Why Isn’t CO₂ From Our Organic Waste Captured And Stored Today?

Our co-founder Kaja Voss presented some of our many thoughts on this the Miljøstiftelsen ZERO and Greenfact breakfast seminar.

“Storing CO₂ is easy,” says our co-founder and CEO Mike Carpenter who has spent 15+ years in the carbon storage industry.

If storing CO₂ is easy, then capturing it must be the hard part about carbon capture and storage (CCS). And usually yes: It is hard to pull CO₂ out of the air or other low-concentration sources.

However, plants that process our foodwaste — so-called biogas plants — emit CO₂ in almost pure form throughout the world today. This CO₂ is so pure it can be taken as it is, compressed, and then transported to a storage location.

But what?! How come pure CO₂ is emitted from these biogas plants? Surely it must be expensive for these plants to emit so much CO₂, given the rising prices in the EU Emissions Trading Scheme?

Here’s the deal: The biogas plants are exempt from the EU Emissions Trading Scheme.

The topic is untouchable for politicians. After all, our food waste and sewage must be processed, so people are opposed to giving biogas plants a big cost item.

This is why we believe the voluntary carbon market is critical to address the CO₂ emissions from our food waste. When companies buy credits today they help build up much needed carbon removal capacity. They also secure high quality credits that will become a scarce commodity in a few years time.

Some still ask us why the voluntary carbon markets haven’t already addressed the CO₂ emissions from our food waste. The carbon capture and storage market is exploding, and taking pure CO₂ streams is easier than extracting CO₂ from the air, so why isn’t it solved already? This used to puzzle us, too.

We uncovered that the biggest carbon market actors, whether buyers like Microsoft or storage providers like Equinor, don’t want to spend time meeting with each individual biogas plant to make purchase agreements. There’s been too much friction for both biogas plants and carbon removal buyers to get off the ground.

This is why we started Inherit Carbon Solutions. We form partnerships with biogas plants, logistics companies, and storage providers, and develop carbon removal projects.