One of the biggest causes of climate change is carbon dioxide (CO2). An important greenhouse gas, CO2, is the result of the combustion of fossil fuels (such as oil, coal, and natural gas). It also occurs naturally via human breathing, plant respiration, and volcanic eruptions.
Wildfires are yet another prominent reason for emitting CO2, with an estimated 2,170 million metric tons released in 2023 alone.
A new study has found that CO2 emissions from wildfires have actually increased by a whopping 60% globally over the past 23 years.
Led by the University of East Anglia (UEA), the study grouped areas of the world into ‘pyromes,’ which are regions where forest fire patterns are affected by similar climatic, human, and environmental controls.
With that, the study looked at the differences between forest and non-forest fires, which reveals the key factors driving the recent increases in forest fire activity.
According to the study, CO2 emission from fires in one of the largest pyromes almost tripled between 2001 and 2023. These pyromes, which cover boreal forests in Eurasia and North America, have some of the most climate-sensitive northern boreal forests.
Significant increases have been seen more broadly across the extratropical forests, amounting to an additional half a billion tonnes of carbon dioxide every year. The epicenter of CO2 emissions is also moving towards the extratropics, away from tropical forests.
The rise in emissions has been associated with an increase in weather that is favorable to fire, such as hot and dry conditions seen during heatwaves and droughts. Moreover, increased rates of forest growth have been leading to more vegetation fuels. These trends are further supported by rising temperatures in the high northern latitudes, which is occurring at 2x the rate it is happening at the global level.
Not only has there been a substantial increase in the extent of forest wildfires, but their severity has also been rising over the last two decades.
The carbon combustion rate, which measures fire severity based on carbon emitted per unit of area burned, surged by as much as 50% across forests globally during this period. According to lead author Dr Matthew Jones of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at UEA:
“Increases in both the extent and severity of forest fires have led to a dramatic rise in the amount of carbon emitted by forest fires globally. Startling shifts in the global geography of fires are also underway, and they are primarily explained by the growing impacts of climate change in the world’s boreal forests.”
The Impact of Wildfires on Carbon Sequestration Efforts
Scientists from around the world came together for the new study and warned that in order to avert the continued growth of forest fires, we must address the main reasons for climate change.
“To protect critical forest ecosystems from the accelerating threat of wildfires, we must keep global warming at bay, and this underscores why it is so vital to make rapid progress towards net zero emissions.”
– Dr. Jones, a NERC Independent Research Fellow
Forests themselves play a crucial role in meeting international climate targets. They, after all, help remove CO2 from the atmosphere by acting as carbon sinks.
The way it works is that forests absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it in the form of biomass, deadwood, litter, and soils, which is called carbon sequestration, and it reduces rates of global warming.
As such, governments worldwide have introduced reforestation and afforestation programs to offset human CO2 emissions, especially from sectors like aviation and certain other industries. The success of these programs, however, depends on permanent carbon storage in forests, which are threatened by wildfires.
With extratropical fires already emitting half a billion tonnes more CO2 than it was in 2001 and the long-term effect depending on the recovery of forests, more widespread and severe forest fires put the emissions out of balance with the carbon captured by post-fire recovery. Dr. Jones said:
“The steep trend towards greater extratropical forest fire emissions is a warning of the growing vulnerability of forests, and it poses a significant challenge for global targets to tackle climate change.”
He further stated that after severe fires, forests are known to rebound poorly. As such, we need to pay close attention to how the increase in fire severity will impact forests’ carbon storage in the coming years.
Amidst all this, there has been reduced burning of tropical fire-prone savannahs, with previous studies showing that, since 2001, the area burned by both forest and non-forest fires has dropped by a quarter globally.
Against this backdrop of reduced burning in grasslands and savannahs, the study, according to its authors, shows that fires continue to happen increasingly where they shouldn’t, i.e., forests have been masking the increasing extent and severity of forest fires. This presents “the greatest threat to people and to vital carbon stores,” said Dr. Jones.
These new observations were unlocked with the help of machine learning, which was used to group forest ecoregions into 12 different pyromes. As we shared recently, AI models are being used extensively to detect wildfires early on. The tremendous potential of AI and machine learning is being further enhanced by the growing fire-occurrence database.
In the new study, using AI to group allowed scientists to isolate the climate change effects from other factors like vegetation productivity and land use. Moreover, understanding what’s causing fires in these different pyromes is important in developing efficient strategies to predict and mitigate wildfires and safeguard forests.
“Substantial financing is required to support strategic programs of forest management, stakeholder engagement, and public education, all of which represent a meaningful shift of fire management strategy from largely reactive to increasingly proactive.”
– Dr. Jones
A New Frontier: Turning CO2 into Valuable Products
Besides carbon sequestration, another way to mitigate the negative effects of CO2 on the environment is converting it into valuable products.
This includes converting CO2 into carbon nanofibers, which can be used to strengthen building materials, combining it with hydrogen to produce fuels like methane, methanol, gasoline, and aviation fuels, and converting CO2 into chemicals and other products such as pharmaceuticals, food additives, and fragrances.
A new study enhanced this conversion of CO2 into valuable products by combining visible light and electrochemistry.
While doing so, the team came upon a surprising discovery that visible light considerably improved selectivity, which is an important chemical attribute. This discovery opens up new avenues for CO2 conversion as well as many other chemical reactions that are used in catalysis research and chemical manufacturing.
Turning CO2 into a carrier of energy instead of waste or emission through recycling is a great way to reduce climate change. Here, carbon dioxide is converted into fuels, chemicals, materials, and thermal energy.
Some ways that CO2 is recycled include artificial photosynthesis, a process under which solar energy is utilized to synthesize chemicals using CO2 as a raw material. Then, there’s electrochemical conversion, where electricity is used to convert CO2 into chemicals like ethanol, acetic acid, or formic acid.
The new study made use of electrochemical reduction to recycle carbon dioxide into valuable products. In this process, Prashant Jain, a chemistry professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, explained, a stream of CO2 gas travels through an electrolysis cell that breaks down carbon dioxide and water into toxic carbon monoxide (CO) and hydrogen. These new gases can then be utilized to create new hydrocarbon products.
However, Jain points out that this reaction is rather sluggish, and we need large electrodes for this process. These electrodes contain a lot of expensive catalyst material like copper or gold or copper.
Given these obstructions, Jan, along with his former graduate student Francis Alcorn, went on to look for ways to speed up the process that would require less catalyst material, hence “making it a more viable option for the alternative fuels industry.”
Using Visible Light to Boost CO2 Conversion Efficiency
Under the new method, the team combined visible light with electrodes that are covered in extremely small particles of gold-copper alloy. This allows for the reduction of CO2 at an increased rate and more controlled selectivity compared to conventional methods.
Jain explained that:
“(The new electrodes) act like tiny antennae that seek out photons in the visible light range and couple them with the chemical reaction pathway.”
In order to enhance the conductivity of these electrodes, the team immersed them in a solution of water, CO2, and an electrolyte. They then applied a voltage across the electrode while its surface was illuminated with a visible light laser.
This resulted in a reaction that rapidly produces hydrogen from splitting water molecules and carbon monoxide, which comes from splitting the carbon dioxide.
While the team was “very excited” to witness the jump in productivity when using visible light, what was not expected was the visible light having such a big impact on chemical selectivity — which Jain said “is the important advance here.”
Now, what is this selectivity here? Well, in catalysis, chemical selectivity is a chemical reaction’s ability to favor one type of molecule or pathway over another.
In this particular study, a water-splitting reaction that forms hydrogen gas was found to be selectively enhanced by using light. Jain said:
“The results suggest that visible light offers a unique opportunity to adjust the ratio of carbon monoxide to hydrogen gas produced, a crucial factor for the industrial production of synthetic gas. This finding paves the way for a more sustainable and efficient energy future.”
Having said that, the professor noted that using light to enhance chemical reactions isn’t without controversy, given that light also brings heat with it. So, this required the team to run control experiments and make careful measurements to determine if it was the light’s heating effect that caused faster reaction rates and selectivity.
What the team did to determine this was they ran experiments with the laser and without it at the exact same temperature produced by light excitation. This helped them rule out heating as the responsible factor.
The team found that it was, in fact, electric fields and directed charge flow created by light excitation that was responsible for the boost in productivity and enhanced selectivity of water splitting.
Now, moving ahead, the team still has challenges to overcome. This includes the repeated use of electrode-based nanoparticles, which will lead to degradation over time, especially when scaling the method for industrial application.
The team also has to do further research into and improve the overall energy efficiency of the process and light management.
“(Overall) what we found with this study presents completely new ways of thinking about electrochemistry and catalysis.”
– Jain
After all, the usage of light has enhanced the catalyst’s activity, but more importantly and surprisingly, it has allowed for changing selectivity, which will unwrap new chemical pathways that make different products. This means CO2 reduction or water splitting is just the beginning; the method can also be applied to many other catalytic reactions that are important to the chemical industry.
Companies Involved in CO2 Reduction and Conversion
The growing severity and devastation caused by wildfires have led to advancements in fire protection methods, such as heat-activatable biomimetic hydrogels. However, there is also a rising interest in reducing and repurposing CO2 emissions. This repurposing involves transforming carbon dioxide, a major contributor to climate change, into useful products such as fuels, chemicals, and building materials.
Companies at the forefront of these efforts are combining cutting-edge technologies to address the environmental and economic challenges posed by CO2 emissions.
This includes Chevron Corporation (CVX -0.02%) (CVX), FuelCell Energy (FCEL -2.62%) (FCEL), and Occidental Petroleum (OXY +0.06%). While Chevron invests in carbon capture technologies, FuelCell Energy is focused on clean energy solutions, and Occidental is involved in direct air capture (DAC) technology to remove CO2 from the atmosphere and convert it into usable products.
Air Products and Chemicals (APD -1.38%) is another one that is involved in hydrogen production and CO2 conversion technologies. With a market cap of $73.44 billion, APD shares are currently trading at $330.37, up 20.66% YTD.
Air Products and Chemicals, Inc. (APD -1.38%)
Now, let’s take a deeper look into another major player in carbon capture:
This American multinational oil and gas corporation, which is the largest direct descendant of John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, has a growing interest in carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) technologies to reduce CO2 emissions.
ExxonMobil’s CCS network involves the operation of the largest 1,500-mile-long CO2 pipeline in the US. It also has multiple strategically positioned storage sites across the US Gulf Coast.
Through ExxonMobil Low Carbon Solutions, the company plays an important role in bringing carbon capture and storage technology to scale. It boasts a current capture capacity of 9 million metric tons per year, cumulative capture of 120 million metric tons to date, and overall accounting for about 40% of all human-produced CO2 captured, as per the figures from ExxonMobil’s official website.
The company has collaborated with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) to enable comprehensive end-to-end solutions for post-combustion CO2 capture. The solution provides complete carbon capture, transportation, and storage solutions.
The company is also running a pilot project to use gas, which would otherwise be burned off due to lack of pipelines, from its North Dakota oil wells to power Bitcoin mining operators. For this, ExxonMobile partnered with Crusoe Energy Systems, which taps into waste energy resources to take gas from its oil wells and power mobile generators used for Bitcoin mining operations. The company expects its emissions reduction plans to achieve World Bank Zero Routine Flaring by 2030.
Exxon Mobil Corporation (XOM -0.57%)
At the time of writing, its shares have been trading at $119.94 following a 20.72% increase in its price so far this year. This puts ExxonMobil’s market cap at $536.2 billion while having an EPS (TTM) of 8.34, P/E (TTM) of 14.47, and a dividend yield of 3.15%.
For Q2 of 2024, the company reported earnings of $9.2 billion, which it said showcases the “differentiated strengths of ExxonMobil’s portfolio and its improved earnings power.” It also expanded its value proposition by furthering carbon capture and storage (CCS) leadership with a new agreement that grew its total contracted CO2 offtake to 5.5 million metric tons per year. This, as per ExxonMobil, is more “committed volume than any other company has announced.” Its third-quarter 2024 financial results will be released on November 1st.
Conclusion
With billions of metric tons of CO2 released into the atmosphere every year, it has been resulting in not only climate change, which leads to more extreme weather events, but also health hazards and ocean acidification that endangers marine life and coral reefs.
As the climate crisis intensifies, it has become critical that we address the grave problem of rising CO2 emissions in order to reduce global warming and its catastrophic consequences. Forest fires, driven by climate change, are releasing unprecedented levels of carbon dioxide, further accelerating the problem. While reforestation and afforestation programs are vital in offsetting emissions, the threat of wildfires looms large, making proactive fire management strategies essential.
Innovative solutions, such as the electrochemical reduction of CO2 and the use of visible light to improve catalytic reactions, offer promising solutions for repurposing harmful carbon emissions into valuable products like synthetic fuels and industrial chemicals.
These advancements, though still in development, represent the potential to mitigate climate change by transforming CO2 from a global pollutant into a resource for the future. As companies continue to invest in carbon capture technologies and alternative fuels, we move closer to a sustainable solution that could reshape the energy landscape.
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