Solar-Driven Carbon Capture and Utilization for Enhanced Carbon Mitigation and Greenhouse Food Production

Mitigating carbon emissions and ensuring food security are essential for sustainable development. While solar-driven carbon capture technologies (SCC) show promising potential to reduce carbon emissions, the efficient utilization of captured CO₂ is equally crucial for ensuring sustainable and economically viable carbon mitigation. A promising yet often overlooked utilization pathway is to directly supply the captured CO₂ to greenhouses to enhance food production. Here, this study proposes a solar-driven carbon capture and utilization (SCCU) strategy by integrating SCC with greenhouse, which can enhance net carbon mitigation, food production, and generate economic benefits. The SCCU system harnesses solar energy to support CO₂ capture methods and utilizes CO₂ to enhance the photosynthetic efficiency of greenhouse crops for boosted production. By developing an analytical model, this study determines the dependence of system performance on key variables, including solar irradiance, plant characteristics, and the energy demand of carbon capture. Results show that the system’s performance is positively correlated to global horizontal irradiance, but negatively correlated to the plants’ original CO₂ fixation rates and specific energy demands of carbon capture methods. The SCCU can achieve the maximum enhancements of 43.1% in food production, 41.0% in carbon fixation, and 23.7% in net present value. Global analysis indicates that the SCCU system outperforms conventional designs in 61.75% of worldwide locations regarding carbon capture, food production, and economic benefits. Overall, this study demonstrates the promising potential of SCCU technology to enhance carbon mitigation and greenhouse food production, providing new insights for fortifying sustainable production and climate resilience.