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How do we cut down on emissions from steel, cement, and plastic?
- dev_dull 7y ago> Some industrial processes can’t easily be electrified because they require too much heat. One possible alternative is to get the heat from a next-generation nuclear plant. Glad to see this. I take any future large-scale green energy initiative as unserious if it doesn’t take an honest look and consideration at new nuclear energy power plants.
- godelski 7y agoThere's three necessities I see in a green scale initiative: carbon tax, nuclear, and sequestration (CC). I also have a hard time taking anyone serially if they don't talk about how we need a diversified energy portfolio nor understand the difficulties of energy density. I feel like many repeat popular points but do not spend time trying to understand. I think that's how we get politicians that consider climate change as one of their top priorities saying that geoengineering and CC are "false solutions". I also don't know any climatologist who isn't pro nuclear (which means nuclear + renewables, not nuclear vs renewables). The IPCC endorses the use of nuclear power too[0]. Being anti nuclear seems to me, as a scientist, anti-scientific. Since it is against what the scientists studying this are recommending. [0] https://www.world-nuclear.org/press/press-statements/the-ipcc-1-5c-special-report-nuclear-energy%E2%80%99s-impo.aspx https://www.world-nuclear.org/press/press-statements/the-ipc...
- bryanlarsen 7y agoNuclear for power no longer makes sense; wind, solar and batteries are just too cheap. Nuclear for heat makes more sense.
- Reedx 7y agoBill Gates explains that batteries are still orders of magnitude too expensive to be a complete solution: https://youtu.be/d1EB1zsxW0k?t=520 https://youtu.be/d1EB1zsxW0k?t=520
- dev_dull 7y agoCan you explain more about why they don't make sense? My understanding is that they're extremely desirable. They're a drop-in replacement for millions of hydrocarbon plants. They can scale up/down with demand. They produce enormous amounts of energy and emit no C02. Think of the materials and industrial waste to produce 1 nuclear power plant versus all of the battery, solar cells, and turbines to equal the same in power and scalability. Besides, why do the technologies need to be exclusive? Shouldn't we be using them all where it makes sense?
- toomuchtodo 7y agoCost [1]. Time from breaking ground to "permission to operate" as well (even if you cut red tape and systemize manufacturing of nuclear generators, you will not be as fast as wind, solar, and batteries). Solar PV Thin Film Utility Scale: $36-$44/MWh | Onshore Wind: $29-$56/MWh | Nuclear: $112-$189/MWh Can you build nuclear faster than the rest of the world can build and install PV solar and onshore/offshore wind turbines? Unlikely. Tesla installed the Hornsdale Power Reserve in 90 days. Bigger utility scale battery systems will take longer, but no where near 10 years. [1] https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-and-levelized-cost-of-storage-2018/ https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-...
- seren 7y agoExcept that nuclear is running 24/7 even if it is not windy (minus the costly maintenance). As long as we don't have a superconductor grid around whole hemisphere, it seems to be the best way to generate power at night.
- toomuchtodo 7y agoIf it was the best, the entire US commercial generator fleet wouldn't be on death's door due to the economics. If you want to subsidize the last 59 US nuclear plants based on their low CO2 emissions, extending their operating license (if it can be done safely) until cleaner base load arrives, that's a sound decision. Building more nuclear is not. I question if we even have the fortitude to fund safe cleanup of existing decommissioned plants (spent rod casks have been sitting onsite in Zion, IL 19 years after that nuclear generator has been shut down, with nowhere to go [1]). Batteries will get cheaper faster than nuclear ever will, considering every automaker is moving to electric vehicles [2]. [1] https://www.chicagotribune.com/resizer/8tYxXLAlIOkm61zbZmVII2qJKTc=/800x449/top/arc-anglerfish-arc2-prod-tronc.s3.amazonaws.com/public/XYNK64ANGVCDFMWJNUHSU6THAE.jpg https://www.chicagotribune.com/resizer/8tYxXLAlIOkm61zbZmVII... [2] https://about.bnef.com/blog/energy-storage-investments-boom-battery-costs-halve-next-decade/ https://about.bnef.com/blog/energy-storage-investments-boom-... (Energy Storage Investments Boom As Battery Costs Halve in the Next Decade)
- smackthatthro 7y agoAnti-scientific, or we learned from our mistakes? We can barely build a bridge that lasts for 50 years, but somehow we are going to magically build containment units for waste which last 1,000s? The science has shown us that Nuclear electricity is incredibly dangerous, and that humans are mostly too incompetent to maintain it safely. I say this as the child of a Nuclear Physicist who spent half of his life working on weapons, and half at a power plant. Dad didn't think we were up to the responsibility either. I was just in Belarus, a friend of mine told me that since Chernobyl 20 members of her family have died of cancer. Cancer isn't fun, I will tell you from experience. There's more to consider than "does it work in the lab?" and "will it be cheaper"?.
- roenxi 7y agoOptions for death are basically either heart attack, cancer or other [0]. Cancer is horrible, but that isn't a very telling example without more detail. > We can barely build a bridge that lasts for 50 years, but somehow we are going to magically build containment units for waste which last 1,000s? We've had nuclear power for ~70 years. There is a very high likelihood that if we push on with nuclear power we will either be reprocessing that 'waste' for fuel at some point or it will be inert enough that it doesn't really matter. The idea that we in 2019 need to take responsibility for the next 15 generations is absurd. Anyone who tried that at any point in the past would have been at best wasting their time; technology has moved too quickly. Our ancestors might as well have worried that by 2019 we'd look back on them with contempt for not leaving us a strategic 10t reserve of bronze for forging our swords and shields. The biggest risk is that in 60 years they will dig it up and hurl it at their enemies, on purpose, as a dirty bomb. [0] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm
- lozenge 7y agoCoal based power causes 800,000 premature deaths every year, can we shut them down for their incompetence?
- godelski 7y ago>Anti-scientific, or we learned from our mistakes? I would say that when you are valuing the opinion of the public and/or political groups over the opinion the scientific consensus (i.e. the IPCC and other) then that is the definition of anti-scientific. (As to Chernobyl, I would also call building a positive void coefficient reactor is also anti-scientific, considering it was against recommendation).
- pbreit 7y agoUnpopular opinion: adaptation is best (only?) solution.
- truculent 7y agoUnpopular opinion: adaptation at +4C is genocide
- AnimalMuppet 7y agoThat seems likely. But (yet another unpopular opinion): "Zero emissions now" is also genocide, or at least large-scale death.
- VBprogrammer 7y agoI don't know why this is being downvoted. If we went zero carbon tomorrow we'd have no replacement for the Haber process which produces the massive amounts of fertilizer needed to feed the human population.
- AnimalMuppet 7y agoOr for most of the tractors and combines that work the farm fields, or the trucks, trains, and ships that transport the food. Or for the power plants that run the air conditioning that keeps some people from literally dying in the summer, or for the natural gas that keeps some people from dying in the winter.
- mrob 7y ago"Zero carbon" is short for "net zero carbon". Sequestration can compensate for the few cases were emissions are truly unavoidable.
- Ididntdothis 7y agoYes. A lot of wars and displaced people. The question is whether rich countries or people can isolate themselves from the upheaval or will suffer themselves.
- barbs 7y ago> "Whenever I hear an idea for what we can do to keep global warming in check—whether it’s over a conference table or a cheeseburger" You're discussing global warming prevention and eating meat??
- viklove 7y agoYou're discussing global warming prevention and using a computer??
- tomComb 7y agoHe says that Steel (and some other materials) are the most important issue because we don't yet have any proven good or easy way to reduce the CO2 impact of their production. That leads me to the opposite of Gates' conclusion. At this point there are many low hanging fruit, so until we have a good way to address steel production, we should keep the focus on those other measures. We should certainly be doing research on the issue that he is focused on, but we shouldn't let ourselves get distracted by it. Getting to zero carbon emissions overall (the goal he brings up to justify his focus) is a great long-term goal but I think our success in this challenge will be determined in the short and medium term.
- garmaine 7y agoThis isn’t something more research will solve. Metals exist in ores as oxides. To get pure metal you have to reduce them, and that oxygen had to go somewhere, bound to something. There is no net zero process that will magic away those pesky atoms.
- thereisnospork 7y agoEh, its perfectly doable to make those atoms wind up as O2, it is just expensive. All we need to do to solve climate change, today, is accept a drastically lower standard of living. Hence why it isn't happening, (and won't happen until people start dying).
- pharke 7y agoJudging from history, we are perfectly willing to let masses of people suffer and die in the streets rather than give up the luxuries the few can afford. We're already seeing this with increasing inequality, which should really be called decreasing equality since the trend has reversed direction, and we're on track to resume the norm of a small privileged class with a tiny middle class and masses of working and dying poor.
- bryanlarsen 7y ago> accept a drastically lower standard of living With sequestration costs at $100 - $300 per tonne for worst-case industries, climate change will cost trillions world-wide. That's a lot of money, but hardly a "drastically lower standard of living". Compare with Iraq war, or Apollo + Vietnam. Much less sacrifice than WW2.
- f_allwein 7y agoGerman steel makers aiming to go carbon neutral by 2050. Hydrogen is an important element in this: https://www.handelsblatt.com/today/companies/green-energy-thyssenkrupp-steels-itself-for-a-carbon-free-future/23894808.html https://www.handelsblatt.com/today/companies/green-energy-th...
- woranl 7y agoIf we have cheap reliable renewable electricity, then we can generate hydrogen from electrolysis, and use the hydrogen as fuel for steel production. Hydrogen burns even hotter than methane and it's clean. So, the key is we need renewable electricity.
- zizee 7y agoI'm not super knowledgeable about this, but my understanding is that there are significant losses during electrolysis and probably when burning hydrogen. I expect just using an electric furnace would be more efficient.
- jakozaur 7y agoSteel can be produced using hydrogen. This plays extremely well with renewables and storing energy. Produce hydrogen from electricity when energy is cheap (sun + wind), don’t do that when its expensive.
- SECProto 7y ago> Making steel and other materials—such as cement, plastic, glass, aluminum, and paper—is the third biggest contributor of greenhouse gases, behind agriculture and making electricity While I agree in broad terms that eliminating greenhouse gases in the materials sector is important medium-term, I agree with other posters here that we need to focus hard on implementing solutions we DO have now - specifically, in the electricity and transportation sectors. > these materials are everywhere in our lives, and we don’t yet have any proven breakthroughs that will give us affordable zero-carbon versions of them This is at least partially misleading - for aluminum. There are a number of hydroelectric-powered aluminum smelters in Quebec and British Columbia, that produce very-low-carbon aluminum. And there are technologies approaching market for zero-carbon aluminum[1]. [1] https://www.elysis.com/en https://www.elysis.com/en
- garmaine 7y agoIt’s not the source of power. It’s the chemical process itself. You get oxygen out of a metal oxide by binding it with carbon and releasing the CO2. Canadian smelting is just as dirty in this respect. The only other alternative is electrolyzing water to get hydrogen, which binds with the metal oxide’s oxygen to make water again. But not only is this really inefficient by comparison, but now you’re adding O2 to the atmosphere at industrial scale.
- _Microft 7y agoIs using hydrogen for that an actual process or just an idea? There's the problem that hydrogen can make metals brittle, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_embrittlement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_embrittlement
- semi-extrinsic 7y agoTo answer the spirit of your question: yes, replacing carbon containing reducing agents in metal foundries etc is very much something that is being developed.
- philipkglass 7y ago
- RickJWagner 7y agoBill Gates has become-- against all odds-- one of my most respected sources of information when he blogs. I don't always agree with him, but I like his thought processes and writing style.
- Ididntdothis 7y agoAgreed. I often disagree with him but at least he makes an effort to present ideas based on facts and well thought out ideas. This makes finding solutions much easier. I am always horrified by the debate about US healthcare we’re almost nobody makes an effort to think it through and also listen to other opinions and experiences.
- gremlinsinc 7y agoCouldn't we just put a dome around manufacturing plants that is air tight and collects the carbon? For breathable air we can use hospital grade air systems.
- bryanlarsen 7y agoMy climate change plan is simple: a ratcheting carbon fee with dividend[1], together with a carbon tariff as part of a climate club[2] The industries where it's easy will take the easy way to avoid the carbon fee. The industries where it's hard will pay the fee but will see the ratchet coming and will be furiously researching alternatives. Worse come to worse, at some point the fee will be more than sequestration costs so they'll take that option. I don't have to talk about any specific industry like steel because there is always sequestration as a backstop. edit: of course my plan only works because there are lots of people like the companies Bill Gates linked to working on the details. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_fee_and_dividend https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_fee_and_dividend 2: https://issues.org/climate-clubs-to-overcome-free-riding/ https://issues.org/climate-clubs-to-overcome-free-riding/
- news_to_me 7y agoCool, now the price of steel skyrockets and brings up the cost of everything that uses steel. Maybe we can find a way to do this in a less economically violent way?
- bryanlarsen 7y agoYou can spend trillions on reduction or you can spend trillions on adaptation or you can die. There's no cheap option.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- tonyedgecombe 7y agoMaybe we can find a way to do this in a less economically violent way? If you accept that we need to lower carbon emissions then that means we will need to stop doing some things. Yes some people will be worse off, others better off. Given that change is coming anyway we might as well be on top of it rather than dragged along screaming and kicking.
- 7y ago
- ThomPete 7y agoI am glad to see Bill Gates being more vocal about this. There has been an unrealistic optimism when it comes to how easy it is to find alternatives to what we are currently using. What people forget is that things like plastic ever-present not because of some evil conspiracy by oil companies to push an inferior material on the market but because it's superior to all other materials we know of. The problem isn't product innovation but fundamental science and we have had no new discoveries since oil to fundamentally change how we approach progress. Having listened to a lot of pitches by claimed alternative to plastic it's been very obvious to me that we simply need improvements in fundamental science not just in technology. I.e we lack fundamentally new discoveries to truly change our ways. Nanotech might help us some of the way but we are nowhere near the utopia a lot of people seem to be thinking.
- jacobush 7y agoSuperior except that it would not be superior in all these cases if the unaccounted for externalities were considered.
- ThomPete 7y agoThe externalities include positive ones so yes it would be superior by far. There literally is no realistic alternative to plastic right now.
- jacobush 7y agoExcuse me what are those? I can list just a few negatives just off the top off my head, hormonal dysfunction in humans and animals, microplastics in the sea, no way to know if plastic contains carcinogens, are safe for food or not, contain heavy metals, litter, and new problems we don't even know about yet, because there is a never ending stream of new products and materials getting shoved out in our lives. And what a defeatist attitude - what about enumerating the plastics we, standardising and regulating additives etc? Today it's total chaos with a very thin veneer of recycling.
- 7y ago
- chrdlu 7y agoI think a lot of this comes down to resources and innovation. As more money is invested and spent on research and development of new ideas, I think some things will eventually start to work providing a solution to these issues. For more money to flow into the ecosystem, we need people to see value from being carbon neutral personally. If you'd like to become carbon neutral, I'd suggest you check out https://projectwren.com/ https://projectwren.com/
- legulere 7y ago> bridges are so sturdy and last so long What a joke, when you see how all the bridges built in the 60s and 70s are crumbling apart.
- pharke 7y agoThat's actually solvable by using another product of high-heat processes, basaltic rebar. The main problem with concrete infrastructure is that water eventually infiltrates down to the rebar and wire mesh used to add tensile strength causing it to rust and expand which breaks apart the concrete. If you use something with equivalent tensile strength that doesn't rust then you get construction that lasts many, many decades longer.
- MayeulC 7y ago> Some industrial processes can’t easily be electrified because they require too much heat [...] We also might be able to get the heat using hydrogen fuels, which can be made using clean electricity I don't quite get it, as this ends up electrifying the production process. Unless he talks about directly heating with electricity (induction?). I was under the impression that there was no real limit to electric heating (induction, microwave, etc.). Of course, a complex hydrogen production plant shipping hydrogen to the factories could end up being much cheaper than installing microwave heaters, I guess. > Carbon capture At the very least, I'd like to see those processed if they can't be eliminated or sequestrated. Run the exhaust trough some algae containers, and transform the resulting biomass into biofuels. At least, that would lessen the carbon impact due to burning those fuels. Taking the idea to its limits to judge the impact: If every factory was to do this, if we take current emissions as (24% agriculture, 25% electricity, 21% manufacturing, 14% transportation) [1] we would in theory be able to fully supply transportation with biofuels, cutting it entirely. Do the same with electricity, and you can remove as much emissions as the entire "manufacturing" budget, so 21%. Not that bad. In parallel, you can continue cleaning up electricity generation, and replacing carbon-intensive manufacturing processes with electricity-based ones. Actually, there is no reason why this couldn't be almost a closed-loop system: Hydrocarbons burned in Manufacturing -> CO2 -> Capture + Algae + processing -> Biofuels (Hydrocarbons) The energy input ends up being solar energy (or equivalent) necessary for photosynthesis. Algae could also be replaced by chemical processes that take electricity as an input. This could be expensive to install, but the fuel could be an extra source of revenue as well (or savings, if closed-loop). That's also why we need the right incentives (carbon tax?) There are multiple research projects being conducted in this area [2] [1]: https://www.gatesnotes.com/Energy/We-should-discuss-soil-as-much-as-coal https://www.gatesnotes.com/Energy/We-should-discuss-soil-as-... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algae_fuel#Carbon_dioxide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algae_fuel#Carbon_dioxide
- pharke 7y agoI think his first point about carbon capture probably deserves more attention. It's likely the most sellable strategy and it also doesn't depend on the location where it is carried out. It has the benefits of possibly producing some goods that can be used and there is prior history of this working. If we look at the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum we see a similar increase in global temperatures due to carbon dioxide release, albeit over a much longer timeline. But we also see a drastic reduction of those carbon dioxide levels. One theory as to how the global CO2 levels were reduced is algal biosequestration. Can we duplicate this at an industrial scale? We're already promoting the growth of algae unintentionally with fertilizer runoff, could we do this intentionally in a location that would minimize harm in order to offset carbon emissions?
- twic 7y agoThere has been quite a bit of work on ocean fertilization, to increase phytoplankton photosynthesis, but no killer app yet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_fertilization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_fertilization