The energy company BP has developed a plan to convert carbon dioxide into limestone making it possible to trade it for more profit. This idea was made possible through an agreement with a San Antonio chemical company that set itself the goal of transforming greenhouse gas emissions into a profitable product.
According to Bloomberg, this agreement reflects a direct collaboration in which BP and Chemicals Holdings LLC will patent the ‘CarbonFree’ technology that will change these gases into calcium carbonate to be used as a filler in plastics and paper. Likewise, both entities have affirmed that they will promote this industry, even among BP clients who want to participate in the development of the system.
This collaboration occurs amid an increase in business interests for the processes of carbon capture, use and storage, since this material is essential to stop the rise of climate change in the steel industry. However, these strategies have been slow to establish themselves as commercial techniques, highlighting the importance of last year’s climate law.
A technology that does not require incentives
For its part, the developer of CarbonFree has defended that its advances in this technology do not need these incentives to sustain its work. Nonetheless, the firm won $28 million in grants that followed from the Department of Energy for over a decade, while BP supported its cause with equity investments for more than a decade, according to Bloomberg.
On the other hand, to boost oil production, this business collaboration has carried out a series of projects that seek to bombard the carbon captured underground, without promoting the use of fossil fuels through a lot of pipes and wells that would take years to to be able to make them correctly, as reported by Martin Keighley, executive director of the CarbonFree project.
Furthermore, Keighley has argued that this has been done without relying on tax credits for profit. Attracting many financial investors who have shown their support, avoiding doubts about the durability of projects supported by federal policy that “always makes them nervous.”
BP’s intentions
BP intends to act as the supplier for this project to the other industrial emitters, helping them drill wells that inject the gas underground. Tomeka Mcleod, the vice president in charge of carbon and hydrogen capture in the US, said in an interview last year that both BP and Chemicals Holdings LLC chose not to disclose the financial details and other key terms of this agreement in order for BP to can achieve zero greenhouse gas emissions.
The process involves bubbling raw gas from a facility’s stack through a column filled with magnesium hydroxide to produce high-purity limestone. Once the carbon dioxide is locked within that calcium, the result can be marketed as a carbon negative product. “As a specialty chemical plant, it’s running very good numbers in its own right. We’re the way to capture carbon right now,” Keighley said.
