Dwe can see the birth of a new species," declared Julio Friedmann, looking at the bleak landscape. Together with several hundred grandees, the renowned energy technologist traveled to a remote corner of the Texas oil field called Notrees at the end of April at the invitation of 1PointFive, a division of the American oil company Occidental Petroleum and Carbon Engineering, and. Canadian tech startup backed by Bill Gates. The affected species is similar to a tree in some respects – but not a biological species, nowhere in barren terrain. It's more of a tree craft: the first commercial "direct air capture" factory ( dac ) in the world. Like a tree, dac it sucks in carbon dioxide from the air, concentrates it and makes it available for a specific use. In nature, this use is the creation of organic molecules through photosynthesis. For dac these may be things that people already CO ₂ they use, such as adding fizz to drinks, promoting faster plant growth in greenhouses, or, in Occidental's case, injecting them into underground oil reservoirs to force more drops of oil out of the nooks and crannies. 

(NOTREES)