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<ul class="summary-list"><li>The <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/worlds-largest-carbon-removal-plant-iceland-climeworks-2024-5">carbon dioxide removal</a> company Equatic has begun designing its largest plant yet.</li><li>The project will be North America's first commercial-scale CDR plant, scheduled to go online by 2027.</li></ul><p>The oceans are our planet's largest <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/us-first-commercial-carbon-capture-facility-opens-2023-11">carbon sink</a>, naturally absorbing about 25% of the carbon dioxide that humans emit. Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) companies like Equatic are trying to harness that natural process to absorb even more.</p><p>"We take what the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/oceans-absorb-carbon-emissions-climate-change-2018-10">ocean does already</a> and amplify that," Edward Sanders, COO at Equatic, told Business Insider.</p><p>On June 18, Equatic <a target="_blank" href="https://www.equatic.tech/articles/equatic-to-build-north-americas-first-commercial-scale-ocean-based-carbon-removal-facility">announced</a> it started engineering designs for the world's first commercial-scale, ocean-based CDR plant, Sanders said. The plant could remove carbon dioxide at a rate that's 99,000 times as fast as the oceans.</p><p>Equatic is one of about a dozen <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/pitch-deck-ebb-carbon-carbon-emissions-ocean-acidification-20-million-2023-4">marine CDR companies</a> that have sprouted in recent years in an effort to accelerate the ocean's natural capacity to absorb more CO2. A <a target="_blank" href="https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/26278/a-research-strategy-for-ocean-based-carbon-dioxide-removal-and-sequestration">report</a> from the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine estimates that marine CDR could remove billions of tons of CO2 from the atmosphere.</p><p>The technology is still in its infancy and it's unclear what the environmental impacts will be — especially at a large scale. But CDR is a necessary step in <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/us-government-launches-largest-ever-carbon-removal-initiative-2023-8">mitigating climate change</a>; reducing greenhouse gas emissions is no longer enough to limit global warming to 1.5 °C to 2 °C by the end of the century, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.</p><h2 id="5b2c67a2-8fb9-4510-8523-f3ad8fbfa636">How Equatic is sucking CO2 from the air</h2><div type="image" title="illustration of Equatic's first commercial-scale carbon dioxide removal plant with hydrogen storage tanks on the left and removal technology on right" height="4320" width="7680" msid="111293591" hostid="261" sizebytes="3507668"></div><p>There are a lot of different ways to <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/us-steel-carbon-capture-does-it-work-reduce-emissions-controversial-2024-4">absorb CO2</a> from the atmosphere. Equatic's technology, for example, uses something called seawater electrolysis. It takes seawater and runs an electric current through it, which splits the water into hydrogen, oxygen, and two separate fluids: one acid and a base.</p><p>"The process stores carbon that was dissolved in the water as a solid, similar to the material that makes up seashells, and creates an alkaline slurry that removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere via a cooling tower," Sanders told BI over email.</p><p>As an added bonus, the hydrogen can be converted into <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/clean-hydrogen-fuel-reserves-could-be-hiding-underground-2024-3">clean hydrogen fuel</a>, which Equatic can either reuse to power its CDR plants or sell. Companies including Boeing and payment service provider Stripe have signed contracts with Equatic for its hydrogen.</p><h2 id="9b9ca663-632c-46dc-a908-bbc835176666">Equatic has proven its technology can work</h2><div type="image" title="Photo of an industrial plant emitting gases into the atmosphere with a wind farm in the background." height="1499" width="1999" msid="111293592" hostid="261" sizebytes="61620"></div><p>Equatic already has two small pilot plants to validate its technology — one in LA and a second in <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/sc/why-singapore-is-the-choice-location-for-firms-support-global-carbon-markets">Singapore</a>.</p><p>The company is also building a larger plant scheduled to go online in Singapore later in 2024, which will absorb about 4,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide annually and lay the groundwork for the company's first commercial-scale plant. That plant will launch in 2026 or 2027 in partnership with Canadian carbon removal project developer Deep Sky.</p><p>Researchers estimate that by 2050, it will cost between $230 and $540 to remove one ton of CO2 from the atmosphere. But Equatic offsets the cost of CDR by producing and selling green hydrogen. The company predicts the new plant could achieve CDR at less than $100 per ton by 2030.</p><p>Ultimately, Sanders envisions a global fleet of these CDR plants.</p><p>"Once we get to that point, we're not talking about a hundred thousand tons, we're not talking about millions of tons, we're talking about <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/richest-americans-income-creates-outsized-emissions-climate-crisis-2023-8">hundreds of millions of tons</a> because this technology can be replicated in many countries," Sanders said.</p><h2 id="c8463862-6d69-476c-82bf-0067e2bc4893">Questions remain about CDR's economic and environmental impact</h2><div type="image" title="Photo of a shoreline with bright blue blooms of algae nad other sealife in the water." height="1414" width="2121" msid="111293593" hostid="261" sizebytes="637988"></div><p>Since there are no commercial-scale, ocean-based CDR plants online yet, practically nothing is known about their impact on the environment and local economies.</p><p>In general, ocean-based CDR techniques manipulate seawater in ways that could potentially disrupt sea life.</p><p>"You're going to be pulling in <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/giant-plankton-bloom-thailand-sea-bright-green-fish-kill-environment-2023-9">phytoplankton</a> and bugs and other potential living creatures from the ocean and filtering those out can have some environmental impacts," Jessica Cross, an earth scientist with the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory who specializes in CDR for the oceans, told BI.</p><p>Exactly <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/increasing-carbon-emissions-ocean-acidification-2014-9">what those impacts</a> are depends on where a CDR operation is and what organisms are involved.</p><p>Sanders told BI that Equatic closely monitors discharge from its CDR plants to ensure they comply with legal pollution standards. Its upcoming plant in Singapore will also filter seawater to remove sea life before water enters the plant.</p><h2 id="1277f18c-6649-4f95-ae1f-933feb3495ab"><strong>We can't fully rely on CDR to mitigate climate change</strong></h2><p>Because CDR is expensive and limited in scale, we can't abandon decarbonization and <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/carbon-emissions-2022-record-renewables-growth-solar-wind-iea-2023-3">emissions reduction efforts</a>, Cross said.</p><p>The benefits of this technology are "far in the future, whereas the risks of initiating this industry and this infrastructure development are local, short-term, and much more immediate," Cross said.</p><p>"Figuring out how to balance, again, this sort of diffuse global benefit with this local risk that happens, it is something that responsible researchers should be grappling with," she said.</p>

A new carbon removal plant will absorb carbon dioxide 99,000 times faster than Earth's oceans 

<ul class="summary-list"><li>The Games' need for a massive infrastructure project has historically hurt host cities' environments.</li><li>Installing and using 5G technology could help minimize the Olympics' environmental impacts.</li></ul><p>When thousands of the world's best athletes descend on one city, it can wreak environmental havoc.</p><p>No single Olympic Games held between 1992 and 2020 was sufficiently sustainable, found <a target="_blank" href="https://affiliate.insider.com?h=c0d989491c74099378a20091f3e16aba6129c646e40d4b337bf98c0f4ca076c3&amp;postID=66a274b6d290cb433ad39ab1&amp;postSlug=paris-olympics-how-5g-tech-could-curb-environmental-impact-2024-7&amp;site=bi&amp;u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nature.com%2Farticles%2Fs41893-021-00696-5">a 2021 study</a> in the journal Nature that assessed the environmental impacts of the Games during that period.</p><p>For example, the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games damaged the city's local environment when an estimated <a target="_blank" href="https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/12/3/166#:~:text=During%20the%20seven%2Dyear%20preparation,Azevedo%202015%3B%20Zimbalist%202017).">77,000 people in favela communities were displaced</a> to make way for the event's infrastructure, according to a retrospective report published in 2023 in the journal Social Sciences.</p><p>From an environmental standpoint, the Rio de Janeiro Games <a target="_blank" href="https://katoikos.world/analysis/olympics-a-celebration-for-humanity-a-disaster-for-the-environment.html">produced</a> more than 17,000 metric tons of waste, used 29,500 gigawatts of electricity — the majority of which was not from renewable sources — and resulted in 3.6 million metric tons of carbon emissions, the Rio de Janeiro Games reported.</p><p>For the Paris Games, limiting environmental impact has been a greater concern than in past Olympics, with efforts across industries to reduce waste. Rather than build a series of new venues, existing ones have been repurposed. <a target="_blank" href="https://olympics.com/en/paris-2024/our-commitments/the-environment/infrastructures">Only one new permanent venue was constructed</a>, and there's more <a target="_blank" href="https://olympics.com/en/paris-2024/our-commitments/the-environment/organising-more-circular-games">renting than buying</a> when it comes to equipment like furniture to reduce waste. Sustainability initiatives also extend to the 5G technology powering the Olympic Games.</p><p>Orange, the telecommunications provider for the Paris Games, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.orange.com/en/allconnected/paris2024/paris-2024-how-orange-will-limit-its-environmental-impact">has set itself the goal</a> of limiting its carbon emissions to 10,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide. If met, Orange's carbon emissions would account for less than 1% of the total estimated emissions of the 2024 Olympics.</p><p>It's the latest example of how 5G providers are supporting sustainability efforts at global-scale live events.</p><p>"As sustainability initiatives around large public venues gather steam, we know IT teams are being asked to find ways to contribute to their organization's decarbonization efforts," said Kevin Swank, the product-marketing director at CommScope, a service provider that has worked on sports stadiums in France, Germany, and the US.</p><h2 id="1d0215d6-49e6-4444-b194-294cf1e5f1bd"><strong>Environmentally friendly technology that can support more fans</strong></h2><p>Though 5G systems require infrastructure installation, their technology is more sustainable than older connectivity systems like analog distributed antenna systems, Swank said.</p><p>Digital 5G systems use less power and less cooling than older systems, which need large amounts of power and cabling to run, Swank told Business Insider. And because 5G systems run digitally, they don't require as much physical infrastructure as their predecessors, Swank added.</p><p>He said he witnessed the positive impact — on the environment and the fan experience — when CommScope updated the internet infrastructure at <a target="_blank" href="https://www.commscope.com/globalassets/digizuite/965502-atandt-stadium-cs-115933-en.pdf">AT&amp;T Stadium in Arlington, Texas</a>, the home of the Dallas Cowboys, in 2020.</p><p>"The venue was reaching the performance limits of its equipment, and its current network just couldn't keep up with the growing demands of a mobile-device-centric fan base," Swank told BI. The stadium needed a 5G network that could support augmented-reality features and mobile-ordering capabilities for concessions for up to 100,000 visitors at a time.</p><p>By switching to 5G, the stadium's network performance increased tenfold, while its power use went down by about 87% and its cooling requirements decreased by up to 75%, a project report from CommScope said. Those reductions equate to over 100 metric tons in CO2 emissions savings a year, Swank said.</p><p>The stadium's 5G system resulted in just five equipment storage racks compared with the 30 to 40 racks previously required for its analog equipment.</p><p>Because of these advantages, 5G is quickly gaining steam within the entertainment industry as events continue to grow in scale and attendees expect more seamless experiences.</p><h2 id="4de8c9b0-599e-4fa3-9e87-59f5acb6ad1c"><strong>Recycling 5G equipment for more sustainability</strong></h2><p>To work toward its carbon-emissions goal for the Paris Games, Orange decreased its equipment manufacturing and infrastructure-deployment footprint. Orange, in partnership with the consultancy Carbone4, estimated that 86% of its global footprint came from those two areas.</p><p>For the Paris Olympics, the company is using more local suppliers and shipping bulky items by sea rather than air to reduce emissions. Orange said it planned to rent one-quarter of its equipment and estimated that 75% of the equipment would be reused or redeployed after the Games.</p><p>Generally, the 5G networks used at sports venues' large events can be reused after the events end and the increased capacity is no longer needed, said Kelvin Chaffer, the CEO of Lifecycle Software, which provides support systems for network operators.</p><p>"By designing infrastructure that can be repurposed for other community uses postevent, and implementing green technologies and sustainable practices," Chaffer said. He added that this approach gives large sporting event organizers the ability "to minimize the environmental impact of event-triggered infrastructure projects."</p>

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A new carbon removal plant will absorb carbon dioxide 99,000 times faster than Earth's oceans

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How 5G technology is helping curb carbon emissions and waste at the Paris Games

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