Our Mission

Our research is focused on minimizing the environmental and climate impacts of our dependence on fossil fuels.

We focus on carbon management. This can be divided into three enormous problems:

1) How can we limit atmospheric accumulation of carbon dioxide?

We study technologies that avoid atmospheric release of CO2, like carbon capture. This can be applied to just about any stationary emitter, but some approaches are harder (and more expensive) than others.

It's most efficient to capture at the source, but we'll need more to hit our climate goals.

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Unfortunately, we're waaayyy behind schedule as a society. This means we'll also need carbon removal to take carbon dioxide back out of the atmosphere. We study engineered solutions like direct air capture and mineral carbonation that can be configured to sequester carbon dioxide safely and securely.

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2) What can we do with the carbon dioxide once it's captured?

We need to relocate billions of tonnes of CO2. This will take massive infrastructure, planning and oversight to minimize environmental and societal harms.

While carbon capture and carbon removal get much of the spotlight, we're still left with the problem of what to do with the captured CO2. Subsurface storage or conversion to minerals or other valuable products are compelling options, but logistics, political, geographical and physical barriers exist. We work to map relationships, chart pathways forward, and inspire policy toward the responsible deployment of these opportunities at scale.

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3) Will it scale?

Solutions can look promising on the bench top, but can they scale to meet our gigatonne needs? We examine the local and distributed environmental and societal impacts associated with the materials, energy and chemicals required to deploy these solutions swiftly, successfully and responsibly.