Iceland already is one of the greenest places on the planet and they are going even further to try keep the whole planet green. The country is hosting a research project that has sucked 43,000 tons of CO2 out of the air and injected it into the ground. They’re capturing CO2 waste and then mixing it with water to decrease the amount of carbon in the atmosphere and the results are promising. This works well in Iceland due to the volcanic rock in the country (this doesn’t work as well with other types of rock).
Of course, the best thing to keep CO2 out of the atmosphere is to not generate it all by using sustainable energy and efficient energy use. Until we have a fully renewable grid and cut down consumer consumption we need to look into carbon capture.
Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is a technology promoted by the United Nations that can capture up to 90 percent of CO2 emissions that come from fossil-fuel sources and send them to an underground storage site—usually an old oil and gas field or a saline aquifer formation—so they don’t enter the Earth’s atmosphere.
Researchers and engineers in Iceland, alongside experts from France and the United States, have been working on one project that applies such CCS methods called CarbFix. For years, they’ve been holed up at Hellisheidi, a massive geothermal plant on a volcano near Reykjavik. The plant is built on a layer of porous basalt rock formed from cooled lava and, crucially, has easy access to the endless water supply underneath the volcano.