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Global Thermostat’s technology, being tested at a demonstration site in Silicon Valley, can remove carbon dioxide from the air, potentially undoing decades of damage to the planet’s climate. “It’s not going to mitigate climate change; it’s going to resolve it,” said CEO and cofounder Graciela Chichilnisky. She envisions a day when tens of thousands of CO2 vacuum cleaners are at work around the world. A Global Thermostat module can extract CO2 from the air anywhere or draw in fumes directly from a power plant. Inside, water vapor and sorbents extract CO2 from the air. When attached to carbon-emitting power plants, the company’s technology could turn those plants into “carbon negative” factories that remove more carbon from the air than they emit, Chichilnisky said. The process is powered by the power plant’s residual heat. That could be a lifesaver. The possibility of catastrophic global climate change, brought on by humanity’s release of CO2 into the air, seems largely beyond dispute. Nations are taking the threat seriously. At talks in Paris last year, nearly 200 countries signed legal commitments aimed at reducing carbon emissions by 80 percent by 2050. Many scientists believe reducing emissions alone is just one part of the solution. Subtracting carbon is needed, too. Global Thermostat’s strategy is to tie carbon extraction to its profit potential rather than making it only about save-the-world altruism. The carbon captured is in a pure enough form that it may be sold at a profit, for industrial uses including plastics manufacturing, biofertilizers, biofuels, greenhouses, desalination of water and making soda pop fizzy. Global Thermostat has been setting up deals to provide CO2 capture systems for many of these applications already, she said. The technology and its economics have skeptics. Like a lot of individuals working to rewrite the rules, Chichilnisky has received both criticism and awards. It’s par for the course, she said. “When I receive these awards, I’m suspicious,” she joked. “I always say that if you really are very creative, you don't get an award. You get punished.” If she is successful, the company will embark on a path of rewriting the entire dialogue around global reaction to climate change.