Besides energy, land, and cost advantages, the shining star that sets CO2Rail apart from other CDR solutions may be in its scaling-related adjunct benefits unrelated to rail or even carbon removal. Indeed, it is certainly optimal that in solving one challenge an unrelated challenge can be correspondingly addressed rather than compounded or, worse, created anew.
To begin with, of the seven scaling challenges presented in the previous section, three are shared dilemmas across all types of DAC deployments. Indeed, massively scaling up unit production capabilities, renewable sources of input energy, and increasing DAC efficiency will be universal boardroom topics of discussion no matter if your DAC solution has wheels or remains terra-firmly affixed.
Four of the seven are indeed rail related challenges but, again, solving for them benefits far more than just rail or even carbon capture. For instance, a comprehensive national push to increase both freight and passenger rail utilization will help enable robust CO2Rail deployment. This might mean longer, and more frequent stops at rail crossings for some drivers but also drastically less truck and auto traffic, less traffic congestion, corresponding higher workforce productivity and quality of life, fewer accidents, highway fatalities, and far, far fewer corresponding emissions due to rail’s dramatically improved efficiency and CO2Rail’s emission co-capture capabilities. [1] In this way, by increasing rail utilization to help scale CO2Rail’s global CO2 harvesting capacity, co-occurring further significant reductions in CO2 emissions can be achieved. This is the kind of “two-for-one” achievement the quintessential buzzword “synergy” was meant for.
Such efforts will also come part and parcel with improvements in critical national infrastructure, rail safety, speed, and efficiency. Automated train braking systems and increased use of energy braking systems mean increased regenerative braking energy but also safer trains, less wear of friction braking components, fewer way-side fires, accidents, and dangerous, polluting derailments. Faster and heavier trains likewise mean increased regenerative braking energy but also newer and safer rail infrastructure and a more efficient global transportation network with increased rail utilization by both freight and passenger users. All of which will loop back and further encourage rail utilization and further compound the above noted adjunct benefits.
Moreover, legions of skilled, high-paying jobs in the railroad, rail equipment, DAC, and corresponding upstream sectors will be created as well as legislative, popular, and corporate support of climate change mitigation and carbon removal programs. Here too we find rare synergies.
Moreover, CO2Rail does not require that rail transportation continue to operate in the status quo and, for example, use fossil fuels to remain a viable carbon-negative solution, only that it remains in motion. In fact, given that transportation is perhaps the most well-developed sector in sustainability, we can envision a time in the not-too-distant future where rail may transition entirely to alternative fuels such as hydrogen-powered locomotives or move towards broader deployment of sustainably-sourced rail electrification. In this case, rail transportation will organically become zero-carbon, dedicated CO2Rail cars which remove locomotive emissions will no longer be necessary, the entirety of on-board generated energy can be dedicated to ambient air DAC, and environmentally dispersed atmospheric carbon dioxide removal will correspondingly increase.