logo
episode-header-image
Nov 2023
34m 45s

Big promise, little success: The state o...

bloomberg
About this episode

The U.S. is spending billions on carbon capture as a climate solution, but is it realistic? The method has been around for 50 years and used primarily as a way to extract more oil. To find out how and if carbon capture can work as a climate solution, Akshat speaks with Emily Grubert, a professor at Notre Dame about what tech demonstrations have actually demonstrated and where this precious resource should be deployed.

This is the first in a two part series about carbon management. 

Read More 

Listen More 

Zero is a production of Bloomberg Green. Our producer is Oscar Boyd and our senior producer is Christine Driscoll. Special thanks to Kira Bindrim. Thoughts or suggestions? Email us at zeropod@bloomberg.net. For more coverage of climate change and solutions, visit bloomberg.com/green

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Up next
Yesterday
Climate summits are working as they were designed: poorly
<p>Over the last two weeks, tens of thousands of people took to the city of Belem, at the mouth of the Amazon river, for the annual United Nations climate summit: COP30.</p> <p>Alongside tense negotiations, there were indigenous protests, daily rainstorms and even a fire at the C ... Show More
27m 33s
Nov 20
Al Gore: Fossil fuel companies are destabilizing democracy and environment
<p>Climate solutions are here, they&rsquo;re just not evenly distributed. So says former US Vice President Al Gore, who remains staunchly optimistic that we can move faster to tackle climate change, even at a time of increasing political resistance in some parts of the world.&nbs ... Show More
36m 38s
Nov 18
Al Gore says 'We may have passed peak Trump'
<p>Former US Vice President Al Gore is one of the grandees of the climate world and knows just how much power America can wield on the international stage. So with President Trump on the warpath against climate action, how should other nations deal with an increasingly rogue US?& ... Show More
32m 42s
Recommended Episodes
Apr 2022
How can the UK get to zero carbon?
Energy is essential: every living thing needs energy to survive, and today’s industrialised societies consume enormous quantities of it. At the moment, the vast majority of this comes from burning fossil fuels that emit carbon. But the government is committed to reaching net zero ... Show More
27m 46s
Apr 2021
Sucking the carbon out of the sky
Most of our efforts to fight climate change, from electric cars to wind turbines, are about pumping fewer greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. But what if we could pull out the gases that are already there? Akshat Rathi, a reporter at Bloomberg with a doctorate in chemistry, kno ... Show More
43m 52s
Sep 2021
Will Direct-Air Carbon Capture Be Viable?
<p>Carbon capture has long been criticized as too nascent, too expensive, and too distracting. Is that changing?</p><p>This month, the Swiss company Climeworks <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2021-09-08/inside-the-world-s-largest-direct-carbon-capture-plant?sref= ... Show More
54m 8s
Nov 2023
CCS Extends Its Reach Beyond Oil and Gas
Investment in carbon capture and storage is skyrocketing. Last year, the technology attracted some $6.4 billion globally, more than double the year before. But why are industries now looking to Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) to cut down on their carbon emissions, rather than ot ... Show More
35m 33s
Feb 2024
The Life Scientific: Mercedes Maroto-Valer
How do you solve a problem like CO2? As the curtain closes on the world’s most important climate summit, we talk to a scientist who was at COP 28 and is working to solve our carbon dioxide problem. Professor Mercedes Maroto-Valer thinks saving the planet is still Mission Possible ... Show More
27m 23s
Feb 2024
A pause in US gas export approvals: a big win for the climate?
<p>The US is the world’s largest exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG), super-cooled to about -160 °C (or -260 °F) so it can be shipped in tankers. An investment boom means export capacity will soar over the next few years. But last month the Biden administration signaled it wa ... Show More
54m 5s
Jan 2022
TED Climate: How to realistically decarbonize the oil and gas industry | Bjørn Otto Sverdrup
<p>Bjørn Otto Sverdrup leads the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI), which gathers the CEOs of twelve of the world's largest oil and gas companies around an ambitious goal: to get one of the sectors contributing most to climate change to drastically lower their own carbon emis ... Show More
13m 32s
Nov 2021
Geoengineering The Planet
Even with the best efforts, it will be decades before we see any change in global temperatures through our mitigation efforts. Given the pace of global heating and the time lag before our emissions reductions have any impact, scientists are exploring additional ways of reducing g ... Show More
27m 23s
Jun 2023
Scrubbing Carbon from the Air
Dan Friedmann is the CEO of Carbon Engineering. The company is at the frontier of a new industry, direct air capture. They just broke ground on a big plant in Texas that will pull carbon dioxide out of the air. Dan’s problem is this: how do you bring the price of direct air captu ... Show More
25m 49s