In Paul Dauenhauer’s playbook, shrinking from a challenge is nowhere to be found. Now, the University of Minnesota chemical engineering professor and alumnus is tackling the biggest: building a low-cost, scalable technology to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
The world’s climate scientists are in consensus that our planet is warming. But if Dauenhauer’s technology for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is widely adopted, it will be not just an ecological benefit but an economic one.
“The cost of doing nothing to address climate change is enormous,” says Dauenhauer, a Distinguished McKnight University Professor in the College of Science and Engineering and a 2020 recipient of the MacArthur Fellowship. “It’s so large that the cost of mitigating climate change is significantly cheaper to society.”
Dauenhauer and his business partner, chemical engineer and fellow University of Minnesota alumnus Andrew Jones, believe they have invented a way to trap carbon dioxide and return it to the earth, effectively undoing some of the damage. Through their startup company, Minneapolis-based Carba, they have developed a proprietary process that converts plant-based waste material into biochar, a stable material that sequesters carbon and can be buried underground for more than 1,000 years.
One of their reactors operates at a Twin Cities-area sanitary landfill, where the resulting biochar could function like an activated carbon filter, preventing harmful substances such as PFAS, lead, and mercury from leaching into the environment.
A crisis like no other
Reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide is critical for any climate solution, but current technologies are difficult to scale effectively. However, Dauenhauer says, Carba’s simple, low-cost approach can be widely deployed—a key advantage.
“The metric that matters is the cost of removing enough carbon to have an impact,” says Dauenhauer. “Engineers need to design and evaluate large-scale processes to really understand the economic viability of new climate technologies.”
According to the World Economic Forum and other sources, meeting global climate goals may require removing up to 10 billion tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year by 2050. Even if it costs as little as $100 per ton, it means a $1 trillion annual market—hence its enormous economic potential.
