Air France-KLM, easyJet and Lufthansa have announced, with Airbus, their intention to jointly explore solutions aimed at storing CO2 captured in the air underground.
It’s an alliance that has style and idea. On Monday, Airbus and the companies Air Canada, Air France-KLM, easyJet, International Airlines Group (British Airways and Iberia), LATAM, Lufthansa and Virgin Atlantic announced that they had signed a letter of intent around the future supply and direct capture of carbon in the air, using a high-potential technology.
A complementary solution, which would allow the sector to extract the equivalent of its emissions emitted into the atmosphere
The idea of this consortium is to take advantage of the technology of direct capture before storage of carbon in the air (DACCS or Direct Air Carbon Capture and Storage). Using powerful fans powered by energy from solar panels, the DACCS filters the air to capture CO2in order to store the latter in a safe and permanent way in the ground, more precisely in geological reservoirs.
The aeronautics industry, aware that it cannot capture the emissions released into the atmosphere at source, thinks that a solution for capturing and storing carbon directly in the air would allow it to extract more or less the equivalent emissions emitted into the atmosphere as a result of its activities.
Airbus and its partners intend to use this direct air capture technology as a complement to other solutions used to reduce carbon emissions, such as sustainable aviation fuel (SAF).
A capacity to capture one million tonnes of CO2 in the air every year
This partnership was concluded with the company 1PointFive, which has started the construction of a CO capture and storage site2 in the Permian Basin of Texas, USA. It should also be operational by 2024 and will have a capacity to capture one million tonnes of CO2 per year once it is fully operational, which is equivalent to the absorption capacity of approximately 40 million trees.
Airbus’ partnership with 1PointFive alone includes the pre-purchase of 400,000 tonnes to be delivered over four years. The airlines, on the other hand, have committed to a period from 2025 to 2028. Airbus Executive Vice President Communications and Corporate Affairs Julie Kitcher sees this as “ a concrete step towards using this promising technology for both Airbus’ own decarbonisation plan and the aviation sector’s ambition to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050 “.
The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) deems carbon removal necessary to help go beyond climate change mitigation and to encourage the sector towards its zero emissions goals.
Source : Airbus press release
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