Scientists say giant floating islands turning atmospheric CO2 into fuel could prevent climate change

Scientists have said that millions of floating islands converting atmospheric carbon dioxide into fuel could help prevent our climate from burning fossil fuels. These proposed islands would be grouped together to create large-scale facilities that, if built sufficiently, could potentially offset total global fossil fuel emissions.

A team of Norwegian and Swiss researchers presented a proposal on "solar islands with methanol" in an article published in PNAS. The article states that most of the technologies for building these facilities already exist and that by creating them on a large scale in ocean areas where they would be safe from large waves and extreme weather conditions , we could significantly reduce the need for fossil fuels, limit the extent of global warming in the coming decades.

"Humanity must stop CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels if we want to avoid dangerous climate change," they wrote. "However, liquid carbon-based energy vectors are often without practical solutions for the vital applications of mobility.The recycling of atmospheric CO2 into synthetic fuels, using renewable energies, offers an energy concept without net CO2 emissions."

The author of the study, Andreas Borgschulte, told Newsweek One of the main problems of renewable energies is to make them competitive on a large scale with fossil fuels. Several concepts have been put forward to try to make renewable energies a realistic option, but nothing has yet succeeded. He added that the idea of ​​solar islands came when the government asked Norwegian researchers to push fish farms offshore. These networks, however, need their own energy. "Energy producing islands have been proposed a long time ago," he said. "What was left was to include energy storage."

In the paper, researchers suggest floating islands similar to large floating fish farms. They would use photovoltaic cells that can convert solar energy into electricity. This would then feed the hydrogen production and CO2 extraction from the seawater. The gases produced would then be reacted to form methanol that can be reused as fuel ", which is conveniently shipped to the final consumer, "they write.

The team indicated that 70 of these artificial islands would constitute a single facility covering an area of ​​approximately one square kilometer (0.4 square kilometers). The facilities could be placed in areas where the wave height would reach less than seven meters, where there would be a low probability of hurricanes and where the depth of the water would be less than 600 meters, so that Islands can be moored properly. Sites for facilities have been found around the world, with the coasts of South America, Australia, and Southeast Asia being particularly suitable.

The team estimates that the production of 3.2 million floating islands would be greater than the total global emissions from fossil fuels.

Production is still far away and the team recognizes that the proposal is "ambitious". At the moment, they are working on the development of prototypes of floating islands.

"[The] The biggest challenge is the development of a large-scale device to extract CO2 from seawater, "said Borgschulte. This process is the only one of the total system [that] has not yet been fully developed. All others already exist on an industrial scale. "