Herman K. Trabish, April 7, 2011 (Greentech Media)
Herman Trabish, writing for Greentech Media, interviewed Graciela Chichilnisky, author of the carbon market of the UN Kyoto Protocol that became international law in 2005, about her current work on carbon capture. Chichilnisky is a member of the Ethical Markets Advisory Board and of the Drafting Committee on Transforming Finance.
Capturing waste heat from power plants would make the idea of carbon-negative power plants economically feasible, according to Columbia University professors Graciela Chichilnisky and Peter Eisenberger.
“That idea was considered preposterous,” Chichilnisky said. But the idea is now their proprietary technology and is being commercialized by Global Thermostat (GT), a company co-owned by Chichilnisky, author of the concept of the international carbon market, Eisenberger, the founder of Columbia’s Earth Institute, and financier Edgar Bronfman, Jr.
A carbon-negative power plant becomes possible, Chichilnisky said, when the plant’s byproduct heat, which is usually wasted, is used to drive technology that removes carbon dioxide (CO2) from ambient air. A power plant equipped with GT technology, she said, can capture more carbon than it emits.