Is this the solution to Britain’s climate crisis? Scientists pinpoint eight sites across the UK where they claim 3 billion tonnes of CO2 could be turned to STONE

The long-awaited solution to Britain’s climate crisis may finally be here.

Scientists have identified eight potential sites for ‘direct air capture machines’ (DACs) that would extract CO2 from the air and turn it into stone.

The eight promising locations include Antrim in Northern Ireland, Borrowdale in the Lake District and the Isle of Mull in Scotland.

According to experts, there is a rich underground volcanic rock in these areas that can react with CO2 and convert the greenhouse gas into a solid form.

Combined, the eight facilities can safely store more than three billion tonnes of CO2; This is equivalent to around 45 years of industrial emissions in the UK.

Researchers think the UK offers ‘the potential to store significant amounts of CO2’ as a weapon against climate change.

Professor Gilfillan, a geochemist at the University of Edinburgh and leader of the study, said ‘we urgently need carbon storage’ to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere.

“We suggest that this potential storage site should be part of the consideration for siting future DAC sites in the UK, particularly for early trials,” he told the Daily Mail.

‘CO2 mineralization offers the UK more space to store CO2, adding to the huge resource offered by rocks beneath the North Sea.’

Researchers analyzed the geology, chemistry and volume of reactive rocks at 21 sites across the UK, mostly in the north.

By combining the surface area and thickness of the rocks with details of their chemistry, they calculated how much CO2 each group of rocks could hold.

A total of eight made the final selection due to their suitability, with basalts from the Antrim Plateau in Northern Ireland topping the list.

Intermediate estimates found that the Antrim Plateau offered the greatest storage potential at 1,400 million tonnes of CO2.

This was followed by Borrowdale in the Lake District and Skye Lava Group in Scotland’s Inner Hebrides, which are estimated to offer 700 million tonnes and 600 million tonnes of storage respectively.

Rounding out the top eight were the Shetland Ophiolite Suite (Shetland Islands), the Isle of Mull (eastern Scotland), the Rum Island intrusives (Inner Hebrides), the Ballentrae Ophiolite Complex (southwest Scotland) and the Lizard ophiolite (Cornwall, England).

In these facilities, companies could be licensed to produce ‘carbon absorbing’ machines similar to those of Zurich-based firm Climeworks, which has already installed machines in Switzerland and Iceland.

These machines consist of huge steel fans that draw in CO2, dissolve the gas in water, and pump it deep underground.

The carbon-absorbing machines consist of a series of huge steel fans that draw in CO2, dissolve the gas in water and pump it deep into the ground. Within a few years, CO2 turns into solid form

Over a few years, CO2 turns into a solid mineral called carbonate when it comes into contact with certain rocks rich in metals such as iron, calcium and magnesium; This process is known as carbon mineralization.

Essentially, the method reduces the amount of greenhouse gases reaching the atmosphere by safely storing CO2 solidly underground.

According to the study’s authors, rocks in these eight regions are rich in calcium and magnesium, which easily bind with CO2 to form solid carbonate; This suggests that these may be ideal places.

‘Mineralization of CO2 in reactive formations has the potential to provide safe, scalable, permanent CO2 storage at an achievable cost,’ they write in their paper published in the journal Earth Science, Systems and Society.

‘To limit global warming to 1.5–2°C above pre-industrial levels, CO2 will need to be stored safely and permanently.’

According to Professor Gilfillan, the next steps will be to evaluate in detail the ‘effective porosity and rock reactivity’ in each region.

‘This will tell us how efficiently each formation can mineralize CO2 in practice,’ he said.

Pilot projects in Iceland and the US have already demonstrated rapid and safe mineralization of CO2, and now the UK government is monitoring this technology.

Discussions have begun with Climeworks to install an equivalent machine called Silver Birch, to be built at Stanlow, near Liverpool.

Capturing CO2 and storing it underground reduces the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and potentially offers a solution to global warming.

But critics warn that carbon capture and storage does not combat CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels, the main cause of global warming.

Environmental organization Greenpeace said carbon capture was a ‘scam’ relying on money coming from ‘the public’s wallet’.

Stuart Haszeldine, professor of carbon capture and storage at the University of Edinburgh, who was not involved in this new study, described CCS projects as a ‘deal with the devil’.

‘Storing two or five million tonnes of CO2 per year should not be a policy excuse for the release of additional tens or hundreds of million tonnes of CO2 due to the development of new oil and gas extraction through tens of new licences,’ Professor Haszeldine said.

Other concerns are that the process itself is very energy intensive and could therefore increase energy prices.

The technology also has security concerns; Some experts fear that once CO2 is stored underground, it could leak out and contaminate nearby water supplies or create tremors due to pressure building underground.