As many as 153 million premature deaths linked to air pollution could be avoided worldwide this century if governments speed up their timetable for reducing fossil fuel emissions, a new Duke University-led study finds.
The study is the first to project the number of lives that could be saved, city by city, in 154 of the world’s largest urban areas if nations agree to reduce carbon emissions and limit global temperature rise to 1.5oC in the near future rather than postponing the biggest emissions cuts until later, as some governments have proposed.
Premature deaths would drop in cities on every inhabited continent, the study shows, with the greatest gains in saved lives occurring in Asia and Africa.
This has a lot to do because the molecule contains two double bonds (which are harder to break than single bonds), so a lot of energy is required (and therefore a high cost as well). It turns out the energy to break it down would produce more CO2 than would be saved by breaking it apart using conventional methods.
You theoretically could break down CO2 and remove it from processes so it doesn’t get released into the atmosphere, but you would have to use a carbon free energy source to do this.
There are lots of scientists working on more efficient ways to do this, because if a low energy/low carbon method is developed to break down CO2, it would make a big impact on reducing CO2 emissions.
Doesn’t algae breathe carbon dioxide sequestering the carbon from the oxygen though? Isn’t algae more useful than gasses wasted in the atmosphere?
Yes there is some research around growing algae using CO2.
With such a focus on the possibilities that microalgae can offer, various industrial methods have been developed for its production. However, most are currently not economically viable, especially on a large scale. Limitations to these systems include: sub-optimal productivity, expensive installation, large footprint (surface area), high water demand and the requirement for a highly trained end-user. The EU-funded ALDADISK project has been set up to meet these challenges by creating a scalable production unit, capable of delivering high value alga-based products and biomass while reducing CO2 emissions.
But there are some pilot projects taking off using this concept, such as this one in Sweden:
I’m hopefully that some efficient process to sequester CO2 is developed in the near future. I think we’ll need it, with the rate that countries are currently reducing emissions (not fast enough).
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