The researchers propose growing crops that naturally absorb excess carbon from the air and then bury vegetation collected in bioengineered landfills that are kept dry with salts.

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It’s a new take on an existing process called agro-sequestration. If applied on a large enough scale, the results could be impressive, the researchers say. Plus, at the equivalent of just 53 cents per gallon of gasoline, that’s pretty good too.

We argue that proper engineering can solve the climate crisis 100 percent at an affordable price. If applied on a global scale, this method of carbon sequestration has the potential to eliminate current annual emissions of carbon dioxide as well as previous years’ emissions from the atmosphere.
— says Eli Yablonovych, lead author of the study, Doctor of Philosophy and professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

The most interesting thing here is that the method will allow to cancel past emissions. The point is that even if humanity achieves its goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, suddenly reducing them to zero right now, we will still have an atmosphere filled with greenhouse gases that have already accumulated over the past decades. Some dissipate over hundreds of years and warm the planet all the while. Therefore, in addition to reducing emissions, humanity desperately needs an effective technology to purify the air of pollutants.

Agricultural segregation has one major drawback: decomposing biomass breaks down to release carbon dioxide and methane, greatly reducing the overall amount of carbon this approach can store. By adding salt, the researchers hope to stop the decomposition of the landfill by drying it out completely and ensure it is preserved for “thousands of years.”

This could allow agricultural sequestration to be not only neutral but also carbon-negative. The team found that every metric ton of dry biomass can safely hold about two tons of CO2.₂This is a huge advantage for the environment.

The technology is scalable due to the large land area available for non-food biomass sources. If biomass production is increased to the level of a large crop, the available CO₂ can be removed from the atmosphere and at the same time retain a significant part of it. [поточних] global emissions”,
– tell the researchers.

The method has certain difficulties. Maintaining large-scale barriers to prevent biowaste from decomposing can be a difficult task, especially in conditions of prolonged rain. In addition, a large amount of salt is needed to empty the landfill.