California Pub Uses Captured Carbon Dioxide to Carbonate Beer

A New Use for Captured Carbon

Beer drinkers having pints outside during a heat wave in Alameda, Calif., may not have been thinking about climate change, but the people brewing the I.P.A.s and lagers were. At this pub, the bubbles in the beer came from carbon dioxide captured in the brewery’s parking lot.

“We’re literally taking carbon out of the environment,” said Damian Fagan, head of the Almanac Beer Company. He called the process “pretty surreal and amazing.”

How the System Works

The air-to-beer carbonation system relies on a machine behind the brewpub that performs direct air capture on site. The unit, described as resembling an oversized HVAC system with a chimney on top, pulls carbon dioxide from the air.

A second system, housed in a nearby shipping container, liquefies the captured carbon dioxide and refines it into a pure, beverage-grade product that can be used to carbonate beer.

A Small Test for a Bigger Industry

Experts say direct air capture will most likely have to play some role in limiting global warming by treating carbon dioxide more like a waste stream that must be managed. Matthew Realff, a chemical engineer at the Georgia Institute of Technology who is not involved with the brewery, said the technology creates the option not only to address current and future emissions but also to deal with historical additions of CO2 to the atmosphere.

A handful of air capture machines at pubs will not solve climate change on their own. But devices like these, made by Berkeley-based Aircapture, could still be useful if they help make carbon capture cheaper and more widely available. The technology has advanced significantly over the past 15 years, though major hurdles remain in scaling it up and reducing costs.

Headwinds for Direct Air Capture

In the United States, most direct air capture efforts have focused on large projects designed to remove at least a million tons of carbon dioxide each year at fixed sites. But after years of federal support, some major projects have recently been delayed or canceled because of funding cuts by the Trump administration.

“There was a strong tailwind, there is now a headwind,” Dr. Realff said.

That makes the California brewery’s experiment notable beyond the bar itself: if a small commercial use for captured carbon can work, it could provide a boost to a carbon-capture industry still searching for viable ways to expand.