As the world grapples with rising water use and climate-fueled drought, countries from the United States to Israel to Australia are building huge desalination plants to bolster their water supplies. These plants can create water for thousands of households by extracting the salt from ocean water, but they have also drawn harsh criticism from many environmental groups: Desalinating water requires a huge amount of energy, and it also produces a toxic brine that many plants discharge right back into the ocean, damaging marine life. Recent desalination plant proposals have drawn furious opposition in Los Angeles and Corpus Christi, Texas.
But a new startup called Capture6 claims it can solve desalination’s controversial brine problem with another controversial climate technology: carbon capture. The company announced new plans this week to build a carbon-capture facility in South Korea that will work in tandem with a nearby desalination plant, sucking carbon dioxide out of the air and storing it in desalination brine, which it will import from the plant. But that’s not all. Capture6 also claims it can wring n... Read more
