Mark Zuckerberg, wife Priscilla Chan have pledged $44 million to fight climate change through carbon removal

In yet another philanthropic gesture, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) has decided to pour in $44 million in a range of efforts to fight climate change. Founded by Meta CEO, Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, the organisation has announced that the funds will be directed towards the pursuit of technologies that will tackle climate change, mostly by the method of carbon dioxide removal.

The technology has lately been the crux of all the efforts meant to negate the impact of global warming on Earth. For those unaware, carbon removal is the process of removing and isolating carbon dioxide gas from the atmosphere. Since it is the primary greenhouse gas emitted from human activities, massive emissions of carbon dioxide over the decades have already polluted our planet enough to bring it close to the point-of-no-return.

Ideally, there is no need of technology for the removal of carbon dioxide from Earth's atmosphere. Nature takes care of it through its trees and phytoplankton - the microscopic marine algae that trap CO2 from the air and dump it into the ocean. But since carbon emissions from human activities have reached unprecedented levels, people are now turning to technology to save our planet Earth from catastrophic doom.

That is where big tech jumps in. As mentioned on the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative website, the organisation will employ "innovative financing strategies" that will include grants, investments, and making carbon removal purchases directly from companies. It will then bet its cards on a range of carbon removal technologies.

One such effort, for instance, will be directed towards producing advanced capabilities for CO2 electrolysis. Twelve, a chemical company that captures and turns CO2 into products like jet fuel and electric car parts, will be at the helm of this innovation. The research and development will require CZI's $20 million strategic program investment.

Another $21 million from the grant will go towards the Institute for Carbon Management (ICM) of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). The organisation will use this for three promising carbon removal solutions. One of these is to produce an "electrochemical direct air capture" that will be much more energy-efficient than the present methods.

Additionally, ICM will also seek to develop a new electrochemical process for the production of portlandite - a material used in construction - to make carbon-negative concrete. The website mentions that the effort could reduce the carbon emissions from cement production by 65 per cent, which already accounts for 8 per cent of global CO2 emissions. The third project named SeaChange will remove CO2 dissolved in seawater by "an energy-efficient approach" that will produce green hydrogen in the process.

Other than these projects, CZI also awarded $10M to Bill Gates' Breakthrough Energy Fellows, which will accelerate other such decarbonization technologies. It is easy to see that these funds will be of great help to the research of new and clean technologies, and we may finally see a balanced Earth environment, thanks to big tech.