Too much CO2 in the atmosphere: “You have to rethink”

Saving CO2 is the climate protection requirement of the hour – but is that enough? An Austro-Bavarian entrepreneur says no – and is working on more advanced methods.

The Austrian-Bavarian entrepreneur Frank Obrist used to develop CO2-free air conditioning systems for the car industry. Now Obrist wants to get the carbon dioxide responsible for global warming out of the atmosphere. “It’s not enough to become climate-neutral,” says the 61-year-old company boss. “Humanity will have to remove some of the greenhouse gases emitted from the atmosphere again in the coming decades.” At the invitation of the UN organization UNIDO, Obrist wants to present his concept to politicians and experts at the World Climate Summit today. Cars with a combustion engine on board should help here. Sounds completely paradoxical at first glance, but on closer inspection his vision of climate-positive individual mobility does not seem so far-fetched. In any case, prominent scientists support the bold ideas of the Austrian, who has had his company headquarters in Lindau, Bavaria, on Lake Constance since May.

Celebrity Supporters

Franz Josef Radermacher, a member of the Club of Rome for 20 years and an advisor to UN Secretary-General Guterres on climate issues for some time now, speaks of a “great idea”. Robert Schlögl, who is the only scientist in Germany to head two Max Planck Institutes and will be President of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation next year, works closely with Obrist.

Schlögl has done essential preparatory work for the project. The specialist for chemical energy conversion has set up an industrial production plant for methanol at the Thyssenkrupp Group, which operates Europe’s largest steelworks in Duisburg and causes five percent of Germany’s CO2 emissions here alone. It first generates hydrogen with an electrolyser, and in a second step CO2 is added from the blast furnaces. This produces the alcohol methanol, which can be used as a fuel. “With our plant in Duisburg, we have proven that methanol can be scaled up industrially in this way, i.e. it can be produced in huge quantities,” says Schlögl.

New technological territory

Obrist wants to go two steps further. The first: He doesn’t want to take the CO2 from industrial plants, but from the ambient air. When the methanol produced in this way is then burned in the engine, only as much CO2 is produced as was previously removed from the air. Such drives are considered climate-neutral: the amount of greenhouse gas remains the same despite combustion. But even that doesn’t go far enough for Obrist. “We need to start clawing back the crap that we’ve released over the last few decades.” In other words: reduce the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.

Specifically, Obrist wants to convert part of the carbon dioxide filtered from the air during methanol production into solid carbon, store it and thus remove it from the atmosphere permanently. Schlögl has not yet done that in Duisburg. The chemist speaks of a challenge that can be solved. “I think the idea makes a lot of sense. In this way you can build a carbon sink and thus get closer to the goals of the Paris climate agreement.” Radermacher also supports Obrist’s idea: “We have to remove ten billion tons of CO2 from the atmosphere every year, and Obrist’s concept can help with that.”

E fuels instead of BEVs

Paradoxically, cars could also contribute to this. Obrist wants to use the green methanol in a powertrain he has developed. His company converted a conventional battery electric car (BEV). The large battery was replaced by a very small one and a small methanol engine was installed, which runs as a generator and continuously produces a large part of the traction current on board. The advantages of the concept: Thanks to the small battery, this electric car with a combustion engine is much cheaper than conventional BEVs, it has a longer range and does not need an expensive rapid charging infrastructure.

“My goal is affordable electric mobility for everyone in the world,” says Obrist. Radermacher takes a similar view. The BEV is “a niche product for the wealthy in rich countries. Concepts with so-called e-fuels make much more sense because they can be implemented anywhere in the world.”

Cheap solar power from desert states

Critics, on the other hand, object that the energy required to produce these synthetic fuels is far too high. “In order to drive a combustion car with e-fuels, you need five times as much solar and wind power as to operate an electric car – and then the whole thing will also be five times as expensive. In Germany we will not set up so many solar systems and wind turbines can,” objected Volker Quaschning. He is an expert in regenerative energy systems at the University of Applied Sciences in Berlin.

But Obrist does not want to set up his CO2 sink in Germany. He wants to locate the production facilities in the sun belt of the earth – i.e. in countries with large deserts where the sun shines almost every day of the year, which is why the efficiency of the solar systems is much higher than in Germany. In the Gulf States of the Middle East, for example, a kilowatt hour of solar power already costs less than one cent. At these prices, says Obrist, it doesn’t matter that you need five times more green electricity for my drive concept than for a BEV. Because the BEV in Germany can only run on the scarce and therefore expensive green electricity that can be produced locally. But his concept can use cheap green electricity from other parts of the world and also build up a carbon sink. And even if it sounds paradoxical: “The more we drive cars that use this fuel, the greater it becomes.”

“Great Opportunity for Africa”

“We have to rethink: driving a car can remove CO2 from the atmosphere,” agrees Radermacher. But until that happens, two huge problems still have to be solved: the production facilities in the desert are only available as computer animations. Building it will cost many billions, and investors still have to be found for it. And the electric car with a combustion engine has so far only been available as a prototype. Although Obrist has spoken to many major manufacturers, he has not yet been able to convince anyone to mass-produce his drive concept. He also wants to promote this during his appearance at the World Climate Conference.

The fact that he is allowed to speak there at all is thanks to an invitation from the UN organization UNIDO, which promotes industrial development in poorer countries. At the opening of Obrist’s tech center in Lindau at the end of May, UNIDO representative Katarina Barunika described the production of green methanol as a “great opportunity for Africa”. The sun-rich countries would be ideal for producing green fuel for the energy supply of the future.