A team of researchers from Iceland is looking to fight climate change by turning greenhouse gases into rocks.
A recent paper published in Science details how researchers have been able to capture carbon emissions and lock them in the ground, transforming them from harmful atmospheric greenhouse gases to volcanic rock.
“Our results show that between 95 and 98 percent of the injected carbon dioxide was mineralized over the period of less than two years, which is amazingly fast,” said lead author Juerg Matter.
A large majority of all electricity in Iceland come from geothermal energy. While geothermal may seem like a very clean source of energy, it is not carbon dioxide independent.
In fact, the geothermal energy of Iceland produces 40,000 pounds of carbon dioxide every year. That is only about five percent of what a fossil fuel plant of the same size would emit, but research team is looking to work toward a completely carbon dioxide independent economy.
