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> What is the renewable alternative for the cement, steel, shipping, and aviation industries? For steel the possibilities are hydrogen or electrolysis, both ar
by hannob 7y ago
> What is the renewable alternative for the cement, steel, shipping, and aviation industries?
For steel the possibilities are hydrogen or electrolysis, both are being tested by some companies. You need the political will to price emissions to make it profitable though.
For everything fuel-based synthetic power-to-x-based fuels are a (costly, but CCS isn't cheap either) alternative.
Cement is the biggest "we don't really have any good alternative, at least not any time soon"-issue.
I agree that there's a role for CCS to play, but I think it's not helping that its advocates have played the "we need CCS for X"-cards a bit more often than justifiable.
- johnmorrison 7y ago> For steel the possibilities are hydrogen or electrolysis, both are being tested by some companies. We already have steel recycling plants today that shift ~100% of emissions to thermal energy source, with a hot enough nuclear reactor (G4 MSR, maybe something in fast spectrum, maybe fusion) you can effectively eliminate the majority of steel emissions globally. > Cement is the biggest "we don't really have any good alternative, at least not any time soon"-issue. Bill Gates posted about this recently [1,2] [1] https://www.gatesnotes.com/Energy/Buildings-are-good-for-people-and-bad-for-the-climate https://www.gatesnotes.com/Energy/Buildings-are-good-for-peo... [2] https://www.carboncure.com/ https://www.carboncure.com/
- AstralStorm 7y agoThe expensive alternative to concrete would be to switch to epoxide resin bonded concrete. Use natural plastics. The formulations exist already and are comparable. The main downside in some cases is they're harder, so post machining is also harder and more expensive. It works with sea sand too. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6416622/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6416622/