The device on Rehaan Lulla’s desk looks like a lava lamp. A tall glass column, a slow swirl of green and a soft glow. What it is invisibly doing is drawing carbon dioxide out of the room and releasing oxygen more efficiently than the pot plants most people keep for the same reason. The organism inside is microalgae, grown for decades as food and as a cosmetics ingredient, which Rehaan’s start-up AlGreen has repurposed to clean the air.
Author: Lidwina Putri
Climate Correspondent, SEA Daily and Associate - Sustainability, Kala Advisory
Why Cooling the Planet Means Removing Carbon, Not Just Emitting Less
Johanna has always been drawn to big challenges and to the simple solutions that are often underestimated. When it comes to the question of climate change, her answer is putting to use what is already around her. “I noticed that there are large amounts of waste wood all around the world and many of the waste wood streams are still unused,” she says. “Instead of burning the waste wood, how could we preserve the carbon that is already embodied in the biomass to remove it from the cycle?” She landed on a simple method called biomass storage, in which they let plants do the hard work of capturing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, then seal the wood in engineered underground chambers so the carbon cannot return to the atmosphere. Other carbon removal methods exist, but most are costly, complex and hard to scale. Biomass storage is a carbon removal method that is simpler and more durable, because it relies on a process nature already runs.