Yale creating carbon capture research center with FedEx money

With a $100 million donation from delivery services giant FedEx, Yale is creating a Center for Natural Carbon Capture to lead research into how best to trap carbon found in the air and oceans, including forest expansion and harnessing the power of rock deposits.

The new center will also work to further industrial innovations to trap carbon.

Indy Burke, dean of the Yale School of the Environment, called it an “ambitious but realistic strategy” that comes on the heels of the U.S. rejoining the Paris Agreement on climate change, after former President Donald Trump pulled the country out of the treaty.

“Earth’s natural systems are ripe with opportunities, and the Center for Natural Carbon Capture will

enable research that transforms these opportunities into real-world, applicable solutions,” Burke was quoted saying in a Tuesday post by YaleNews. “These natural solutions must be used as part of a portfolio of methods to reduce net greenhouse gas emissions.”

During the hiatus from the Paris Agreement, private sector companies and think tanks have continued to develop emerging technologies and strategies to limit carbon pollution. Amazon, IBM and Henkel are among more than 50 companies to have signed “The Carbon Pledge” to be carbon neutral by 2040 — a decade in advance of the goal set by the Paris Agreement —

while chipping into a $2 billion fund to invest in new ideas.

On Tuesday, FedEx pledged an identical, $2 billion investment, including the Yale gift, while adding its name to the 2040 carbonneutral roster. The FedEx commitment approaches the company’s ballooning profits over a six-month stretch of the pandemic as home deliveries spiked during stay-athome orders.

FedEx founder and CEO Frederick Smith is a 1966 graduate of Yale.

“At FedEx, we have a responsibility to take action in addressing climate change,” Smith said in a statement posted Tuesday by YaleNews. “We have created a roadmap to achieve our carbon neutral goal that includes helping to establish the Center for Natural Carbon Capture. Yale has a deep reservoir of expertise and researchers working on this shared problem, which makes it the ideal place for this important work.”

Through its existing Yale Planetary Solutions Project, the university held a three-day symposium in early December with an array of speakers.

Yale economist and Nobel Prize laureate Bill Nordhaus, who addressed the topic of engagement on climate change, said there’s been “very little progress” on slowing carbon emissions.

“If you go back to the Kyoto Protocols of 1997 ... or the Paris accord which is not very long ago, you really cannot see a strong impact of these climate policies on global emissions,” Nordhaus said in October.

Yale scientists have been tackling the problem from different angles. Researchers Craig Brodersen and Erica Edwards engineer plants to be able to take in more carbon dioxide through photosynthesis. Others see the possibility for accelerating carbon capture through mineral deposits, as happens naturally with the formation of limestone and marble.

“There is essentially a limitless supply of weatherable rocks, and storing carbon in this manner is effectively permanent,” stated David Bercovici, chair of Yale’s Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, as quoted by YaleNews. “Developing these strategies has enormous potential for making a global impact.”