Moving from thinking to acting about carbon
To bring an idea into the world, it takes a dream, a secret, and a spreadsheet. Our secret is hydrochar. Our dream is to make it the base layer of a global carbon economy.
“Nothing is more powerful than an idea at the right time.” — Victor Hugo
In our newsletters so far, we tried to make the case for the potential that hydrochar offers to protect the climate in a simple, decentralized, economically feasible way.
Practical experience, technical solutions, and a wealth of scientific research already exist for many of the building blocks we laid out. However, many of them still exist in hiding. And in our opinion, that is definitely not where they should be.
In order to promote and support them, as well as to implement them in practice, it is necessary to create greater publicity, scientific support and political awareness so that hydrothermal carbonization can realize its full potential.
For the German-speaking area, a group of interested citizens from various scientific areas including economics, technology, law, and management have now joined forces to make this happen. And in the good old German tradition, start by incorporating an association.
We can now proudly announce the foundation of act4carbon e.V.!
As founding members of act4carbon, our shared background is a long engagement with the many aspects of climate protection, including its often meandering history.
We are keenly aware that too little is being done, so we used the impetus to get involved personally and move away from the often politicized public debate and close in on making the practical solution we mapped out in the last months reality.
For many of us, it provides an opportunity to offer our energy, imagination, commitment, realism and expertise, and transform them into the first practical implementations. For humans, animals and nature. To start today, so that there is a future worth living.
In its founding manifesto, act4carbon has set itself the objective of evaluating and promoting technologies and make them accessible to the general public, the scientific community, and the political class in support of climate goals, and to enable the safe and permanent sequestration of carbon.
We see it as the first building block, the civic-minded seed of an emerging ecosystem.
Reflection, development, advancement, and promotion
The association is now a recognized non-profit organization. Its stated purpose is:
the promotion of environmental protection, including climate protection, as well as the promotion of science and research. In particular, the purpose of the association is to protect humans and the environment from the adverse effects of climate change caused by increased CO2 emissions and to promote (elementary) carbon capture and storage.
Our means to achieve this purpose include:
Activities of networking scientific and practical expertise in the context of carbon sequestration.
Reflection, development, advancement, and promotion of effective measures and facilities for the long-term sequestration of carbon dioxide in the form of carbon.
Public awareness, promotion of public discourse in the spirit of the association's purpose.
But this is only a small part of what we plan to achieve.
The first working groups within act4carbon are already up and running.
The first one deals with the practical, technical process steps necessary for the production of hydrochar and the additional possibilities that result from it, including phosphorus recovery and many others.
A second working group is dedicated to the evaluation of carbon qualities and quantities for subsequent sequestration and the practical possibilities of sequestration.
And yet another group is concerned with the definition of a credible certification process of negative emissions that can be derived from these activities.
The initial focus is on the hydrothermal carbonization of biologically generated residues (carbon-rich biomass) in order to remove carbon from the atmosphere for a long time, or to create transitional substitutes for fossil fuels.
However, we are not limiting ourselves to this. If new or more suitable approaches to achieving these goals are found along the way — in the sense of serendipity — then these can also be integrated.
The act4carbon association is set up more broadly, so that everything that serves the goals of climate protection can be part of the association's work, including the adjacent solid carbon processes pyrolysis, torrefaction, and leaching.
We plan to entice important contacts to join the association, both individuals and organizations. To this end, we already established new contacts in industry, academia, and politics. The first feedback was already more than positive — the first initiatives have been initiated on the spot.
We feel like we have thrown the pebble into the water; the first ripples are forming!
To bring an idea into the world, it takes a dream, a secret, and a spreadsheet. Our secret is our expertise in hydrochar and hydrothermal carbonization. Our dream is to make it the base layer of a global carbon economy. The “spreadsheet” is the list of things we need to tackle to get this started, and the list of people, companies, organizations, and governments we need to convince of our case.
If you feel you want to join us in this endeavor, please get in touch with us!
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