High tech carbon capture van maps pollution in New Zealand

Описание: (20 Feb 2026)
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Wellington, New Zealand - 28 January 2026

1. Mid of electric-powered Carbon Watch van measuring carbon emissions leaves Earth Sciences New Zealand laboratory at Avalon
2. Various of Dr Jocelyn Turner driving vehicle towards the city
3. Carbon Watch vehicle pulls up on foreshore
4. Various of Dr. Turner exiting vehicle and opening the back doors
5. Mid of Turner operating scientific instruments in the vehicle
6. Various of monitor showing carbon levels in the atmosphere being measured
7. Wide of antennae on top of the vehicle
8. SOUNDBITE (English) Dr Jocelyn Turner, Lead Scientist, Earth Sciences New Zealand
“Here in New Zealand where most of our electricity is renewable and we don’t have too much heavy industry we see that pretty much our emissions are traffic, traffic and traffic. There are some other sources, some industry, commercial, residential, aircraft, ships, those kind of things, but mostly it’s traffic.”

9. Various of traffic on motorway in and out of Wellington
10. Close from Carbon Watch van of lorry accelerating and overtaking van on motorway
11. Tracking shot of Wellington Port from Carbon Watch van
12. Cutaway of Turner driving
13. View of air monitoring station from van
14. Close of antennae on air monitoring station
15. Wide vehicle and monitoring station
16. Various of Turner removing air flask from box and attaching it to atmospheric sampler on the back of the van
17.Traffic passing air monitoring station
18. SOUNDBITE (English) Dr Jocelyn Turner, Lead Scientist
“You see we have so much green space in our cities, that green space, those plants are photosynthesising and taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and that is actually, probably, we think, offsetting a small amount of our emissions in our cities and so we really want to understand how much has been offset, how much has been taken off and if there are actions we can take, for example planting more trees in our cities, managing green spaces better to offset a bit more of our emissions, but I want to emphasise that that can only be a small part of solving the problem, but what we really need to do if we want to reduce emissions, is reduce emissions. ”

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Wellington, New Zealand - 26 January 2026

19. Mid of cyclist walking bicycle past car exhaust
20. Close of bus passing cyclist crossing on city street
21. Wide of traffic at intersection

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Wellington, New Zealand - 28 January 2026

22. Various of Carbon Watch vehicles driving up residential street taking reading
23. Wide of rack of air flasks in laboratory at Earth Sciences New Zealand
24. Various of Turner adjusting flasks on rack
25. SOUNDBITE (English) Mus Hertoghs, Laboratory Technician, Earth Sciences New Zealand
“So the samples that we collected on the road are now going to get cryogenically purified by freezing out the CO2 in our liquid nitrogen here. This will leave us with the pure CO2 gas. This will then get turned into graphite on our graphite line behind me and then, when it’s in solid form and graphite, it can go down to our accelerator mass spectrometer down the hall. There we’ll count the individual atoms of carbon and then we can see how much of that carbon came from fossil fuels versus how much came from natural sources.”

26. Various of sample being exposed to liquid nitrogen
27. Various of Hertoghs holding small tube of graphite extracted from sample
28. Various of mass spectrometer
29. Wide external of cable car descending past the Wellington skyline


ASSOCIATED PRESS
Wellington, New Zealand - 27 January 2026

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