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The core of the argument is the cost of reversing thermodynamics at extremely large scales. We need a way to scale the application of energy to the sequestratio

The core of the argument is the cost of reversing thermodynamics at extremely large scales. We need a way to scale the application of energy to the sequestration process which is intrinsically energy intensive. Biomass sequesters CO2 from the atmosphere with almost perfect scalability because it has a built-in energy source and the sequestration "factory" largely builds itself. The industrial chemistry infrastructure required to drive this sequestration at the same scale literally doesn't exist by several orders of magnitude. Even worse, the tremendous power generation capacity to support that industrial chemistry infrastructure also doesn't exist. We're talking global GDP levels of CapEx just to build the infrastructure that would make it possible to build sequestration infrastructure that could remove CO2 on a reasonable time frame. Biomass requires none of this investment to operate at the same scales. These prototypes of industrial sequestration are only pricing in the OpEx and the CapEx of the facility itself. At scale, you also have to pay for the creation of the entire supply chain from scratch -- the factories, power plants, mines, logistics, etc that allow these sequestration facilities to exist at the required scale. The only way the fully burdened cost remotely makes sense is in applications where none of this infrastructure needs to be built i.e. small scale applications. For global atmospheric CO2 reduction, the fully burdened cost of sequestering CO2 via industrial processes is never going to be viable due to industrial chemistry economics. Industrial chemistry is not embarrassingly parallelizable.

varjag 7y ago
> Biomass sequesters CO2 from the atmosphere with almost perfect scalability because it has a built-in energy source and the sequestration "factory" largely builds itself. Wait, what? Biomass uses solar.
- jandrewrogers 7y ago
  Yes, that was my point. Humans are not required to build vast power generation infrastructure for biomass to sequester CO2 from the atmosphere, we get it for free. The industrial chemistry for sequestering CO2 is not that expensive in terms of mass ingredients (nothing rare or exotic), considering the scale, but it is extremely energy intensive and that is where most of the cost of sequestration comes from. If almost all of the sequestration cost is the cost of putting energy into the system then biomass has a massive cost advantage, literally orders of magnitude.
  - varjag 7y ago
    Oh, it's your mention of internal energy source that confused me, as biomass depends on external energy, just as any industrial process. And we know that an industrial process can be potentially at least just as efficient as biomass, by the virtue of same physics/chemistry.
godelski 7y ago
> the fully burdened cost of sequestering CO2 via industrial processes is never going to be viable due to industrial chemistry economics. To this I fully agree. This problem isn't going to be solved by industry. I'm not sure why people are putting that on the table. There is no incentive for them (unless you put huge carbon taxes on as well). This is really a thing where we have to cut our losses and say "It is cheaper to build these now than the cost of the damage of what happens if we don't." There's no industry incentive for that. But there is huge public and governmental incentive.
- jandrewrogers 7y ago
  I don't think you understood what was meant by "industrial chemistry", it is a type of science and engineering (basically doing chemistry at mass scale) not an interest group. The government is bound by the same laws of physics as everyone else. The industrial processes outlined in these articles are fundamentally non-scalable to the problem of meaningfully reducing atmospheric CO2, it doesn't matter who implements them. The fully burdened cost per ton of CO2 adds up to more resources than humanity has available in its entirety as a practical matter. It would be great if it could feasibly scale but there is no science that supports that notion. Any chemical engineer worth a damn can figure that out on the back of a napkin. Scaling is hard for industrial chemistry, same as with software, and it is only weakly parallelizable. The idea that we will take one of these prototypes and scale it a million-fold (literally) while increasing efficiency by 1-2 orders of magnitude is completely implausible for well understood boring engineering reasons. And even if we could do this, the economics are barely within the realm of plausibility. Biomass, on the other hand, has math that works out (still expensive though).
  - Dylan16807 7y ago
    > The fully burdened cost per ton of CO2 adds up to more resources than humanity has available in its entirety as a practical matter. What are you basing that math on? At $100 per ton it's about 4 trillion dollars a year to capture all current emissions. That's five percent of world GPD. And that's ignoring any attempt to reduce emissions, or to more efficiently capture carbon at power plants. Even at the current price of $600 if we reduced emissions by half we could afford that. And for land use, 40 billion / 1 million * 300 acres is 19k square miles, or one sixth of Nevada. Would there be material shortages? Are all those prices fake?

varjag 7y ago

> Biomass sequesters CO2 from the atmosphere with almost perfect scalability because it has a built-in energy source and the sequestration "factory" largely builds itself. Wait, what? Biomass uses solar.

jandrewrogers 7y ago
Yes, that was my point. Humans are not required to build vast power generation infrastructure for biomass to sequester CO2 from the atmosphere, we get it for free. The industrial chemistry for sequestering CO2 is not that expensive in terms of mass ingredients (nothing rare or exotic), considering the scale, but it is extremely energy intensive and that is where most of the cost of sequestration comes from. If almost all of the sequestration cost is the cost of putting energy into the system then biomass has a massive cost advantage, literally orders of magnitude.
- varjag 7y ago
  Oh, it's your mention of internal energy source that confused me, as biomass depends on external energy, just as any industrial process. And we know that an industrial process can be potentially at least just as efficient as biomass, by the virtue of same physics/chemistry.

godelski 7y ago

> the fully burdened cost of sequestering CO2 via industrial processes is never going to be viable due to industrial chemistry economics. To this I fully agree. This problem isn't going to be solved by industry. I'm not sure why people are putting that on the table. There is no incentive for them (unless you put huge carbon taxes on as well). This is really a thing where we have to cut our losses and say "It is cheaper to build these now than the cost of the damage of what happens if we don't." There's no industry incentive for that. But there is huge public and governmental incentive.

jandrewrogers 7y ago
I don't think you understood what was meant by "industrial chemistry", it is a type of science and engineering (basically doing chemistry at mass scale) not an interest group. The government is bound by the same laws of physics as everyone else. The industrial processes outlined in these articles are fundamentally non-scalable to the problem of meaningfully reducing atmospheric CO2, it doesn't matter who implements them. The fully burdened cost per ton of CO2 adds up to more resources than humanity has available in its entirety as a practical matter. It would be great if it could feasibly scale but there is no science that supports that notion. Any chemical engineer worth a damn can figure that out on the back of a napkin. Scaling is hard for industrial chemistry, same as with software, and it is only weakly parallelizable. The idea that we will take one of these prototypes and scale it a million-fold (literally) while increasing efficiency by 1-2 orders of magnitude is completely implausible for well understood boring engineering reasons. And even if we could do this, the economics are barely within the realm of plausibility. Biomass, on the other hand, has math that works out (still expensive though).
- Dylan16807 7y ago
  > The fully burdened cost per ton of CO2 adds up to more resources than humanity has available in its entirety as a practical matter. What are you basing that math on? At $100 per ton it's about 4 trillion dollars a year to capture all current emissions. That's five percent of world GPD. And that's ignoring any attempt to reduce emissions, or to more efficiently capture carbon at power plants. Even at the current price of $600 if we reduced emissions by half we could afford that. And for land use, 40 billion / 1 million * 300 acres is 19k square miles, or one sixth of Nevada. Would there be material shortages? Are all those prices fake?