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My chief problem with carbon capture as policy is that it's even less politically viable than carbon tax or any other government subsidies. Carbon capture does

My chief problem with carbon capture as policy is that it's even less politically viable than carbon tax or any other government subsidies. Carbon capture doesn't generate money in itself. You have to pay someone to do this, and since it's more expensive to capture CO2 than not emitting it in the first place, someone has to pay more money than, say, reducing US fossil fuel usage by 10%, to achieve the same CO2 reduction. We can't even muster enough political willpower to shut down coal plants. Imagine going to these same people and saying "Good news, you can keep your coal plants, we will just tax you more than how much it would cost to shut them down!"

genidoi 6y ago
Is the state of carbon capture tech like where transistors were in 1950, or has it already reached the physical limit and the only gains to be made are through better/cheaper/cleaner energy sources to power carbon capture?
- jackdeansmith 6y ago
  Somewhere in the middle I'd guess, I'd say more like photovoltaics about ten years ago. There's still a lot of room for improving efficiency and manufacturing cheap hardware.
jackdeansmith 6y ago
Even one we reach net-zero emissions (which I agree, is proving to be an incredibly hard task politically) we still have the problem of a century of carbon emissions in the atmosphere. Getting our climate back to pre-industrial is going to require carbon capture ramping up dramatically later this century. These projects will only make sense to operate at truly large scale once we've already shut down all the coal plants. I think what stripe is trying to do here is make early investments so that when we really need it to scale, the costs are low and the tech is mature.
ohazi 6y ago
> Imagine going to these same people and saying "Good news, you can keep your coal plants, we will just tax you more than how much it would cost to shut them down!" ...thus incentivizing the operator to shut down the plant of their own accord. This was the desired outcome anyway, so what's the problem?
- yongjik 6y ago
  The problem is that politics is less like a parent telling the kid "Well, if you don't eat your broccoli then no dessert for you, your choice," and more like a kid telling the parent "If you don't take me to the beach this weekend I demand two beach trips next weekend!" I.e., if policy A is already unpopular, bringing up an even less popular policy B won't help you.
philipkglass 6y ago
Political viability differs a lot between polities. Oregon shut down its last coal plant this year. Oregonians can't vote to shut down West Virginian coal plants. Oregon can't impose carbon tariffs to nudge other states, either, since interstate commerce is the domain of federal power. But Oregon can theoretically get to net 0 emissions by deploying carbon capture in tandem with their own ongoing phaseout of fossil fuels. Carbon capture is the least bad option once a polity has cut its own internal emissions as much as practical and has tried and failed to get other polities to make similar cuts.

genidoi 6y ago

Is the state of carbon capture tech like where transistors were in 1950, or has it already reached the physical limit and the only gains to be made are through better/cheaper/cleaner energy sources to power carbon capture?

jackdeansmith 6y ago
Somewhere in the middle I'd guess, I'd say more like photovoltaics about ten years ago. There's still a lot of room for improving efficiency and manufacturing cheap hardware.

jackdeansmith 6y ago

Even one we reach net-zero emissions (which I agree, is proving to be an incredibly hard task politically) we still have the problem of a century of carbon emissions in the atmosphere. Getting our climate back to pre-industrial is going to require carbon capture ramping up dramatically later this century. These projects will only make sense to operate at truly large scale once we've already shut down all the coal plants. I think what stripe is trying to do here is make early investments so that when we really need it to scale, the costs are low and the tech is mature.

ohazi 6y ago

> Imagine going to these same people and saying "Good news, you can keep your coal plants, we will just tax you more than how much it would cost to shut them down!" ...thus incentivizing the operator to shut down the plant of their own accord. This was the desired outcome anyway, so what's the problem?

yongjik 6y ago
The problem is that politics is less like a parent telling the kid "Well, if you don't eat your broccoli then no dessert for you, your choice," and more like a kid telling the parent "If you don't take me to the beach this weekend I demand two beach trips next weekend!" I.e., if policy A is already unpopular, bringing up an even less popular policy B won't help you.

philipkglass 6y ago

Political viability differs a lot between polities. Oregon shut down its last coal plant this year. Oregonians can't vote to shut down West Virginian coal plants. Oregon can't impose carbon tariffs to nudge other states, either, since interstate commerce is the domain of federal power. But Oregon can theoretically get to net 0 emissions by deploying carbon capture in tandem with their own ongoing phaseout of fossil fuels. Carbon capture is the least bad option once a polity has cut its own internal emissions as much as practical and has tried and failed to get other polities to make similar cuts.