Carbon neutrality – a trend or salvation from the Earth's climate crisis

Carbon neutrality is a term that means that the company has significantly reduced emissions of carbon dioxide and its analogues in the course of its production activities or compensated for these emissions through carbon-negative projects carried out at its own expense on the territory of other industries.

Scientists divide the emissions of companies into three areas of coverage. The first scope is the direct emissions of the enterprise during production. The second scope includes energy consumption. It is important to understand from which sources the company received energy: coal plants, nuclear power plants, hydroelectric power plants and others. The third scope includes the entire product life cycle chain: purchase of raw materials, delivery, sale, use, disposal, etc., that is, emissions that are not directly related to the manufacturer.

Three main ways to achieve carbon neutrality:
1) Reduction of direct emissions and transition to renewable energy sources – hydrogenation, solar energy, wind energy.
2) Direct capture of CO2 from the air.
3) Compensation through investing in projects that reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

1. Reduction of direct emissions.

This method is considered the most effective, since the company directly eliminates the source of CO2 emissions. It is good because it makes it easy to identify steps to reduce emissions, since they are direct, not indirect. The latter are embedded in a long chain of the product life cycle, so it is quite difficult to calculate the compensated amount of carbon dioxide emissions and determine the ultimate culprit.

The problem is that this path is associated with economic constraints – reducing direct emissions is often associated with a decrease in production, which means a drop in the company's income. If production is not reduced, financial investments will require technologies that would reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Often companies simply do not go for it because of economic inexpediency. 

2. Direct capture of CO2 from the air. 

Direct capture of CO2 is, in fact, the ”sucking” of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. It can be ”buried” underground for long-term storage or used in chemical processes for the production of fuel, plastic and other materials. 

The most common method of capturing is to pass air over a special liquid. CO2 sticks to the mixture, but the rest of the air does not. The mixture is then recycled, releasing carbon dioxide using heat.

Carbon Capture Bioenergy (BECCS) – a technology that can be attributed to the direct capture of emissions, but the capture does not come from the atmosphere, but from the burning of biomass. Biomass includes plants and agricultural crops.

Energy from alcohol and manure: advantages and disadvantages of biofuels. The advantage of this technology is that is has negative emissions. Plants absorb CO2 through photosynthesis, and when they are burned, they give carbon back, thus instant capture occurs, and carbon does not enter the atmosphere. Thus, plants absorb carbon dioxide, but then they do not emit it back into the atmosphere – this is how negative emissions occur, that is, the actual reduction of carbon dioxide in the total volume.

3. Compensation through investing in carbon-negative projects.

There are a lot of projects to compensate for carbon dioxide. This can be both support for natural processes, and assistance to other companies and non-profit sector in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. One of the most popular ways to compensate for natural absorption is reforestation. But there are others less well-known – for example, the restoration of an environment containing ”blue carbon”.

”Blue carbon” is carbon that is stored in coastal or marine ecosystems. Mangroves, swamps and algae thickets are essentially protection against climate change, as they absorb CO2 from the atmosphere. This process is even faster than that of forests. Today, there are already examples of companies investing in the restoration of mangrove forests in Southeast Asia. 

Another way is to increase the productivity of the ocean. For the most part, these are still only theoretical studies. One idea is to add nutritious iron to those parts of the ocean where it is not enough. This should cause accelerated flowering of microscopic plants (phytoplankton), which capture carbon dioxide through photosynthesis.

World leaders have agreed that the most effective way to combat climate change is to directly reduce emissions. The main focus should be on mitigation, reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. It won't be easy, but it will undoubtedly be easier than applying carbon-negative technologies on a significant scale.

At the general debate of the 76th session of the UN General Assembly, President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev said that our Republic intends to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060. The Head of State noted that the climate of Kazakhstan, as the largest landlocked country, is changing faster than the global average, which threatens the population and economy.