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Entrepreneurs tasked with removing carbon pollution from the air 

‘Visionary leaders and entrepreneurs can really have a hand in scaling these carbon removal solutions.’ Carbon emissions from power plants, transportation, and industry cause global warming. But reducing that pollution may not be enough to avoid the worst effects of climate change. Some scientists say the world must also remove carbon that’s already in the atmosphere.Giana Amador is cofounder of the nonprofit Carbon180. She says that a number of industries already have strategies to soak up carbon pollution.

“We can farm in ways that store more carbon in the soil. We can plant more trees,” she says. “And there are also technologies that are basically big fans that use chemical reactions to capture carbon directly from the air and separate that out into a pure stream of CO2 that can then be either sequestered underground or used in products like cements and plastics.”

But to meet climate goals, these solutions need to scale up dramatically.

To help, Amador’s nonprofit has started a fellowship. It helps entrepreneurs launch businesses that – within a decade – can remove a billion tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year.

“We think that visionary leaders and entrepreneurs can really have a hand in scaling these carbon removal solutions,” Amador says.