By Ecotality blogger Bill Hobbs. Originally published on July 23, 2007.

Regular readers of my writings here at the Ecotality blog know I have an abiding faith in the ability of profit-incentivized innovators and entrepreneurs to come up with solutions to the problems all tangled up in the global warming/energy puzzle, and today comes news out of Wales that fits thgreenbox.bmpat expectation to a tee.

It’s called the “Greenbox” and what it does is trap CO2 emissions from a vehicle’s exhaust system, and hold them for future use in making biofuel. Reuters reports:

The world’s richest corporations and finest minds spend billions trying to solve the problem of carbon emissions, but three fishing buddies in North Wales believe they have cracked it. They have developed a box which they say can be fixed underneath a car in place of the exhaust to trap the greenhouse gases blamed for global warming — including carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide — and emit mostly water vapor. The captured gases can be processed to create a biofuel using genetically modified algae.

Dubbed “Greenbox”, the technology developed by organic chemist Derek Palmer and engineers Ian Houston and John Jones could, they say, be used for cars, buses, lorries and eventually buildings and heavy industry, including power plants. “We’ve managed to develop a way to successfully capture a majority of the emissions from the dirtiest motor we could find,” Palmer, who has consulted for organizations including the World Health Organisation and GlaxoSmithKline, told Reuters.

The inventors “stumbled across the idea while experimenting with carbon dioxide to help boost algae growth for fish farming,” Reuters said, and they now are seeking venture capital either from government or industry.

A Greenbox small enough to fit under a car would hold the CO2 emission from burning on tank of gasoline, they say.

The crucial aspect of the technology is that the carbon dioxide is captured and held in a secure state, said Houston. Other carbon capture technologies are much more cumbersome or energy-intensive, for example using miles of pipeline to transport the gas.

“The carbon dioxide, held in its safe, inert state, can be handled, transported and released into a controlled environment with ease and a minimal amount of energy required,” Houston said at a demonstration using a diesel-powered generator at a certified UK Ministry of Transportation emissions test centre.

More than 130 tests carried out over two years at several testing centers have, the three say, yielded a capture rate between 85 and 95 percent.

Engadget, where I first read the story today, suggests that while the technology appears to work, people won’t be wanting to slide under their cars to remove the Greenbox and replace it with an empty Greenbox at each fill-up. That’s true. But that problem just needs its own environmental solution. Step one would be for filling station operators to realize that they now have a potential second business - emptying Greenboxes into a larger holding tank, and selling it to biofuels makers. And the Greenbox folks need to design a way for a filling station to plug in a hose and empty the Greenbox, rather than remove it.