AWARD YEAR
2023
CATEGORY
Work
GOALS
Climate Action
KEYWORDS
climate change, Reducing CO2 Emissions, carbon footprints
COUNTRY
United States of America
DESIGNED BY
Daniel Cavero and Josh Santos.
WEBSITE
https://www.noya.co
Noya
Capture CO₂ with a cooling tower on top od buildings.
How does it work?
Noya will add ducting and CO? capture equipment alongside your cooling tower that won’t affect its operation.
Then install CO? processing equipment downstream from your cooling tower that doesn’t have a large physical footprint.
And share the carbon credits generated through capturing and permanently removing CO? so you can offset your building’s emissions.
Instead of starting from scratch, Noya’s clever way of addressing the challenge is to retrofit existing infrastructure to capture carbon dioxide. The infrastructure consists of cooling towers, the units atop buildings that transfer heat from air conditioning and related systems to the atmosphere. What Noya does is retrofit cooling towers with its own equipment, equipment which removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
Why is it needed?
To understand the nature of the obstacles, consider the following: In rough terms, humans currently emit approximately 40 gigatons (Gt) of CO2 into the atmosphere every year. (One Gt is 1 billion metric tons, and a metric ton is 10% larger than a standard ton.) Emitting CO2 is easy, but the reverse is difficult to do profitably and at scale. It is difficult because atmospheric CO2 has very low concentration, roughly 415 parts per million. This low concentration presents a challenge.
How does it improve life?
I can lead the U.S. to become carbon negative relatively quickly.
The purpose is to re-engineer the world to harness the opportunity that climate change presents.