Drivers Could Soon Be Making Money off the CO2 Their Cars Emit

Human-driven CO2 emissions might be responsible for ongoing phenomena such as global warming and climate change, but rumor has it that this generally despised chemical compound could soon be regarded as a precious resource.

This is because several newly emerging industrial processes, together with others that have been around for quite a while, require its being used as a means to access other resources in a faster and easier manner.

Thus, a practice known as Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR, for short) requires that CO2 be pumped into the underground to better extract either oil, or coal bed methane.

According to Green Car Reports, in the US alone, roughly 90 million barrels of oil have so far been extracted with the help of CO2.

As well as this, this particular country made significant investments in developing what some would call a CO2 infrastructure, meaning that many miles of transmission and distribution pipelines have been installed.

Seeing how various industries now up and running on a global scale are known to release significant amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere, thus causing environmentalists and greenheads to frown upon their business agenda, it should come as no surprise if a new international market emerged soon and allowed these companies to collect and store their carbon dioxide emissions for the sole purpose of selling it to EOR enthusiasts.

As we previously reported, existing technologies already make it possible for people to trap and store CO2, so perhaps it really is only a matter of time before this chemical compound is sold and bought on a large scale.

However, environmentalists are bound to argue that developing a global market for CO2 emissions would do little to help with cutting down on human society's ecological footprint, seeing how this harmful gas would start being regarded as more of a valuable commodity, rather than something industries need to get rid of as soon as possible.