Abstract
Reducing carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions is essential to slowing climate change, but many major sources of emissions cannot be easily eliminated. Carbon capture technologies, which remove CO₂ either directly from the air or from industrial exhaust gases, are therefore expected to play a crucial role in meeting global climate targets. However, deploying these technologies on a meaningful scale presents a major challenge. Global CO₂ emissions exceed 35 billion metric tons each year, and capturing even a fraction of this amount requires enormous quantities of effective capture materials. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projects that billions of metric tons of CO₂ will need to be removed in the coming decades to limit global warming, yet current technologies operate on a much smaller scale. This lecture provides an overview of carbon capture technologies, the strengths and limitations of existing approaches, and why new materials are urgently needed. It also highlights recent research from our group on transforming waste plastics into low-cost materials for large-scale carbon capture.
