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The airline industry is notoriously hard to decarbonize: large jets traveling long distances cant feasibly use batteries, and sustainable aviation fuel is still only produced in tiny volumes. As airlines explore a range of options, United Airlines Ventures Sustainable Flight Fund just invested in one possible solutiona system that uses crushed rocks to capture CO2 for use in fuel or to store underground. The fund announced today that it invested an unspecified amount in Heirloom, a company that uses a powder made from limestone to pull CO2 from the air, relying on the material’s natural ability to absorb the greenhouse gas. At a facility in Californias Central Valley, robots stack trays of the limestone powder into tall stacks exposed to outdoor air. Then the powder is heated in furnaces to release the CO2 so it can be used or stored. United also now has an agreement with Heirloom that gives it the right to buy up to half a million tons of carbon dioxide removal from the startup. We can either sequester it and track it as a carbon removal credit, or we can use it for [sustainable aviation fuel], says Andrew Chang, managing director at United Airlines Ventures. [Photo: Heirloom] The investors liked the basic simplicity of the technology. “We understand how limestone can capture and release CO2,” Chang says. “It is not a novel, unproven technology or catalyst or chemical pathway. It works: Heat it and cool it and it’ll lock and unlock CO2.” Several other companies are paying Heirloom for the service of carbon removal to offset emissions, including Microsoft, which has a long-term contract to buy as much as 315,000 metric tons of CO2 removal from the startup. If the captured CO2 is combined with green hydrogen, it can be made into fuel that can be used on existing planes. Some other sustainable aviation fuel is limited because of the feedstockmaking jet fuel from corn, for example, poses environmental challenges because of the amount of land that’s needed to grow it. (United has separately invested in biofuels made from corn, along with several other approaches.) But CO2 has a supply advantage: There’s more than enough extra CO2 in the atmosphere to meet the industry’s needs. Some startups, including Twelve and Infinium, are now beginning to scale up production of CO2-based sustainable aviation fuel. The carbon footprint is as much as 94% less than conventional jet fuel. (If airlines also pay Heirloom to remove CO2 and store it, that can help offset the remaining carbon footprint.) Right now, this type of sustainable aviation fuel is two to four times as expensive as traditional fuel, though as airlines work on long-term plans to cut emissions by 2050, there’s a path to eventual price parity. The same approach could be used to cut emissions in other hard-to-decarbonize industries, like cargo shipping. United’s investment will help Heirloom scale up production faster. “The funding will be used to continue to drive down the cost of the technology, develop additional projects, and provide the funding needed to subsequently access infrastructure capital,” says Heirloom spokesperson Scott Coriell. The startup is focused on what it calls “deployment-led innovation,” using real-world installations to help it iterate and reduce costs. “As we continue to build larger projects, costs will come down and the market will grow,” he says. “The critical objective to scale [direct air capture] is to repeat this cycle again and again.” Ultimately, though huge volumes of captured CO2 could be used to make fuel, the carbon removal industry will have to grow even faster to deal with the problem of CO2 in the atmosphere; even as companies cut emissions, pulling CO2 out of the air is necessary to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. Around a trillion extra tons of CO2 have been added to the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution, and the number keeps growing. As it’s captured, much of it will be stored. “We believe that over time, the vast majority of CO2 will end up underground,” Coriell says. “Even in a world where aviation, and other hard-to-abate industries, transition to cleaner fuels, there will still be billions of tons of CO2 emissions that will need to be abated each year.”
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E-Commerce
An annual United Nations conference on biodiversity that ran out of time last year will resume its work Tuesday in Rome with money at the top of the agenda.That is, how to spend what’s been pledged so farand how to raise a lot more to help preserve plant and animal life on Earth.The talks in Colombia known as COP16 yielded some significant outcomes before they broke up in November, including an agreement that requires companies that benefit from genetic resources in naturesay, by developing medicines from rainforest plantsto share the benefits. And steps were taken to give Indigenous peoples and local communities a stronger voice in conservation matters.But two weeks turned out to be not enough time to get everything done.The Cali talks followed the historic 2022 COP15 accord in Montreal, which included 23 measures aimed at protecting biodiversity. Those included putting 30% of the planet and 30% of degraded ecosystems under protection by 2030, known as the Global Biodiversity Framework.“Montreal was about the ‘what’what are we all working towards together?” said Georgina Chandler, head of policy and campaigns for the Zoological Society London. “Cali was supposed to focus on the ‘how’putting the plans and the financing in place to ensure we can actually implement this framework.”“They eventually lost a quorum because people simply went home,” said Linda Krueger of The Nature Conservancy, who is in Rome for the two days of talks. “And so now we’re having to finish these last critical decisions, which are some of the the nitty-gritty decisions on financing, on resource mobilization, and on the planning and monitoring and reporting requirements under the Global Biodiversity Framework.”The overall financial aim was to achieve $20 billion a year in the fund by 2025, and then $30 billion by 2030. So far, only $383 million had been pledged as of November, from 12 nations or subnations: Austria, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Japan, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Norway, Province of Québec, Spain, and the United Kingdom.Participants will discuss establishing a “global financing instrument for biodiversity” intended to effectively distribute the money raised. And a big part of the talks will be about raising more money. ‘Completely off track’ on larger financial goal Chandler and Kruger both said the finance points at Colombia’s talks were particularly contentious.“It’s really about how do we collect the money and how do we get it distributed fairly, get it to the ground where it’s needed most, so that that’s really the core issue,” said Kruger.Oscar Soria, chief executive of The Common Initiative, a think tank specializing in global economic and environmental policy, was pessimistic about raising a great deal more money.“We are completely off track in terms of achieving that money,” Soria said. Key sources of biodiversity finance are shrinking or disappearing, he said.“What was supposed to be a good Colombian telenovela in which people will actually bring the right resources, and the happy ending of bringing their money, could actually end up being a tragic Italian opera, where no one actually agrees to anything and everyone loses,” Soria said.Susana Muhamad, Colombia’s former environment minister and the COP16 president, said she’s hopeful of “a good message from Rome.”“That message is that still, even with a very fragmented geopolitical landscape, with a world increasingly in conflict, we can still get an agreement on some fundamental issues,” Muhamad said in a statement. “And one of the most important is the need to protect life in this crisis of climate change and biodiversity.”Global wildlife populations have plunged on average by 73% in 50 years, according to an October report from the World Wildlife Fund and the Zoological Society of London.“Biodiversity is basically essential to our livelihoods and well-being,” Chandler said. “It’s essential to the the air we breathe, the water we drink, rainfall that food systems rely on, protecting us from increasing temperatures and increasing storm occurrences as well.”Chandler said deforestation in the Amazon has far-reaching impacts across South America, just as it does in the Congo Basin and other major biodiverse regions worldwide.“We know that has an impact on rainfall, on food systems, on soil integrity in other countries. So it’s not just something that’s kind of small and isolated. It’s a widespread problem,” she said. The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org. Steven Grattan, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
New York City collected $48.6 million in revenue from the first month of its congestion pricing program that the Trump administration has moved to kill, a transit agency said. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) said on Monday that in January the program reduced congestion and raised $48.6 million with $11.1 million in expenses and net operating revenue of $37.5 million. New York Governor Kathy Hochul met with President Donald Trump on Friday to make the case for the congestion pricing program. Under the program, which launched on January 5, most passenger vehicles are charged $9 during peak periods to enter Manhattan south of 60th Street. Trucks and buses pay up to $21.60. The fee is reduced by 75% at night. The MTA, which has issued $900 million in debt for the congestion system infrastructure costs and capital projects, projected Monday it is on track to raise $500 million in net revenue the first year, noting it only collected revenue for 27 days in January. In total, 68% of revenue came from passenger vehicles, 22% taxis and ride share vehicles, 9% from trucks and 1% motorcycles and buses. The MTA sued last week seeking to block Trump’s effort to terminate the program. Hochul has said that funds raised from the program would underpin $15 billion in debt financing for mass transit capital improvements. The program was approved in the final months of former President Joe Biden’s administration. Charged via electronic license plate readers, private cars pay once a day regardless of how many trips they make into the central business district. A few other cities have implemented congestion pricing systems. London, which began its system in 2003, now charges 15 pounds ($18.70). Singapore and Sweden also have congestion pricing plans. Before the fee, New York said more than 700,000 vehicles entered the Manhattan central business district daily, slowing traffic to around 7 miles per hour (11 kph) on average, which is 23% slower than in 2010. David Shepardson, Reuters
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