17 May Building stones for our planet
Dr. Edda Sif Pind Aradóttir, CEO, Carbfix, is refining a way to solve one of our biggest environmental problems: the turning of CO2 into stone.
Can you tell us a little bit about your amazing journey at Carbfix and your strategic vision as CEO of the organization?
We started with just an idea on paper. It has been known for a long time that nature has a very efficient process of regulating CO2 levels in the atmosphere over geological timescales. The process is by mineralizing CO2, turning it into stone in the subsurface. Actually, 99 percent of all carbon that exists on earth is already stored through this process in the bedrock below us. In 2006, we began to develop a technology to accelerate this natural process. This involves coming up with ways to efficiently inject the CO2 into the subsurface to create the conditions that allow efficient and permanent mineralization to take place.
The project was formally founded in 2007 when we continued to design the technology, researching the reactions underground, in the lab, in numerical models, and in natural analogs. We started the first pilot injections in 2011, and they worked very well. It took some time to follow what happened after we injected the CO2 into the subsurface, and, following a successful monitoring campaign, we were able to scientifically prove that, in just two years, almost all the CO2 that we had injected in the pilot phase had mineralized.
These important results completely changed the timescale of permanent CO2 mineral storage. The oil and gas sector had been using CO2 injection predominantly to increase oil recovery, and there were some projects that stored CO2 in the gas phase in oil fields, but nobody had yet permanently transformed the CO2 to stone. This fully eliminates any risks of CO2 leaking back to the surface. Ours was an incredibly important milestone to reach and we published these findings in 2016. Since then, there has been ever-increasing interest from various international industries and sectors wanting to explore the possibilities of taking up our technology. This is both encouraging and necessary. We will not meet our climate goals without carbon capture and storage on a large scale.
Have the last two years of the pandemic had an impact on the company’s operations, and how do you see Carbfix’s position now in 2022 after COVID-19?
We have kept seeing an ever increased interest in applying our technology throughout the past two years, despite the pandemic. Of course, we have not been able to travel to some of the locations to kick off projects and we have been using digital means to ensure that Covid has as little effect on us as possible. We would probably be a bit further with some of the projects that are currently in the pipeline, nevertheless, we are very happy with the past two years, as we have grown significantly and met all our goals.
Can you tell us a little bit more about the partnership with Climeworks and the new ORCA plant, the world’s first commercial direct air capture plant? At what timeline are things proceeding?
We are pursuing scaling our technology in three parallel pathways depending on how we source the CO2. Partnering up with companies like Climeworks is one of those pathways to permanently store CO2 already emitted into the atmosphere. Just looking at the science and all the international climate reports, we know we will not meet our climate goals without large-scale carbon removal, and direct air capture and storage is one of the technologies that will be applied. The cost is still too high, which is why it is extremely important for us to launch commercial projects like ORCA so that we will be able to reduce the cost of the full value chain. This means that by the time we need the technology at a very large scale, we will already be there with lower cost figures than we have today. We have been working with Climeworks since 2016, our collaboration having started through a co-funded project from the European Union. Just a year after we started our first discussions, we already had a demo chain of removing CO2 from the atmosphere with Climeworks and then injecting it into the subsurface with Carbfix’s technology. It is not very often that things happen this quickly, but we have kept at it and already last year we had scaled up for the first step. ORCA is a result of that. The project has received a lot of international attention. We strive to keep up the pace and hopefully within the not-too-distant future, we will have something even larger.
The beauty of direct air capture and storage is that you plant the units where you have favorable storage conditions, provided that you have a source of renewable energy to drive the capture process as well. This is a vital piece of technology, and it is important that we continue to scale it and add on new projects internationally, but we can never forget that we also have to stop emissions. These are the two different sides of the same coin, and we need both of them to succeed.
Do you believe Carbfix will become a partner of choice for the big players in the oil and gas, the mining, the energy industries? Are you looking at these sectors specifically, and do you think other players will shift toward using your technology?
Our technology works irrespective of where the CO2 comes from. We need the CO2 captured and we can work with different capture solution providers. Our technology is agnostic with respect to what type of capture is applied and which type of industry is at the source of the value chain. We just take the CO2 inject it into the subsurface and make sure that it is permanently mineralized. If we look at the global potential, the primary formation into which we inject, basalt, is one of the most common rock types on earth. We find it on all continents and on the majority of ocean floors as well. The capacity is much larger than we will ever need for climate action. So the possibilities are huge and the technology exists, both for permanently mineralizing CO2, but also for capturing it. Therefore, the task at hand is to rapidly build the projects at scale in different parts of the world and in different sectors.
Globally, where are you seeing more interest? What countries or continents are you targeting?
For a long time, we have mainly been focusing on Europe where we have the ETS system incentivizing, or at least putting a price on, carbon emissions. That is helping us in getting projects up and running. Then our focus is in North America where, particularly after the Biden administration took over, there has been a big push for incentivizing and supporting the various solutions needed to scale up for climate action. Another key market is Asia. These are the three key areas at the moment, but the possibilities are vast in all the continents and countries. We had to start somewhere, and these are the markets where we found the incentives and support functions needed to drive the initial projects.
You have recently announced a field site demonstration for research involving the use of saltwater to make your operations even more sustainable. How close is this new technology to being viable?
We have been working on research for using seawater instead of freshwater for many years now, in collaboration with some of our academic partners. They have been doing a lot of lab experiments, and we have been doing some modelling work and it is looking very promising. In all likelihood, we should be able to carry out the process using seawater, which will be a game-changer for many regions of the world where freshwater is scarce. We will be doing the first field demonstration later this year here in Iceland, where we have our seawater-based system on land. We are very excited to launch that pilot program and are optimistic that we will have as good results as we hope for.
Our technology indeed requires considerable amounts of water, however, the water acts as a carrier for the CO2 which means we do not lose it. We use it to dissolve the CO2 during injection and the CO2 remains dissolved in the water phase until it has mineralized. Then we recirculate the water and use it repeatedly. We usually produce the water from the storage formation, which is always already filled up with water. We bring the water up to the surface, add the CO2 into it, and inject it again. That is our preferred choice. Then we recycle it once the mineralization process has taken place.
On a broader scale, what values would you like to see associated with the Icelandic brand on the international stage?
Green. Looking at our energy and technical solutions, we have been leading the way in the energy transition, transitioning already several decades ago from burning fossil fuels for producing electricity, or heating our houses, to renewable energy sources. Now we build on top of that and want to lead the remaining energy transition. Solutions like we have developed at Carbfix allow us to fully eliminate emissions from hard to abate sectors and reduce CO2 levels already in the atmosphere. Those are the fronts on which we want to be leading. We are green. We think ahead. We provide solutions for the future in advance.
Do you have a final message for the millions of readers of Newsweek Magazine?
We need solutions like Carbfix if we are to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement. Our technology is based on natural processes, so we are basically helping nature help itself by implementing our technology and we do it cost efficiently. If you are looking to reduce your emissions or retrieve some of the CO2 you have already let out into the atmosphere, think of us. We are happy to come and assist and see how we can make interesting projects become a reality in different parts of the world.