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-UK project trials carbon capture at sea to help tackle climate change [[https://kra34c.cc/|kra35.cc]]
+‘I could not afford the American Dream:’ This retired US veteran relocated to Brazil after struggling with the cost of living [[https://kra32att.cc|kraken onion]]
-The world is betting heavily on carbon capture — a term that refers to various techniques to stop carbon pollution from being released during industrial processes, or removing existing carbon from the atmosphere, to then lock it up permanently.
-The practice is not free of controversy, with some arguing that carbon capture is expensive, unproven and can serve as a distraction from actually reducing carbon emissions. But it is a fast-growing reality: there are at least 628 carbon capture and storage projects in the pipeline around the world, with a 60% year-on-year increase, according to the latest report from the Global CCS (Carbon Capture and Storage) Institute. The market size was just over $3.5 billion in 2024, but is projected to grow to $14.5 billion by 2032, according to Fortune Business Insights.
+After spending years traveling the world while working in the United States military, Christopher Boris dreamed of one day moving overseas permanently.
-Perhaps the most ambitious — and the most expensive — type of carbon capture involves removing carbon dioxide (CO2) directly from the air, although there are just a few such facilities currently in operation worldwide. Some scientists believe that a better option would be to capture carbon from seawater rather than air, because the ocean is the planet’s largest carbon sink, absorbing 25% of all carbon dioxide emissions.
+But the retired veteran, who grew up in New Jersey but was based in Maryland at the time, ended up relocating earlier than he’d intended after struggling to cope with the rising cost of living.
-In the UK, where the government in 2023 announced up to £20 billion ($26.7 billion) in funding to support carbon capture, one such project has taken shape near the English Channel. Called SeaCURE, it aims to find out if sea carbon capture actually works, and if it can be competitive with its air counterpart.
+“I really couldn’t afford my mortgage payments and my utilities anymore,” Boris tells CNN Travel.
-“The reason why sea water holds so much carbon is that when you put CO2 into the water, 99% of it becomes other forms of dissolved carbon that don’t exchange with the atmosphere,” says Paul Halloran, a professor of Ocean and Climate Science at the University of Exeter, who leads the SeaCURE team.
+“I struggled. I was living off of VA disability,” Boris says, referring to a tax-free monetary benefit paid to veterans with disabilities. “And I said, ‘I think my money could go a lot longer living overseas.’”
+In the summer of 2024, Boris and his wife Maria Jesus, originally from Bolivia, left the US to start a new life in Brazil.
-“But it also means it’s very straightforward to take that carbon out of the water.”
+“I could not afford the American Dream,” he says.
-Pilot plant
+According to Boris, they had been struggling financially for at least five years, but things came to a head when he left his government job in 2022.
-SeaCURE started building a pilot plant about a year ago, at the Weymouth Sea Life Centre on the southern coast of England. Operational for the past few months, it is designed to process 3,000 liters of seawater per minute and remove an estimated 100 tons of CO2 per year.
-“We wanted to test the technology in the real environment with real sea water, to identify what problems you hit,” says Halloran, adding that working at a large public aquarium helps because it already has infrastructure to extract seawater and then discharge it back into the ocean.
+“It was a year-long decision,” he adds. “My wife and I were always talking about moving overseas.”
-The carbon that is naturally dissolved in the seawater can be easily converted to CO2 by slightly increasing the acidity of the water. To make it come out, the water is trickled over a large surface area with air blowing over it. “In that process, we can constrict over 90% of the carbon out of that water,” Halloran says.
+While they considered moving to Bolivia, the couple ultimately chose to settle in neighboring country Brazil, a destination that they’d previously lived in between 2007 and 2008, when Boris was stationed there.
+“We chose Brazil, and Rio specifically, because of the higher quality of life,” explains Boris, adding that their experiences using the medical care system in the country had been positive, and they knew that they could live comfortably there.