yeah, absolutely.


David Roberts


At that point, you've got all the world's oceans full of water.
Right now. You are, as we've been sort of discussing, in what
might as well have been cooked up in a laboratory to be the
perfect circumstances for this. You've got the geothermal there,
you've got cheap carbon free power to run it on. You've got the
perfect porous, young basalt rock. Almost unlimited space down
there to use, so this — Iceland is ideal for this. Have you tried
to do this with other kinds of rock and other kinds of geology in
other countries?


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


We have done two small test projects abroad, so we have injected
small amounts in Germany and in Turkey. Those were kind of
research pilot projects, not really intended to become huge
projects, more of a scientific exercise. We are looking into
several locations abroad at various stages of discussion,
possibly development. Basalt is actually quite common. It covers
about 5% of the land mass.


David Roberts


Oh, really?


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


Yeah. So it's not only in Iceland, but it tends to be young and
favorable basalt in Iceland; also, the ocean floor, the majority
is basalt. So that also is about what we're discussing earlier.
So there are several locations, but I could mention also the US.
We have been awarded three rather than four, I think it's three
grants from the US Department of Energy to study the potential of
our method in the US.


David Roberts


Interesting. Where would that be?


David Roberts


What kind of rock would that be?


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


Well, it's basalt in the Pacific Northwest, so two projects
there. And I should note that we are in collaboration with many
other parties collaborating on these projects. So it's not just
us, it's the Rocky Mountain Institute, the University of Wyoming
and others, and others, Pacific Northwest National Labs and other
partners that are collaborating on a couple of projects in the
Pacific Northwest. And those have to do with basalt because there
are huge basalt in that area. And then in Minnesota, we also have
a feasibility study that we are going to do in collaboration with
others as well, to check whether our method can be applied there
in a slightly different form of rock formations.


David Roberts


Is there a general way to characterize what sort of geology you
need? I mean, is it basalt specific, or is it just, you need
porous rock, rock with a lot of these minerals in it? Are there
other kinds of rock that have these features?


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


Yeah, like I said, they are similar to basalt. These mafic and
ultramafic rocks, which have the large amounts of the metals that
we discussed, need to be there. The porosity can vary — for our
approach it needs to be there to some extent.


David Roberts


Right.


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


And we know that there are other companies looking into different
types of rocks that are maybe less permeable but have also
potential storage capacity. So those will bring different
challenges, I guess, that we are not qualified to explain fully.
But at least this natural tendency and capability of rocks to
store CO2 is something that is catching a lot of attention. And
to my knowledge, I think I can safely say that we are the only
ones actually applying it today, at least on a commercial basis.


David Roberts


So it's still somewhat of an open book here. We still don't have
a great idea of the full extent of types of rock that could be
used here.


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


Yeah, you're right. And I forgot to mention that we also got, in
collaboration with scientists in Scotland, a public fund there,
to also look into potentials there. I believe those are also
slightly different rock types. So there is a lot of research
going on and what we have to balance is to move our projects
along that are based on what we know and at the same time to
expand, improve and do research and development as we need to do
to scale these things up. But we are quite satisfied with the
project pipeline that we have already and the R&D pipeline.


So we are around 43 people today. We were 15 when I started 18
months ago. We are changing fast.


David Roberts


It's the right thing at the right time. Seems like there's no
shortage of CO2 out there looking for places to be buried.


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


Yeah, that's right.


David Roberts


In terms of sort of accounting, just to take your current setup.
If Climeworks captures a ton of CO2, sends it to you and you bury
it, who gets the carbon credit? Who gets to sell the carbon
credit there? Who gets to sort of claim to be the entity that
dealt with the carbon?


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


Yeah, well, that's a matter of negotiation. Under the current
setup, Climeworks sells the credits to customers such as
Microsoft and others. So we are providing the storage as a
service. Potentially we could have a different setup where we
would split those credits somehow. We were not really there at
the moment.


David Roberts


So that's not totally settled yet, how that's going to work?


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


For the current setup it is definitely. But what may happen in
the future potentially we also have collaborations with other
direct air capture companies. So what the setup will be when
those come online, we'll have to see. One fascinating question
from my perspective is also the interplay of corporate accounting
and national accounting.


David Roberts


Yes, we addressed that on an episode of this very pod a few weeks
ago.


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


I'll have to listen to that.


David Roberts


It's a puzzle.


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


Yeah. Because there is some criticism that, for example, a
particular project in Denmark, where Denmark is going to count
the storage project against its national targets and the credits
are also sold to a private company in another country.


David Roberts


I think it's Microsoft, actually. I think we discussed that very
case.


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


Yeah. So some people call that double claiming, double counting
others, and I'm a bit fond of that argument, which is that this
is co-claiming where you shouldn't confuse national accounts with
corporate accounts. It's two entirely different systems. So you
do have countries, for example, publishing figures on employment,
and then you have companies publishing exactly the same figures
and one is an aggregate of the other. So you're not double
counting the jobs, you're just counting them in two different.
You have them in the annual report of this company and then you
have them in the national economic figures of the country.


So I don't think really there is necessarily a problem there as
long as there are not two companies claiming the same results.


David Roberts


Right. Well, there's still puzzles though, because, say, in the
private accounting scheme, whatever, Climeworks gets the credit
and shares a little bit of it with you, that's the private thing.
But for publicly, if emissions are captured in, I don't know,
Germany liquefied, shipped to Iceland and buried in Iceland, is
that a reduction in Germany's emissions? Does Iceland get to
claim anything?


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


Well, what is, and what should be? My understanding is that under
the current rules, it would be an emission reduction in Germany.
Because you count at the smokestack, so to say.


David Roberts


Right.


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


And that's the same logic. The current climate accounting is you
count the emissions where they happen.


David Roberts


Right.


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


You could do it otherwise. You could, for example, have
consumption based accounting where Iceland would have to — well,
we import cars, we don't produce any cars.


David Roberts


Right.


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


The case could be made that to be fair, we should be
acknowledging the carbon footprint of those cars —


David Roberts


The embedded emissions I think they are called.


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


Yes. And at the same time, we are having in Iceland to
acknowledge or bear the burden, so to speak, of having three
aluminium plants. We are producing aluminium for 3% of the
world's production, many hundreds of times more than what we
need. We could produce our own needs in like 10 seconds or
something.


David Roberts


Yeah. Right.


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


Because we're such a small nation of 360,000 people and you could
say it's unfair that we have to account for this. And as a result
of this, we have some of the highest emissions per capita in the
world. But that's because we are the aluminium factory of the
world. That's not really fair, you could argue. So you could
argue for a consumption based, but I guess it's just not
practical. So you just count at the stack in the geography where
the stack is located.


David Roberts


I mean, if you did do a consumption based accounting, you could
see Iceland being like negative emissions many, many times over.
You know if they become a hub for bearing stuff.


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


Yeah, if you would count all the bearing in Iceland, then you
could. Yeah, but at the same time, we do consume products and
they have to be shipped here and so on. But the point I'm making
is maybe that there is no single best way. You have to choose an
approach. And it may not be perfect, but it has to be practical.
We have this principle of just counting the geography. And by
that logic, I guess if emissions are reduced in a certain
location, that location needs to be credited. And even though it
seems a bit unfair that the country storing it doesn't get the
credit, because if you couldn't store it, then what would you do
with it?


Personally, I feel that it is worth discussing at least whether
we need for this to be recognized somehow, the contribution of
countries that are storing, providing storage. Or is it simply
the financial benefit of selling that service? Or should it be
reflected in the climate national accounts? I mean, I don't
really have a very strong opinion on it, but it's worth thinking
about. And it's an interesting thought exercise.


David Roberts


Yeah, it's quite a puzzle. You move one piece and a bunch of
other pieces move.


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


Yeah. I'm also sympathetic to the view that we mustn't get too
caught up in bookkeeping. We need to get things done. So I don't
want to give the impression that, well, Iceland will not store
CO2 unless we get the credit. I mean, that's not really a very
sensible position, even though you may have interesting arguments
about it. The pressing issue is to get things done and not to get
stuck in these details. With all due respect to proper accounting
and everything, of course it has to be in place. But let's not
get distracted from the task, which is to get some progress and
scale up our efforts.


David Roberts


For sure. One of the things that really captured my attention and
my imagination —


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


No pun intended?


David Roberts


exactly! Captured, but did not bury my attention and imagination,
here is just how simple this whole thing is. There's no piece of
this that is particularly obscure or technical, more than an
ordinary person could understand. So I wonder, are there places
in this process where you can foresee substantial performance
improvements or innovations? Like where could you improve the
performance of this process? Or is it so simple that it just is
what it is, and you might get some economies of scale, but the
process itself just is what it is. Or is there room here to sort
of improve the performance of this?


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


Yeah, absolutely. We are continuously doing that. I'm not sure
that there will be an order of magnitude improvements in
efficiency, but we are definitely working to use our resources
more efficiently, use less water, and increase the capture
efficiency from geothermal power plants. That was a big
breakthrough that we had. So we have designed new capturing
equipment.


David Roberts


Oh, interesting.


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


We've designed a mobile injection system that enables us to go
into areas for test injections with much less effort than before.
The seawater tests, of course, would be, if those are successful,
a game changer. But you are right, I think it's more apart from
the seawater, which is really a big shift, it's more honing and
fine tuning, but definitely going after every bit of improvement
that we can identify.


David Roberts


Awesome. Well, this is so fascinating, Ólafur, thank you so much
for coming on and talking us through it.


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


It's been a pleasure.


David Roberts


I hope to see you up here in the Pacific Northwest before too
long.


Ólafur Teitur Guðnason


Absolutely. Thank you for having me. It was a real pleasure.


David Roberts


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