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New café opens at Erie Bank Sports Park YourErie
Through the first five PGA Tour events in the nascent 2021-22 season, the five tour winners—Max Homa, Sam Burns, Sungjae Im, Rory McIlroy and Hideki Matsuyama—had all been inside the top 50 of the World Ranking when they captured their titles. That’s the longest streak to start a season since 2005 when the first 10 winners came from inside the top 50.
But it’s a streak that ended—barely—on Sunday at the Butterfield Bermuda Championship. Lucas Herbert, 57th in the World Ranking to start the week, shot a final-round 69 to come from four shots back over overnight leader Taylor Pendrith to win at Port Royal Golf Club by one shot over Patrick Reed and Danny Lee at 15-under 269. The victory was the 25-year-old Australian’s first on the PGA Tour to go with two wins on the European Tour (2020 Dubai Desert Classic and 2021 Irish Open). And with the win, Herbert will, ironically, move inside the top 50.
Herbert’s win easily surpasses his best previous finish in 20 career PGA Tour starts (T-18 at the Memorial in June). It also earned him by far his biggest career payday. The overall prize money payout at Port Royal G.C. is $6.5 million with the winner earning $1.17 million. Herbert’s biggest career payday was a $110,670. His career earnings are only $358,840.
Here’s the prize money payout for each golfer who made the cut this week in Bermuda. Come back shortly after the end of the tournament and we’ll update this story with individual names and prize money payouts.
Win: Lucas Herbert, -15, $1,170,000
T-2: Patrick Reed, -14, $578,500
T-2: Danny Lee, -14, $578,500
4: Patrick Rodgerrs, -13, $318,500
T-5: Taylor Pendrith, 272/-12, $251,062.50
T-5: Scott Stallings, 272/-12, $251,062.50
T-7: Peter Malnati, 273/-11, $190,775
T-7: Davis Riley, 273/-11, $190,775
T-7: J.J. Spaun, 273/-11, $190,775
T-7: Curtis Thompson, 273/-11, $190,775
T-7: Vincent Whaley, 273/-11, $190,775
T-12: Brian Gay, 274/-10, $129,025
T-12: Russell Knox, 274/-10, $129,025
T-12: Graeme McDowell, 274/-10, $129,025
T-12: Seamus Power, 274/-10, $129,025
T-12: Alex Smalley, 274/-10, $129,025
T-17: Patrick Flavin, 275/-9, $99,125
T-17: Justin Lower, 275/-9, $99,125
T-17: Chad Ramey, 275/-9, $99,125
T-20: Jonathan Byrd, 276/-8, $82,875
T-20: Stephan Jaeger, 276/-8, $82,875
T-22: Thomas Detry, 277/-7, $57,362.50
T-22: Austin Eckroat, 277/-7, $57,362.50
T-22: Dylan Frittelli, 277/-7, $57,362.50
T-22: Mark Hubbard, 277/-7, $57,362.50
T-22: Sean O'Hair, 277/-7, $57,362.50
T-22: Chase Seiffert, 277/-7, $57,362.50
T-22: Greyson Sigg, 277/-7, $57,362.50
T-22: Adam Svensson, 277/-7, $57,362.50
T-30: Matt Fitzpatrick, 278/-6, $41,600
T-30: Kramer Hickok, 278/-6, $41,600
T-30: Seung-Yul Noh, 278/-6, $41,600
T-30: Mito Pereira, 278/-6, $41,600
T-34: Garrick Higgo, 279/-5, $33,865
T-34: David Skinns, 279/-5, $33,865
T-34: Peter Uihlein, 279/-5, $33,865
T-34: Camilo Villegas, 279/-5, $33,865
T-34: Brandon Wu, 279/-5, $33,865
T-39: Kiradech Aphibarnrat, 280/-4, $25,675
T-39: Scott Brown, 280/-4, $25,675
T-39: Brett Drewitt, 280/-4, $25,675
T-39: Scott Gutschewski, 280/-4, $25,675
T-39: David Hearn, 280/-4, $25,675
T-39: Ben Kohles, 280/-4, $25,675
T-39: Denny McCarthy, 280/-4, $25,675
T-46: Luke Donald, 281/-3, $18,343
T-46: Robert Garrigus, 281/-3, $18,343
T-46: Adam Hadwin, 281/-3, $18,343
T-46: Nick Watney, 281/-3, $18,343
T-46: Dylan Wu, 281/-3, $18,343
T-51: Brandon Hagy, 282/-2, $15,717
T-51: Ben Martin, 282/-2, $15,717
T-51: Matthias Schwab, 282/-2, $15,717
T-51: Sepp Straka, 282/-2, $15,717
T-51: Johnson Wagner, 282/-2, $15,717
T-51: Ludvig Aberg, 282/-2, Amateur
T-57: Christiaan Bezuidenhout, 283/-1, $14,885
T-57: Jim Knous, 283/-1, $14,885
T-57: David Lingmerth, 283/-1, $14,885
T-57: Guido Migliozzi, 283/-1, $14,885
T-57: Seth Reeves, 283/-1, $14,885
T-62: Max McGreevy, 284/E, $14,365
T-62: Aaron Rai, 284/E, $14,365
T-62: Kyle Wilshire, 284/E, $14,365
T-65: Sangmoon Bae, 285/+1, $14,040
T-65: Kurt Kitayama, 285/+1, $14,040
T-67: Ryan Armour, 287/+3, $13,650
T-67: Ben Crane, 287/+3, $13,650
T-67: D.A. Points, 287/+3, $13,650
T-67: John Senden, 287/+3, $13,650
T-71: Arjun Atwal, 288/+4, $13,195
T-71: Hayden Buckley, 288/+4, $13,195
T-71: Lee Hodges, 288/+4, $13,195
74: Sahith Theegala, 292/+8, $12,935
75: John Merrick, 294/+10, $12,805
There’s a new Internet provider in town, and they’re on a mission to take on the Goliaths that so many of us are frustrated with, while ultimately delivering affordable, accessible Internet to billions of people. Including the underserved communities that are the hardest to reach.
After routers, installations, hidden fees, upcharges, the average household in the US pays about $80/month.
Rather than using traditional fiber-optic cables that make super-fast Wifi unaffordable for low and middle-income customers, Starry delivers super-fast Internet to customers over the air, using innovative new technology that builds gigabit networks across entire cities at a fraction of the cost and time required by competitors.
That’s how the Good Unicorn is able to offer 200 Mbps at $50/month with no contracts, no fees, and free routers.
Even more compelling is the story of how Starry’s innovations enable it to offer super-affordable, $15/month, 30 Mbps service to underserved communities as part of its digital equity program, Starry Connect. To-date, Starry Connect serves more than 40,000 units of public and affordable housing in Boston, New York, Denver, Los Angeles, Washington, DC and Columbus OH.
Starry’s ultimate mission? To connect billions worldwide. Starry’s mission is in alignment with Goal 9 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, “to significantly increase access to information and communications technology and strive to provide universal and affordable access to the Internet in least developed countries.” That’s why I’m including Starry in this series on Good Unicorns, the companies valued at $1B+ that are creating transformative change for our people & planet.
Let’s dive into the deep end with serial entrepreneur and tech activist Chet Kanojia, CEO & Founder of Starry. A note on Chet, he’s not your typical startup founder. He’ll take his fight to break up monopolies straight to the Supreme Court if he has to...and he did in 2014. We don’t dive deep into that epic battle, but you can learn more about that here.
Diana Tsai: Hey Chet! Let’s start with the problem you’re CURRENTLY solving, as I know the vision is quite big. Can you give us a snapshot?
Chet Kanojia: We’re making affordable broadband available to millions of Americans. Just in the US, 20 million Americans still lack access to a high-speed internet broadband connection. We believe connectivity is a powerful equalizer for individuals, families, and entire communities. Yet, many people remain unconnected because broadband is too expensive or unavailable to them.
The reason we started all this was because we saw an imbalance in the broadband marketplace: the vast majority of Americans, 65%, have only one option for broadband; broadband service was expensive; and the customer experience was abysmal, all of which contributed to a very negative experience for consumers. We saw an opportunity to do better, by developing a groundbreaking technology that dramatically lowered the cost of building robust, gigabit networks and coupling that with a laser-focus on the customer experience.
So ultimately, Starry's mission is simple: connect as many people as possible to affordable, high-quality broadband. Because if we do that, then we can enable greater access to economic opportunity, education and health care. And more access to those things will help move and lift society forward.
Starry is still on that road and today we are bringing service to six 6 markets: Boston, New York, Los Angeles, Washington, DC, Denver and Columbus, OH with an expansion roadmap that will, over time, take the company to 37 states and cover more than 40 million US households.
Tsai: How exactly do you make it more affordable?
Kanojia: The Internet today comes to you on a set of wires. Mostly copper, with fiber being the best existing technology. The problem is that the last mile of getting that fiber to hard-to-reach communities is really expensive. You have to literally dig physical trenches. And that’s why you really don’t have competition in the sector, which drives up prices. Finally, companies simply can’t justify the return on investment for getting high-speed internet to the communities that are hardest to reach. I mean, Google tried it and they have more money than God, and they gave up.
So how do we reach these hard-to-reach communities and bring them online? The essence of it is that we’ve created a new wireless technology on a foundation of using licensed high-capacity millimeter wave spectrum to dramatically lower the costs of building a broadband network. It’s a painfully complicated business because it has to do with executing on superior software, hardware, installation, and distribution partnerships.
We designed our own innovative technology to build gigabit networks across entire cities at a fraction of the cost and time it takes now for incumbent providers. And, that means more savings for the consumer. That’s how Starry’s able to offer 200 Mbps near-symmetrical speeds for $50 a month with all equipment, installation and 24/7 white-glove customer care included and with no data caps, no long-term contracts, or no extra fees. Ultimately, the goal is to create accessibility and affordability of high-speed Internet for all.
Tsai: Ok, I think I got it. I don’t know if I fully understand all the technicalities, but I get the core, which is you’re making the Internet faster, and cheaper, for those who need it most, by smart innovations in the wireless tech space. For a customer, how is their experience with Starry different from their experience with your competitor providers?
Kanojia: We’re ethical, and we treat people the way we want to be treated. It’s not about selling a bunch of random crap to our customers. It’s about total transparency, no fees, no hidden costs, protecting their data, never looking at their information, net neutrality, these are the types of very hard guardrails we hold ourselves accountable to.
Tsai: Can we dig more into what you mean by ethical?
Kanojia: I think of it as how I want to be treated. You know, empathy, fairness, compassion. Ethical for me also means transparency.
That manifests across all parts of our business, even the physical router, there’s a display on it that shows exactly what a customer is getting at all times. So they’re not buying 200 Mgps and then wondering if they’re only getting 25 Mgps, what you see is what you get.
On the price side, what that means is there’s one price, no taxes, no fees, no equipment rental, no charges, stuff that needs to be disputed.
No contracts. I think the feeling of being held captive is a terrible feeling.
We don’t even come close to anything that feels like that. You can cancel anytime with us, no contracts. And it’s not because we’re terrible at doing business that we do all these things. It’s because we believe when we have these values ingrained in the company, our customers will stay with us no matter what. I have faith that the vast majority of people just want to be treated well, treated fairly, and they want to support companies that do that.
Tsai: Something that struck me about Starry is your deliberate focus on serving chronically underserved and unserved communities. I know you've already reached 40,000 families in these communities, can you speak more to this?
Kanojia: Our ability to serve under-served communities and provide massively discounted prices and incredible value is really enabled by our technological innovation. It’s not a charitable initiative, it’s actually a profitable one, which means it’s sustainable and scalable.
Traditionally, our competitors that use fiber, when they come across a low-income area, they might skip over the whole neighborhood, because they don’t think they’ll get a return on investment because of the hardware investment costs. What we’ve been able to do is deliver that Internet over the air and very efficiently due to our core innovations, so it doesn’t cost us anything extra to deliver to those communities. That’s how we’re able to offer Starry Connect, our $15 per month product at 30 Mpbs.
Why does this matter? You take away these barriers to high-speed Wifi and you’re enabling people who in the past might not have been able to work from home, now you save them time and costs on commute, on childcare.. So the entire cost at which people can enter the workforce goes down.
Tsai: So zooming back to the beginning of the story. There are so many problems that are worth tackling in this world. So what was the process by which you decided to tackle this particular problem to build this particular solution to choose to build Starry?
Kanojia: In 2012, I was doing some philanthropic work in India. We put together a library of 50 Chromebooks in a village and set-up good Wifi with a satellite connection. And then we just opened the library up and let kids watch YouTube, explore the world. It was really fun to watch engagement, the numbers go up, to see the kids learning. And that’s where this idea of building a Wifi access network seeded.
The things that resonated about Starry? We’re moving society forward, we’re doing something constructive, and there’s this massive sector with huge margins.
Also, it's complicated, which I really, really like. I like businesses at the intersection of different disciplines, and this is at the intersection of software, media, law, government. This is truly very complicated technology with regulatory components, because we license spectrum, we deal with the government, local state.
And then as an engineer, I love when my product is actually being used by an end customer. And our product is used 13 hours a day by consumers, right? It's not discretionary.
Tsai: What about finding product-market fit? Was that difficult or did you come in straightaway with the core innovation and it was just a matter of growth?
Kanojia: I’m not smart enough to figure out a new product. I’m an engineer at the end of the day. Where I do great things is building on existing technology that already solves a problem. Once I understand what actually moves the needle, or what's really valuable to consumers, I know exactly what to build, and I do that.
With Starry, my team and I, we were waiting for the Supreme Court decision on my previous company, Aereo. So my cofounder Joe and I, we just bought a bunch of equipment to a farm on the south shore of Boston, and spent months doing experiments on waveform preservation, the fundamental stuff we needed to understand to know if our hypothesis on super-fast Wifi over the air would work.
Once we figured that out, it was just a matter of risk management, iteration, execution, which as a team we have a pretty strong track record in.
Tsai: What’s your advice for entrepreneurs who want to take on problems worth solving?
Kanojia: One of the things that I think people do wrong is they fight themselves. People are their worst enemies. And I think a lot of bad things happen when people go against who they are. And that leads to disingenuous behavior and intellectual dishonesty.
I guess the core strategy I tend to follow is: just be true.
Do what you like to do. Don’t listen to what’s right or wrong from anyone else. All those learned behaviors aren’t going to change who you are. People around you, your employees, your customers...humans are smart. They’re quick at picking up who you really are. So if your startup has a bro, frat boy culture, no matter how many times you put on a suit and go on CNBC, ultimately, people see past to who you are.
So that’s my view, which is why we don’t really have a strategy, all that crap.
Our strategy comes down to this: we’re good people, and we’re going to get really good at doing what we do. That’s what good teams do in my opinion. Because strategy goes out the window the moment you hit the deck, completely unknown situations pop up. I mean, the NASDAQ could go to hell tomorrow, right? You never know. The world changes, you have to pivot, you have to change. And unless you’re good at having emotional strength, you’re not going to survive.
Try not to be too clever. Stick to your compass. Just be true. That’s it.
Want more on Good Unicorns? Go here.
Do you have to upgrade from Windows 10 to Windows 11? Here's what to know.
Sarah Tew/CNETWindows 11 began its rollout to eligible devices on Oct. 5, meaning that Windows 10 is slowly on the way out. Microsoft has announced that Windows 10 support will end in 2025, so you still have a few years before you'll stop getting security patches. And Microsoft's phased rollout of Windows 11 means you might not even be prompted to make the switch until next year. But all those details can make it hard to tell whether you should upgrade now or if it's better to wait until later.
If you're wondering how long you actually have to make the switch to Windows 11 and how long you can safely wait before updating, you've come to the right place. I'll also explain how to download Windows 11, how to tell whether your computer is compatible and who gets the update for free. Read on for everything you need to know about the end of Windows 10 support and prepping for Windows 11.
Read more: Windows 11: What to know about the download, new features, device compatibility, price and more
Support for Windows 10 will end on Oct. 14, 2025. That means Microsoft will no longer provide security patches or feature updates for the Home, Pro, Enterprise, Pro Education and Pro for Workstations editions at this time -- affecting virtually all Windows 10 users. (The only people who have until 2029 are the few Windows 10 Enterprise Long Term Support Channel users.)
This doesn't come as a surprise: Microsoft has a long-established Fixed Lifestyle Policy for many of its products. For each version of its OS, the company offers a minimum of 10 years of support (at least five years of mainstream support like security updates and no-charge incident support, followed by five years of extended support like paid troubleshooting).
Windows 10 was released in July 2015, so its 10-year life cycle will have come to a close by October 2025. Here's everything you need to know about the end of Windows 10 support.
Windows 10's days are numbered.
Josh Goldman/CNETYou'll still be able to use your Windows 10 computer the same way you have been, just like a lot of people are still using Windows 7 or Windows 8, though Microsoft pulled support for both of those in recent years. However, once support ends, you won't get any security updates, which could leave your computer vulnerable -- many forms of malware target Windows devices.
If you don't want to stop using your Windows 10 machine after support ends in 2025, there are certain steps you can take to better secure it.
It depends. If you recently bought a new PC, that computer should be able to run Windows 11. To see if your current Windows 10 PC is eligible for the free upgrade to Windows 11, go to Microsoft's website for a list of requirements.
The easiest way to find out is to download the PC Health Check app to check if your machine is compatible. Alternatively, you can use another open-source app called WhyNotWin11 to see if your device is compatible. Plus, here's how to check some hardware compatibility with Windows 11 without either tool.
If you're already a Windows 10 user and have a compatible computer, Windows 11 will appear as a free upgrade for your machine once it becomes available for you. Microsoft's new OS is gradually rolling out between now and mid-2022.
Once Windows 11 becomes available for you, you'll download it the same way you would any new version of Windows. Most users will go to Settings > Update & Security > Windows Update and click Check for Updates. If available, you'll see Feature update to Windows 11. Click Download and install. (Here's more information on how to download Windows 11. If you haven't yet upgraded to Windows 10, you may still be able to download Windows 10 free, too -- here's how.)
Windows 11 includes a new interface and lots of new features.
MicrosoftWindows 11 gets a new visual design and several new features that aim to make navigating your computer easier, whether for personal use, work or both. Here are some of the biggest changes in Windows 11:
We broke down all of the biggest differences between Windows 10 and Windows 11 here. We've also got a guide to all of the best new Windows 11 features and how you'll use them.
For more details, check out every feature we wanted in Windows 11 but didn't get and how to use Android apps on Windows 10 right now.
How loss can transform your perspective will be explored at Lifetree Café on Monday, Nov. 1, at 2 p.m.
The program includes filmed interviews with two artists who experienced the loss of loved ones and coped through their art.
“Loss can be devastating,” says Lifetree Café representative Craig Cable. “In this program, we’ll share our stories of loss with people who care—and consider how we can become stronger through tragedy. This hour of discovery and discussion is for anyone who’s experienced loss.”
Admission to the 60-minute event is free. Snacks and beverages are available. Lifetree Café meets at Jalapeno's Mexican Restaurant, 314 N. Second Ave., Sandpoint.
Lifetree Café is a place where people gather for conversation about life and faith in a casual coffeehouse-type setting. Questions about Lifetree may be directed to stan@followcommunity.org or 208-304-6465.
A Swiss company is operating a device in Iceland that sucks CO2 from the air and shoots it into the ground, where it turns into rock.
This article is part of a special report on Climate Solutions, which looks at efforts around the world to make a difference.
Stephan Hitz paused from his work operating an odd-looking machine in an otherworldly landscape in Iceland and reached for a “Star Wars” analogy to explain his job at the frontier of climate technology.
“I feel like I have come from the Dark Side to become a Jedi warrior,” he joked as he braced against a chill wind blowing across the treeless stretches of cooled lava and distant volcanoes.
The 37-year-old service technician from Zurich spent nine years working in the aviation and marine industries before joining Climeworks, a Swiss start-up that is trying to undo the damage caused by such heavily polluting industries.
“It does give you extra satisfaction to know that you’re helping the planet instead of damaging it,” he said.
Mr. Hitz and his small team of technicians are running Orca, the world’s biggest commercial direct air capture (DAC) device, which in September began pulling carbon dioxide out of the air at a site 20 miles from the capital, Reykjavik.
As the wind stirred up clouds of steam billowing from the nearby Hellisheidi geothermal power plant, a gentle hum came from Orca, which resembles four massive air-conditioners, each the size of one shipping container sitting on top of another.
Each container holds 12 large round fans powered by renewable electricity from the geothermal plant, which suck air into steel catchment boxes where carbon dioxide or CO2, the main greenhouse gas behind global warming, chemically bonds with a sandlike filtering substance.
When heat is applied to that filtering substance it releases the CO2, which is then mixed with water by an Icelandic company called Carbfix to create a drinkable fizzy water.
Several other firms are striving to pull carbon from the air in the United States and elsewhere, but only here in the volcanic plateaus of Iceland is the CO2 being turned into that sparkling cocktail and injected several hundred meters down into basalt bedrock.
Carbfix has discovered that its CO2 mix will chemically react with basalt and turn to rock in just two or three years instead of the centuries that the mineralization process was believed to take, so it takes the CO2 that Climeworks’ DAC captures and pumps it into the ground through wells protected from the harsh environment by steel igloos that could easily serve as props in a space movie.
It is a permanent solution, unlike the planting of forests which can release their carbon by rotting, being cut down or burning in a warming planet. Even the CO2 that other firms are planning to inject into empty oil and gas fields could eventually leak out, some experts fear, but once carbon turns to rock it is not going anywhere.
Orca is billed as the world’s first commercial DAC unit because the 4,000 metric tons of CO2 it can extract each year have been paid for by 8,000 people who have subscribed online to remove some carbon, and by firms including Stripe, Swiss Re, Audi and Microsoft.
The rock band Coldplay recently joined those companies in paying Climeworks for voluntary carbon credits to offset some of their own emissions. The firm hopes to one day turn a profit by getting its costs below the selling price of those credits.
The problem is that Orca’s output equals just three seconds of humanity’s annual CO2 emissions, which are closer to 40 billion metric tons, but Orca has at least shown that the concept of scrubbing the air clean and putting carbon back underground has moved from science fiction to science.
Tarek Soliman, a London-based climate change analyst at HSBC Global Research, says the launch in Reykjavik is not the sort of “quantum leap” that would prove the technology can reach the scale and cost required to have a real impact on climate change.
“But it is a step in that direction,” Mr. Soliman said. “Given that direct air capture has been seen by many people as a nonsense, this is something you can see and touch that puts it on a pathway to credibility.”
Christoph Gebald, Climeworks’ co-founder, is adamant that the technology can grow into a trillion-dollar industry in the next three or four decades, a goal that he says would be helped if the upcoming COP26 meeting in Glasgow saw most nations commit to net zero emissions by 2050.
“That would be a dream outcome from Glasgow, along with decision makers recognizing that any approach that leads to net zero must include carbon removal as well as emission reduction,” he said in a telephone interview from Zurich.
Dr. Gebald, a soft-spoken 38-year-old, began working on DAC with a fellow German, Jan Wurzbacher, while they were studying mechanical engineering in Switzerland. They formed their company in 2009 but Dr. Gebald says their big breakthrough was the release of the U.N.-led Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report in 2018, setting out the need for reaching net zero emissions by 2050 if global warming was to be kept to 1.5 degrees. Crucially, it also produced the first scientific consensus that some emissions would be too hard to eradicate so all viable paths to “net zero” would rely on removing some previous emissions.
Dr. Gebald believes that machine-based solutions may have to carry half that workload because the potential for most nature-based options are limited by a shortage of arable land.
Getting from 4,000 metric tons a year to 5 billion metric tons quickly enough to help limit climate change may seem fanciful but there is an intriguing comparison with the world’s first commercial wind farm, which opened in 1980 on Crotched Mountain in New Hampshire.
That project consisted of 20 turbines with a combined output of 600,000 watts. Forty years later, in 2020, the wind capacity installed around the world was 1.23 million times larger, at 740 gigawatts.
Increasing Orca’s annual output at the same rate would yield a CO2 removal capacity of 5 billion metric tons by around 2060.
“That is exactly what climate science asks us to do to achieve climate targets,” Dr. Gebald said.
The challenge will hinge on reducing costs, which Dr. Gebald says are now about $600 to $800 a metric ton. Increased output could bring those costs down to $200 to $300 a metric ton by 2030, and $100 to $150 somewhere around 2035, he said.
DAC would already be competitive if it received the subsidies that helped electric vehicles and solar panels deploy and flourish, Dr. Gebald said. .
A fundamental difference from wind and solar power is that they were ultimately driven by the profit motive because once subsidies had helped to make them competitive they were producing a valuable asset: cheap electricity.
DAC’s main “output” — helping to save the planet — must instead rely on government supports such as emission credits and taxes on carbon emitters, hence the importance of meetings such as the Glasgow COP.
While Mr. Hitz and his team are monitoring Orca to hone their next plant, which will be 10 times larger and is expected to launch in two to three years, Dr. Gebald acknowledged that in many ways Orca, meant to operate for a decade, has already achieved its goal. “We know that the technology works, so the main experiment with Orca really was testing the market interest in carbon removal, and we’re very happy that already a large share of the lifetime capacity of the plant has been contracted.”
Carbfix is busily exploring how to adapt its mineralization process to other types of rock and how to use seawater at sites that are short of fresh water.
Carbfix was launched as a research project in 2007 after prodding by the then-president of Iceland, Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, who had been told by a local scientist that Iceland’s highly porous basalt could mineralize CO2 without creating any seismic problems.
Dr. Grimsson consolidated his role as Orca’s “fairy godfather” shortly after ending his 20 years as president in 2016, when he was walking through the bar of a luxury hotel at that year’s COP meeting in Marrakesh.
“I happened to overhear this American investor sitting at a table loudly boosting this new Swiss company that he said had the technology to pull carbon straight out of the air,” he recalled.
“So I stopped and said ‘Hey, in Iceland we know how to turn that stuff into rock!’” He put Dr. Gebald together with Carbfix “and bingo, that was the missing link.”
Despite that lucky accident, Edda Aradottir, the chief executive of Carbfix, says she is not confident that the latest COP will do enough to help “negative emission technologies” live up to their potential.
“Somehow it seems that these events rarely achieve what they set out to do,” she said.
Dr. Grimsson, the former president, is also downbeat about Glasgow, saying “the problem is that COPs are primarily about finding ways to reduce emissions.”
That is fine, he said, but “we also have to destroy some of the carbon that is already in the air. If we don’t start doing that very, very quickly we are never going to succeed on climate change.”
takanadalagi.blogspot.com Two new sibling bars are opening in far south Austin sometime this year. There’s cafe and cocktail bar Drifters S...
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