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President Donald Trump said he might consider lowering tariffs on some US goods while reiterating that his broad use of import taxes is helping lure investment and revive long-suffering industries like auto and semiconductor manufacturing.

Asked in an interview with Politico whether he'd rule out cutting tariffs on more goods than coffee, beef and bananas, Trump said he would "on some, and on some I'll increase tariffs." He said the breaks he approved recently amid a voter outcry against elevated prices on groceries in particular were "very small carveouts. It's not a big deal."

Under the same line of questioning about levies, Trump said "we've got $18 trillion coming into our country," an apparent reference to investment pledges by companies and countries looking for tariff relief have made to the Trump administration.

"You know what happens is because of tariffs, all of the car companies are coming back," Trump said, adding that the government's equity stake in Intel Corp. earlier this year was also a win. "In about 10 minutes, I made $40 billion. Nobody talks about that."

Source: Bloomberg Europe

In carbon dioxide removal, collecting the Earth-warming gas that makes up only 0.04% of the atmosphere is not the most difficult part. Doing it at a scale that can have an impact on climate and at a reasonable cost is.

That's where Japan Inc. can come in, says Shashank Samala, CEO of Heirloom Carbon Technologies. The California-based carbon removal company is building a commercial-scale plant on America's Gulf Coast to remove 1 million tons of CO2 from the air.

"We need to reduce costs, and Japanese companies are really good at continuous improvement, bringing down costs incrementally, and continuous refinement," Samala told Nikkei Asia in an interview. "And that's what our industry needs."

It would, he argues, be a win-win situation.

"Japan was making low-cost, high-quality, efficient cars and built this huge export-led economy, creating a huge boom for 20 years, 30 years," he said. "Now it's an opportunity to figure out where the next automotive [industry] comes from. ... I think it could be carbon capture and a few other climate technologies, because direct air capture is in a similar place."

Heirloom is developing a technology that replicates the carbon dioxide mineralization process. In nature, atmospheric CO2 dissolves in sea water, combines with calcium ions and forms shells and skeletons, eventually turning into limestone. In Heirloom's facility, calcium hydroxide -- commonly known as lime -- is used to capture CO2 and turn it into limestone. This limestone is then heated up to 900 Celsius to release the CO2. The remaining lime is then ready to absorb more CO2. The company likens the process to repeatedly soaking and wringing a sponge.

Heirloom has been in procurement talks with Japanese suppliers as part of its efforts to ramp up operations: Hitachi for CO2 compressors and electrical systems like transformers and switch gears; air conditioner maker Daikin for humidity sensors; ceramics maker NGK Insulators for filters and heat insulators; engineering company Chiyoda for plant engineering services; and trading houses Mitsubishi Corp. and Mitsui & Co. for possible project financing and offtake deals.

Six Japanese companies have invested in Heirloom. Japanese companies have also partnered with other carbon capture startups, such as Switzerland's Climeworks, the world's largest.

Japanese companies have an incentive to work on carbon capture, too. Japan is a manufacturing-led economy and a big user of fossil fuel, especially for production processes such as welding, paint-drying, casting and smelting. Carbon capture is a way to off set emissions from manufacturing activities.

NGK, the world's largest maker of automotive exhaust filters, is looking to direct air capture as a new growth driver to replace automotive operations, which currently make up 60% of its revenue. Automotive exhaust filters take out soot, gunk and harmful substances like nitrogen oxide or carbon monoxide produced by cars. It's good business, as each fossil fuel car requires three to six such filters in its exhaust system. But as electric vehicles become more common, such filters are less necessary. Fortunately for the Nagoya-based company, the transition is happening in phases. NGK expects 30% of new car sales will be battery electric by 2030, the year it has set as its target for mass-producing DAC filters.

Founded in 1919, NGK has a history of transformation, starting as a maker of ceramic insulators for electric utilities, transitioning to automotive ceramic filters in the 1980s. In the last 10 years, a new business has grown making ceramic heaters -- a flat ceramic plate on which a silicon wafer is placed during fabrication steps, making NGK the global leader in the field.

A ceramic filter is a cylinder around 15 centimeters in diameter with thousands of tiny holes running lengthwise, each a millimeter wide or less. They can be coated with CO2-absorbent materials, such as amine, or made with ceramics that contain such substances.

Ceramics are durable, heat-resistant and non-conductive, properties desirable not just for cars and chipmaking but also for DAC, which involves use of chemicals and heat for CO2 absorption and regeneration.

NGK says the production lines for exhaust filters can be quickly converted to those for DAC. The company has supplied product samples to some 30 DAC companies.

Economics is the biggest challenge. Capturing CO2 is easier the higher its concentration is. Major energy-related companies such as Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Shell Cansolv and SLB Capturi are focusing on capturing CO2 at the point of emission, such as those from flue stacks, which have CO2 concentrations of 10% to 20%.

"CO2 removal is very costly," said Tatsuto Nagayasu, MHI's head of carbon capture, utilization and storage. "Cost-effective technologies will be chosen first."

"MHI probably understands the challenge of making carbon capture commercially viable so well that it is steering clear of DAC," said Hidetaka Yamada, a professor at Kanazawa University and an expert on carbon capture technologies.

But people like Heirloom's Masala and his backer, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, believe that the world will eventually need negative emissions, or carbon dioxide removal, as human activities continue to add CO2 to the atmosphere. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that humans have emitted 2.4 trillion tons of CO2 between 1850 and 2019 and continue to release more than 40 billion tons a year. This leaves a remaining "carbon budget" of only 400 billion to 500 billion tons to keep temperature rises from the pre-industrial period to 1.5 C, a critical threshold to avoid climate catastrophes such as ice sheet collapse, coral reef extinction, island nation disappearance and more frequent heatwaves, floods and draughts, according to the panel.

Microsoft is Heirloom's biggest customer, and Bill Gates-backed Breakthrough Energy Ventures is its biggest investor. In 2020, Microsoft announced a plan to go carbon negative -- remove more CO2 than it emits -- by 2030, remove all the CO2 they've ever emitted since its founding in 1975 by 2050 and keep going negative thereafter.

"Right now when you look at the climate, there are billions of tons of CO2 in the air, but there are ways to remove it very cheaply. There are ways to improve it, reduce cost, and build at scale over time," Samala said. "Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in 10 years," he added, quoting a remark made by Gates.

The International Energy Agency also sees carbon capture as critical. "Removals are indispensable not only to reach net zero emissions by 2050 but also to achieve net negative emissions in the second-half of the century and thus bringing warming back below 1.5 degrees by 2100," it said in its World Energy Outlook 2025.

Not all methods of carbon capture involve use of lime to absorb CO2. Some use alkaline materials like amines, an ammonia derivative. But whatever material is used, the challenge remains the high cost of separating CO2 from the material that absorbs it.

Industry and government sources estimate there are some 140 startups globally trying to commercialize DAC technology.

Samala says that it currently costs "several hundred dollars" to capture a ton of CO2, adding that his goal is to bring it down to $100, competitive with the higher end of carbon credit prices. There is no incentive to use DAC unless it can reduce CO2 emissions less expensively than other carbon offsets such as reforestation and carbon capture and storage.

"We are in the mid-few hundred dollars per ton right now. We need to go down to 100," Samala said. The company's immediate goal is to hit $300 per ton. "I think within 10 years, $100 per ton is possible."

Source: Asia_Nikkei

Source: Bloomberg