6 ms·

It's worth pointing out the "omg" math moment in this paper. According to various mitigation scenarios modelled, the amount of CCS required (in addition to othe

It's worth pointing out the "omg" math moment in this paper. According to various mitigation scenarios modelled, the amount of CCS required (in addition to other mitigating approaches) requires the construction of an "average typical" CCS facility at a rate of between one a week, and one a day, until 2050. I'm not sure how to describe how this makes me feel, other than "ill".

H8crilA 7y ago
Another thing is where will all that energy required to break down CO2 come from. It's so bizarre that you hear so little about that, almost like nobody can do simple accounting on Joules: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption
- lrem 7y ago
  Isn't the lack of that energy the reason for proposing storage in the first place?
- Tuna-Fish 7y ago
  Binding carbon from CO2 does not necessarily cost energy. The reactions CaO -> CaCO3 is exothermic, and the same is true for the equivalent reaction for magnesium, and the reactions forming carbonates from the silicates of those metals. Eroding volcanic rock naturally pulls CO2 out of the atmosphere, as erosion slowly reveals metals that were reduced by the volcanic heat. This process is naturally quite slow, but it can be sped up, for example, by fracking basaltic rocks and feeding carbonated water in them. The pilot project for was ran in Iceland and was successful enough to lead to both constructing a full-scale plant and scaling the process out to multiple different locations in Europe. The current main open problem is substituting seawater for fresh water for the process (Using a lot of fresh water is not exactly a problem in Iceland, but presents challenges for scaling the process out).
  - leoedin 7y ago
    This relies on the right sort of rock. Is it ubiquitous enough that we can account for meaningful amounts of carbon sequestration?
    - Tuna-Fish 7y ago
      Yes, by many orders of magnitude, to capture not just all existing emissions but the emissions that results from burning of all the fossil fuels on the planet.
      - bamboozled 7y ago
        Have you read about this! Curious about what others think!
      - darkmighty 7y ago
        By available, do you mean 'It exists on the planet crust', or 'It can be accessed at a significantly lower cost than the forward (breakdown, e.g. the cost of equivalent oil) energy cost?'[1], and if so, do you have sources to back that up? [1] If it costs more, or even not significantly (an order of magnitude at least) less than the cost of oil for equivalent emissions, than the economic proposition is dire. Solutions so far have those economic difficulties afaik, and we're still at a stage where we have easily available capture resources (i.e. we haven't depleted or saturated a number of them) -- we're talking about a planetary scale solution here
        Tuna-Fish 7y ago
        The first definitely, the second remains to be proven. You can find most of the relevant scientific articles by searching for 'carbfix' on sciencedirect. The current results are promising, but there are still challenges to overcome. Notably, the system they run in Iceland absolutely guzzled fresh water, and while this is not a problem in Iceland, it would prevent the scaling up of this project to a true planetary-scale solution. Work is ongoing for figuring out if saltwater would clog up the wells too badly, and how this can be mitigated. Also, as the carbfix project took in CO2 and H2S as highly concentrated gases, as the direct problem was to get rid of the emissions of a geothermal plant. To scale up to carbon capture from the atmosphere, they'd have to either set up their system to use less concentrated input gases, or figure out a cost-effective method of separating and concentrating CO2 from the atmosphere. Not saying this is necessarily a silver bullet for all our emissions, just saying that the original concern of the poster I replied to about where the energy to split CO2 it going to come from is not actually as big of a deal as it seems.
- igravious 7y ago
  Very true. I may email the researchers of this report about this, surely they've spent time thinking about this. (More recent stats) https://yearbook.enerdata.net/total-energy/world-energy-production.html https://yearbook.enerdata.net/total-energy/world-energy-prod... https://yearbook.enerdata.net/total-energy/world-consumption-statistics.html https://yearbook.enerdata.net/total-energy/world-consumption...
igravious 7y ago
It has been widely reported than China is to build a Coronavirus treatment hospital in Wuhan in six days to manage the treatment of people with said virus. This article is suggesting that we ought to treat climate change with a similar degree of alarm and urgency. This is not happening, therefore we should start preparing for the probable scenarios, not the improbable ones. “To get to net-zero emissions, the residual emissions must be counteracted by CO2 removal to achieve net zero emissions (dark green). Most models do this with afforestation or bioenergy with CCS (BECCS). Non-CO2 greenhouse gas emissions (such as methane) add to the residual emissions (not shown).” I'm all for massive afforestation programs, I'm less for BECCS – fight nature with nature I say.
algo_trader 7y ago
In 2019 we built ~500 large renewable energy projects. Total 180GW, or about 2 per day. We can and should built about x2-x3 more. Current bottlenecks is NIMBY, competing fossil assets, and transmission. It will be hard, so feel "ill but hopeful".
- revax 7y ago
  What does a "renewable energy project" means?
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - greglindahl 7y ago
    180GW / 500 = 360 megawatts average, does that help set the scale?
- natch 7y ago
  The numbers were referring to carbon capture and sequestration projects, not renewable energy projects. Both help with getting carbon out of the atmosphere. But they are not the same thing. Energy projects generally produce or help deliver energy for the locale that creates and funds them. That means there is political will for them, locally. CCS projects benefit the global climate, but not the local taxpayers directly. I’m all for them but your average climate denier is not going to be onboard. It’s way beyond being a hard sell. Hopeful is not the feeling that naturally arises here.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
- acidburnNSA 7y ago
  Is that 180GW of capacity or of generation? With renewables these values are often different by ~4x due to intermittency.
johnmorrison 7y ago
I think looking at the total rate is naturally going to feel heavy. Instead, consider this: per country on average, that rate is between one every 4 years, and 2 every year, until 2050. That's not bad at all.
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  Presuming every country has the same ability to pay. Once you get outside the G20, or top 40, you may well be asking the impossible.
  - johnmorrison 7y ago
    Of course I don't mean to suggest we should actually split it up by country - it's just a nice mental model that splits by ~40 million person groups.
- labawi 7y ago
  Depends whether you are China or Vatican. Perhaps a per-capita calculation would be more appropriate: 1/day global = 1/day / 7000·1Mp = 1/20y per 1M people; 5/1y per 100M. USA should do a lot more, Africa can get a pass.
  - johnmorrison 7y ago
    > Africa can get a pass. As an African I disagree w/ this. But you're right, global powers like the US/EU/China should and will likely contribute the most.
    - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
      Having seen the effect of China and India getting a pass in the UN Climate summits -- because of where they were 30 years ago, no one should get a pass. Otherwise it'll be a source of much future regret.
      - johnmorrison 7y ago
buzzkillington 7y ago
I find it fascinating. Now I know why the Easter Islanders were building statutes burning up all the trees. The world has gone insane and I'm along for a ride I don't want to be on.

H8crilA 7y ago

Another thing is where will all that energy required to break down CO2 come from. It's so bizarre that you hear so little about that, almost like nobody can do simple accounting on Joules: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_energy_consumption

lrem 7y ago
Isn't the lack of that energy the reason for proposing storage in the first place?
Tuna-Fish 7y ago
Binding carbon from CO2 does not necessarily cost energy. The reactions CaO -> CaCO3 is exothermic, and the same is true for the equivalent reaction for magnesium, and the reactions forming carbonates from the silicates of those metals. Eroding volcanic rock naturally pulls CO2 out of the atmosphere, as erosion slowly reveals metals that were reduced by the volcanic heat. This process is naturally quite slow, but it can be sped up, for example, by fracking basaltic rocks and feeding carbonated water in them. The pilot project for was ran in Iceland and was successful enough to lead to both constructing a full-scale plant and scaling the process out to multiple different locations in Europe. The current main open problem is substituting seawater for fresh water for the process (Using a lot of fresh water is not exactly a problem in Iceland, but presents challenges for scaling the process out).
- leoedin 7y ago
  This relies on the right sort of rock. Is it ubiquitous enough that we can account for meaningful amounts of carbon sequestration?
  - Tuna-Fish 7y ago
    Yes, by many orders of magnitude, to capture not just all existing emissions but the emissions that results from burning of all the fossil fuels on the planet.
    - bamboozled 7y ago
      Have you read about this! Curious about what others think!
    - darkmighty 7y ago
      By available, do you mean 'It exists on the planet crust', or 'It can be accessed at a significantly lower cost than the forward (breakdown, e.g. the cost of equivalent oil) energy cost?'[1], and if so, do you have sources to back that up? [1] If it costs more, or even not significantly (an order of magnitude at least) less than the cost of oil for equivalent emissions, than the economic proposition is dire. Solutions so far have those economic difficulties afaik, and we're still at a stage where we have easily available capture resources (i.e. we haven't depleted or saturated a number of them) -- we're talking about a planetary scale solution here
      - Tuna-Fish 7y ago
        The first definitely, the second remains to be proven. You can find most of the relevant scientific articles by searching for 'carbfix' on sciencedirect. The current results are promising, but there are still challenges to overcome. Notably, the system they run in Iceland absolutely guzzled fresh water, and while this is not a problem in Iceland, it would prevent the scaling up of this project to a true planetary-scale solution. Work is ongoing for figuring out if saltwater would clog up the wells too badly, and how this can be mitigated. Also, as the carbfix project took in CO2 and H2S as highly concentrated gases, as the direct problem was to get rid of the emissions of a geothermal plant. To scale up to carbon capture from the atmosphere, they'd have to either set up their system to use less concentrated input gases, or figure out a cost-effective method of separating and concentrating CO2 from the atmosphere. Not saying this is necessarily a silver bullet for all our emissions, just saying that the original concern of the poster I replied to about where the energy to split CO2 it going to come from is not actually as big of a deal as it seems.
igravious 7y ago
Very true. I may email the researchers of this report about this, surely they've spent time thinking about this. (More recent stats) https://yearbook.enerdata.net/total-energy/world-energy-production.html https://yearbook.enerdata.net/total-energy/world-energy-prod... https://yearbook.enerdata.net/total-energy/world-consumption-statistics.html https://yearbook.enerdata.net/total-energy/world-consumption...

igravious 7y ago

It has been widely reported than China is to build a Coronavirus treatment hospital in Wuhan in six days to manage the treatment of people with said virus. This article is suggesting that we ought to treat climate change with a similar degree of alarm and urgency. This is not happening, therefore we should start preparing for the probable scenarios, not the improbable ones. “To get to net-zero emissions, the residual emissions must be counteracted by CO2 removal to achieve net zero emissions (dark green). Most models do this with afforestation or bioenergy with CCS (BECCS). Non-CO2 greenhouse gas emissions (such as methane) add to the residual emissions (not shown).” I'm all for massive afforestation programs, I'm less for BECCS – fight nature with nature I say.

algo_trader 7y ago

In 2019 we built ~500 large renewable energy projects. Total 180GW, or about 2 per day. We can and should built about x2-x3 more. Current bottlenecks is NIMBY, competing fossil assets, and transmission. It will be hard, so feel "ill but hopeful".

revax 7y ago
What does a "renewable energy project" means?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- greglindahl 7y ago
  180GW / 500 = 360 megawatts average, does that help set the scale?
natch 7y ago
The numbers were referring to carbon capture and sequestration projects, not renewable energy projects. Both help with getting carbon out of the atmosphere. But they are not the same thing. Energy projects generally produce or help deliver energy for the locale that creates and funds them. That means there is political will for them, locally. CCS projects benefit the global climate, but not the local taxpayers directly. I’m all for them but your average climate denier is not going to be onboard. It’s way beyond being a hard sell. Hopeful is not the feeling that naturally arises here.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
acidburnNSA 7y ago
Is that 180GW of capacity or of generation? With renewables these values are often different by ~4x due to intermittency.

johnmorrison 7y ago

I think looking at the total rate is naturally going to feel heavy. Instead, consider this: per country on average, that rate is between one every 4 years, and 2 every year, until 2050. That's not bad at all.

NeedMoreTea 7y ago
Presuming every country has the same ability to pay. Once you get outside the G20, or top 40, you may well be asking the impossible.
- johnmorrison 7y ago
  Of course I don't mean to suggest we should actually split it up by country - it's just a nice mental model that splits by ~40 million person groups.
labawi 7y ago
Depends whether you are China or Vatican. Perhaps a per-capita calculation would be more appropriate: 1/day global = 1/day / 7000·1Mp = 1/20y per 1M people; 5/1y per 100M. USA should do a lot more, Africa can get a pass.
- johnmorrison 7y ago
  > Africa can get a pass. As an African I disagree w/ this. But you're right, global powers like the US/EU/China should and will likely contribute the most.
  - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
    Having seen the effect of China and India getting a pass in the UN Climate summits -- because of where they were 30 years ago, no one should get a pass. Otherwise it'll be a source of much future regret.
    - johnmorrison 7y ago

buzzkillington 7y ago

I find it fascinating. Now I know why the Easter Islanders were building statutes burning up all the trees. The world has gone insane and I'm along for a ride I don't want to be on.