16 Negative Emission Culture

Climate change is an incontrovertible reality. 17 of the 18 warmest years ever recorded came in the 21st century.

To counteract this development, climate-friendly processes that reduce the emission of greenhouse gases are only a beginning. Even innovative, completely climate-neutral processes and products are now no longer enough to effectively slow down global warming. The growing awareness in society of the implications of climate change has led to more customer groups demanding climate-neutral products and services.

If certain products or services cannot be produced or provided in a climate-friendly manner, companies will have to use accompanying services to cut their CO2 output in order to ensure their climate neutrality. Indeed, the climate neutrality aspect of each company will become an important success factor in the future.

Actively reducing or binding the levels of the greenhouse gas CO2 in the atmosphere must become the main priority of both nations and companies if they really wish to make an effective contribution to protecting the climate. A technical solution is available in the form of so-called carbon sequestration. This involves using specific technologies to capture CO2 during industrial production processes and permanently storing it in underground reservoirs. Another approach for actively reducing CO2 views the CO2 available in the earth’s atmosphere as a valuable resource. Using an air capture method, the CO2 is taken as a raw material and then used, for example, in the production of fuels.

All these various levels of developments not only highlight the growing awareness of climate change and its consequences, but are also signs of a developing culture of actively reducing emissions – the beginning of the “Negative Emission Culture” era.

Etsy offsets carbon emissions from shipping

Etsy is the first e-commerce platform to offset all of its shipping-generated carbon emissions. Both Etsy sellers and bu...

March 8, 2019

Burger chain presents climate positive menu

The Swedish fast-food chain MAX Burgers now offers customers the world's first climate positive menu. The company uses c...

October 24, 2018

Shopping app reduces carbon footprint

The Malta-based start-up Ecoingot offers users an app that helps them to change their shopping behaviour by enabling the...

March 1, 2019

Ride-hailing service in green mode

In Seattle, Lyft is testing the introduction of a "Green Mode" that lets users of the Lyft app choose electric and hybri...

February 22, 2019

Mineral water with CO2 from the air

Valser Mineralquellen GmbH, a Swiss subsidiary of Coca-Cola, has partnered with the start-up Climeworks to reuse CO2 in ...

January 8, 2019

Bricks made of organic cement

The start-up bioMason has reinvented the production of bricks and developed a climate-friendly alternative to traditiona...

January 10, 2019

Self-healing polymer converts greenhouse gas

Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a self-healing polymer that absorbs carbon dio...

October 30, 2018

A2F process for producing oil from air

The Canadian company Carbon Engineering has developed a process called "Air to Fuels" (A2F) that absorbs the greenhouse ...

February 9, 2018

Power plant turns carbon dioxide into stone

A pilot project has been going on for some time at the Icelandic geothermal power plant Hellisheidi. It is run by the Sw...

November 2, 2017

Climeworks captures CO2 from the air

The Swiss start-up Climeworks has opened the world's first commercially used CO2 filter plant that extracts CO2 from the...

June 26, 2017

Regular long-haul flight with biofuel

Virgin Atlantic, as part of its partnership with the biofuel manufacturer LanzaTech, has for the first time used its fue...

November 20, 2018

Probiotics for plants reduce CO2

The US start-up Locus Agricultural Solutions offers the probiotic mixture "Rhizolizer", which is intended to make agricu...

February 20, 2019

Independent CO2 power plant for the home

The start-up Gensoric has developed a fridge-sized system called Willpower Energy for private homes and it uses electric...

December 28, 2018

Hybrid system converts CO2 into energy

A team of researchers from UNIST in South Korea and Georgia Tech in the US has developed a so-called hybrid-Na-CO2 syste...

February 25, 2019

Bacteria converts CO2 into fuel

The scientist Daniel Nocera from Harvard University has developed the bacteria "Ralstonia eutropha" which uses targeted ...

June 15, 2016

CO2 becomes ethanol

While trying to convert carbon dioxide into fuel, scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the US state of Tenness...

October 25, 2016