Out of thin air

Fossil fuels are simply ... brilliant: easy to handle, with a high energy density, versatile, available in large quantities, hence cheap. They are the foundation of our technological progress and prosperity over the last 200 years.

But there's quite a price tag that comes with it: The Earth is heading for climate collapse. Every year, we pump around 9.4 billion tons of carbon (in the form of CO₂) into the atmosphere. Natural processes, especially via vegetation and the oceans, partially compensate for this gigantic output. The bottom line, however, is an excess of around 5.1 billion tons of atmospheric carbon – every year. Since 1988, the CO₂ concentration in the atmosphere has been above 350 ppm (parts per million), which is considered the limit for climate stability. If this is exceeded for a longer period of time, the Earth's climate system is in danger of collapsing – with potentially irreversible consequences.

Business as usual is therefore not an option, and even net zero can only be an interim goal. What is needed is a holistic approach that can be both technically implemented and financed. Which brings us to Mining the Atmosphere. In contrast to simply capturing CO₂ and storing it in the ground – the necessary first step – the "mining" approach goes much further: The goal is to develop a completely new global economic model and the associated industrial sector that converts CO₂ as the raw material of the future into valuable materials to replace conventional building materials and petrochemicals.

This approach calls for a change of perspective: Where raw materials were previously mined underground, the focus is now shifting to the atmospheric "mine". At the same time, this affects society as a whole, which is changing from a CO₂-emitting society to a CO₂-binding society, via the energy transition heading for net zero over the next 20 years.

That's the idea – the implementation of which is a century-long task for which countless players from research and industry will have to work together. The challenge is to remove an estimated 400 billion tons of carbon (around 1,500 billion tons of CO₂) from the atmosphere.

And that is just the beginning. Then it's a matter of converting this carbon into value-adding materials, polymers, construction materials, etc. The construction sector, in particular, has a key role to play here, as concrete and other building materials could bind an enormous amount of atmospheric carbon due to their mass. After being recycled several times, the carbon-containing materials could eventually be deposited as a final carbon sink at the end of their service life.