How To Solve Climate Change? With Giant Floating Solar Farms That Suck CO2 & Make Electricity

We all know climate change is real and it’s happening right now — we are all living and experiencing its devastating effects to the planet at large and our own personal lifestyles.

Even though time’s dangerously running out on what remedial steps we can take to reverse the effects of climate change, there’s a school of thought that having floating solar farms can help reset the balance of carbon dioxide on our planet, which in turn can hit the brakes on global warming.

Lakhs of solar panels spread together to form an island can convert carbon dioxide in seawater into methanol, which can be used to power everything from aeroplanes and trucks, according to new research coming out of Norway and Switzerland, which was recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal.

The research paper claims that we currently possess the technology to build out these massive solar farms in seas and oceans to suck out carbon dioxide from the water and turn it into methanol. It even specifies locations around the world where these giant solar farms can be tethered, where they will be safe from waves or extreme weather.

How will these floating solar farms operate?

According to researchers, these solar farms won’t be too different than fish farms at sea — in terms of operation and scale. Each floating solar farm will cover roughly a square kilometre area, producing electricity by splitting water molecule and isolating hydrogen.

The hydrogen molecule will then react with carbon dioxide absorbed by the seawater to create methanol fuel, which can be used at scale to make this renewable energy source literally replace oil and natural gas powered fossil fuel use around the world.

For example, a single solar farm can produce 15,000 tons of methanol per year and the electricity generated from the sunlight can be stored in on-shore batteries like the one Elon Musk’s Tesla has built down under in Australia.

China already has started building floating solar farms to provide an alternate, cleaner, renewable energy source for its growing industrial needs. India and the rest of the world need to start doing something similar on a very large scale very fast.

Source: indiatimes