A startup in Kenya plans to use geothermal energy to capture carbon from the air.
The 4,000-mile-long Great Rift Valley up Africa’s east coast was created by tectonic plates pulling apart. Much of it is therefore hugely geologically active, and Kenya uses the energy to generate about a quarter of its electricity.
But the vast majority of its potential is untapped, MIT Technology Review reported. Nairobi-based Octavia Carbon has built four prototype “direct air capture” machines powered by the Earth’s energy, to demonstrate that the technology is efficient, affordable, and scalable. The UN’s climate change body says that keeping warming to manageable levels will require not just cuts in emissions but pulling billions of tons of carbon from the air.
