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decarbonize

From Wiktionary, the free dictionary

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English

Alternative forms

Etymology

From de- +‎ carbonize.

Pronunciation

Verb

decarbonize (third-person singular simple present decarbonizes, present participle decarbonizing, simple past and past participle decarbonized)

  1. To remove carbon from something.
    1. (transitive) To clean hard sooty deposits from inside an internal combustion engine.
      Synonym: decoke
      Coordinate terms: carbonize, recarbonize
      During the overhaul, the cylinder heads were found to be reusable, as long as they got a good cleaning to decarbonize the valve seat areas.
      • 1968 February, Popular Science, page 115:
        To decarbonize piston rings and ring grooves, remove each ring carefully by spreading the ends just enough to get them clear of the piston top land and lifted off.
    2. (transitive) To remove carbon content from iron or steel, either intentionally or accidentally, as by (for example) overheating steel in the presence of air, destroying its former temper and hardness.
      Synonym: decarburize
      Coordinate terms: carbonize, carburize, recarbonize, recarburize
      A blast furnace decarbonizes iron enough that it can be used as input to a steelmaking furnace.
      Repeatedly scorching a case-hardened tool will ruin the case by decarbonizing it.
    3. (transitive, intransitive) To reduce or replace fossil fuels by renewable energy in energy production and distribution systems.
      Troponyms: electrify, solarize
      Coordinate term: recarbonize
      Efforts to decarbonize the automotive fleet are challenging, but no one wants nightmare-grade climate change, either.
      Efforts to decarbonize have been facing some challenges lately.
      • 2015, Tessa Hebb et al., The Routledge Handbook of Responsible Investment, Routledge, →ISBN, page 617:
        In fact, at a time when it is urgent to decarbonize the economy by all means possible, carbon footprinting misses the majority of the footprint of many sectors, either due to technique or lack of data.
      • 2025 November 2, Sean Illing, “We can have growth while fighting climate change. How to change your mind on the climate’s future, according to data scientist Hannah Ritchie”, in Vox‎:
        Climate stories usually start the same way: fire, flood, loss, collapse. The charts are grim. The vibes are worse. But there’s another story in the numbers that starts with what’s working, what’s already being built, and how far we’ve actually come. Hannah Ritchie is a data scientist at the University of Oxford and the author of Clearing the Air, a book that offers encouraging answers to some of our hardest questions about the climate. She’s a “data optimist” who doesn’t ignore the dangers of climate change, but recognizes how the world is decarbonizing faster than most of us realize. The real bottleneck now, Ritchie argues, isn’t technology so much as belief. Belief that progress is still possible without shrinking our world; belief that the cleaner option can also be the better, cheaper one; belief that the future is worth racing toward.

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