I saw a youtube video about how Japan burns materials that can’t easily be recycled to produce energy and captures the CO2 produced from the process. The CO2 is then sold to some local factories to produce various things like fire extinguishers, and some algae farms (I googled this and algae is used to produce food and oil).
I googled that at sea level, CO2 in the atmosphere is at 350 PPM, but certain plants thrive at 1500 PPM.
It got me thinking – why can’t we pump CO2 into indoor farms, plantations or forests to sequester more carbon?
Would that even work? Is the carbon just released into the air again once the plants are eaten or broken down?
In: Biology
So, most carbon emissions are not in a setting that allows for easy scrubbing. But, putting that aside, this approach does work in theory. Even though carbon does get re-emitted once a plant dies, creating a larger pool of organic carbon will reduce the steady-state concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere.
The issue is that you have to plant a truly massive number of plants to make a difference. Just to be clear, this isn’t because the biosphere isn’t good at handling carbon; human CO2 emissions are small relative to the flux of carbon due to photosynthesis and respiration. But increasing that capacity even further to counteract something that we’re very, very good at doing, burning fossil fuels, turns out to be pretty tough.
To get more bang for our buck, many researchers in plant biology and biotechnology are trying to make plants that invest more heavily in recalcitrant organic matter like lignin. If we couple this with enhanced investment, by the plant, in below-ground biomass, we could leave behind large quantities of carbon after every harvest, making this a more attractive strategy.
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