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Is carbon capture a viable solution?

108 points by scottbucks 6y ago

Maakuth 6y ago
If the coal burning power plants are already starting to lose the bid to wind power and photovoltaics, I doubt they stand a chance with the substantial added cost of CCS. Maybe it could be used to sort of pull carbon from the atmosphere if it was combined with renewable fuels. But it does not seem likely that it's going to save fossil fuel profits.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- philwelch 6y ago
  Coal is obsolete anyway, but carbon capture may be useful for natural gas, particularly for applications like peaking plants.
  - tonyedgecombe 6y ago
    I suspect airlines could swallow the cost fairly easily as well.
david_draco 6y ago
No order of magnitude estimation and no time-scale. Carbon capture is irrelevant. This problem has to be solved at the root -- the energy demand. https://withouthotair.com/ https://withouthotair.com/
- phreeza 6y ago
  This book is great, but now more than a decade old and the author is sadly deceased. It would be great to get an updated version which includes advances in renewable and battery technology. It is also focussed almost exclusively on the UK. Would be nice to have a version to cover feasibilities for all countries. Edit: if memory serves, it also doesn't really cover carbon capture?
  - dredmorbius 6y ago
    Virtually nothing's changed, save PV is now at or below fossil-fueled or nuclear thermal generation costs, and will continue to fall at a predictable rate for the foreseeable future, likely several decades. MacCay's principle unit of analysis is energy per unit area, available or used. This is fundamentally insensitive to cost (which annoys economists) and only moderately responsive to technology --- efficiency limits are real (which annoys technologists), meaning the real questions become what new sources can be deployed (as they become economical --- economists are not entirely useless), and how much can demand-side be reduced (ditto technologists). The sources are solar and wind (MacCay is addressing the UK). There is little untapped or available hydro or geothermal potential (exceptions exist elsewhere), tide and wave are effectively negligible and extraordinarily capital intensive, and biofuels are impractical (the UK cannot even feed itself, as it shall soon rediscover post-Brexit, let alone its automobiles, furnaces, and ovens). Nuclear is the wildcard, but is as much a problem child as ever. (MacCay was a quiet proponent.)
    - philipkglass 6y ago
      MacKay assumed that PV modules used in large solar farms would be only 10% efficient, on the grounds that "solar panels would be mass-produced on such a scale only if they were very cheap, and it’s the lower-efficiency panels that will get cheap first": https://www.withouthotair.com/c6/page_41.shtml https://www.withouthotair.com/c6/page_41.shtml A lot of solar startups foundered on this same mistaken assumption that low efficiency thin film panels would be cheaper than crystalline silicon. Considering costs for cover glass, backsheets, frames, cabling, and racking, that wasn't actually true. Crystalline silicon wins both the "premium" rooftop module market and the low cost ground mounted market. Several manufacturers now offer panels for the utility market with efficiencies reaching 20%, like this one from LONGi Solar: https://en.longi-solar.com/uploads/attach/20200423/5ea0f8bb2764c.pdf https://en.longi-solar.com/uploads/attach/20200423/5ea0f8bb2... He palmed an even more significant card at the beginning of the book. Instead of starting with actual per-capita energy consumption in the UK, he estimated consumption for "a typical moderately affluent person" living in the UK: http://www.withouthotair.com/c2/page_22.shtml http://www.withouthotair.com/c2/page_22.shtml Making the whole population "moderately affluent" yields per-capita energy demand 56 percent greater than the actual value at the time the book was written (195 vs 125): https://www.withouthotair.com/c18/page_104.shtml https://www.withouthotair.com/c18/page_104.shtml I thought that MacKay was a clever but not very quiet proponent for nuclear power. His assumptions effectively nudge the reader toward the nuclear solution. Even though some of his assumptions were dubious from the first, and others have been invalidated by subsequent developments, I still love the book for its transparent analysis.
- yodsanklai 6y ago
  Very interesting link, as discussions on energy are meaningless without data. My understanding is that simple back-of-the-envelope calculations show that energy demand is the fundamental issue. That being said, I've read that "without hot air" is a bit outdated and should be updated to reflect recent progress on renewable energy and battery technologies.
jos_pol 6y ago
I've been trying to figure out what the best way to become a "net zero carbon human". Although there's a clear consensus that reducing emissions is great, but what's next? What do you do with the emissions you inevitably produce? As an amateur, it's super confusing: - offsetting is criticised as "paying of your guilt without fixing the problem" - carbon capture is next to impossible as an individual because there are so few projects to sponsor, besides planting trees which has questionable returns in the long run since who can guarantee these trees will not be burned 50 years from now? Any ideas or good overviews are welcome.
- adrianN 6y ago
  You could always buy some cheap land somewhere, start a coppice and produce charcoal that you bury.
  - rhesa 6y ago
    Unless you're in the tropics, where soil has a hard time hanging on to nutrients, you can probably skip the biochar step. Just bury the wood in hugelkultur.
    - leoedin 6y ago
      The biochar step has the advantage of giving you back a bit of energy while you're doing it.
- edent 6y ago
  A short list of things which are fairly easy to do. Don't have children. Switch to a vegetarian or vegan diet. Use public transport or bikes / walking rather than petrol cars. Use solar panels to offset your electricity consumption. Improve the thermal efficiency of your home to reduce energy usage. Switch to "green" energy suppliers. Lobby the companies you use to become more environmentally friendly. Ask your pension provider whether they have a low/no carbon plan - if so, switch your investments to it. Plant a small garden that you can take care of. Encourage others to do the same. Those are all things I've done. Some may be easier or not depending where in the world you are, and your financial means.
alfiedotwtf 6y ago
If civilisation as we know it is almost, at, or past, the no point of return, does it actually matter given it’s our only option?
- noselasd 6y ago
  There's no indication we're at or past a point of no return that would mean the end of civilization.
  - tonyedgecombe 6y ago
    Once demand for food exceeds supply all bets are off. It's hard to see how we can keep growing enough with 3 or 4 degrees of warming.
    - bryanlarsen 6y ago
      Warmer temperatures and higher CO2 levels are great for plants. The world is fully capable of growing all necessary food inside greenhouses if necessary, all it would take would be spending 25% of GDP on food rather than 10% as we do now. There will certainly be starving people in the future, but that will be a failure of capitalism not lack of capability.
      - tonyedgecombe 6y ago
        all it would take would be spending 25% of GDP on food rather than 10% as we do now I don't know, I've grown quite sceptical about what technology can achieve against this problem. I'm pretty sure increasing food spending to 25% of GDP would involve a massive societal shift. Whatever way you look at it we are in for a lot of pain.
        bryanlarsen 6y ago
        Greenhouses have been around for 200 years. And yes, it is a big shift with lots of pain. A massive increase in food prices would be required, which would result in riots across the third world. Easier and cheaper to spend a trillion or five to halt the increase in carbon emissions.
Hnrobert42 6y ago
I question the legitimacy of an article about carbon capture that leads off with a picture of a nuclear power plant’s steam cooling tower.
- jasonwatkinspdx 6y ago
  That's a coal power plant. Note the smoke stacks. Here's an aerial photo of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_Scherer#/media/File:Schererplant.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_Scherer#/media/File:Sche... That design of cooling tower is in no way exclusive to nuclear power plants.
- gspr 6y ago
  I question the legitimacy of a comment that tries to criticize an article for using a picture of a nuclear power plant when that picture is in fact of a coal-fired plant [1], something you'd easily see if you clicked on the picture before posting snark. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_Scherer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_Scherer
pydry 6y ago
Since overproduction is a good way of dealing with variability of solar + wind and because carbon capture uses quite a lot of energy this might be a good use of over produced energy (those periods when energy prices go negative). Better than mining Bitcoin.
- kolinko 6y ago
  Hear hear. Right now, sadly - crypto is the only thing that allows you to directly convert excess energy into money, without a surrounding infrastructure.
scottlocklin 6y ago
I don't even know why this is a question. So, people burn hydrocarbons for energy. How do you expect to capture the carbon piece into a stable compound that can be buried without expending more energy? Please draw this chemical reaction out, along with energy balances and how endothermic it is. The idea that you could do this belies total ignorance of chemistry, fossil fuel genesis and the laws of thermodynamics. Life actually does a pretty good job of turning CO2 into dirt which gets buried -encouraging that rather than building some preposterous contraption involving mineshafts seems a little more sensible.
- gspr 6y ago
  > So, people burn hydrocarbons for energy. How do you expect to capture the carbon piece into a stable compound that can be buried without expending more energy? Please draw this chemical reaction out, along with energy balances and how endothermic it is. If you read the article, you'd see: > Nowadays, Industrial production accounts for one-quarter of CO2 emissions from energy and industrial processes. With the demand for cement, steel and chemicals remaining strong to support a growing and increasingly urbanised global population, the future production of these materials will have to be more efficient and emit much less CO2 if governments want to meet their climate goals. In other words, this technology is not targeted at capturing carbon that is burned for energy.
  - contravariant 6y ago
    Well the images of power plants as well as statements like > Carbon capture, usage and storage (CCUS) refers to a chain of different technologies aimed at capturing waste carbon dioxide (CO2), usually from large point sources of pollution like power plants or > Another drawback of carbon capture, usage and storage, is the considerable amount of extra power it requires, which would increase the cost of electricity Do give the distinct impression that they're talking about the production of energy (since 'increasing the cost of electricity' would be a weird way to phrase a pure increase in demand). If it was purely talking about processes that also happen to release CO2 then it doesn't make sense to solely talk about carbon capture vs. renewable energy like this article does as that's not an alternative. Now carbon capture might still be necessary in a fossil fuel free world, but the article puts no real arguments forward why that would be the case.
jesperlang 6y ago
A dangerous thing with this I think is that it risks cementing current unsustainable practices. It gives people and politicians, today, a sense of relief which stops them from doing the absolutely urgent actions that are needed right now (or was needed many years ago)...
- kisamoto 6y ago
  I think the idea is not to replace reducing with removal but to supplement it. There is no substitute for reducing emissions and completely transitioning to zero emissions but we already have such an excess of CO2 in the atmosphere that to get that is under control we also need to remove carbon. Net-zero is the ultimate, sustainable goal but we'll need to even be carbon negative for a bit to undo the gigatons of carbon humanity has pumped out.
michaelaiello 6y ago
They key metric here is how much it costs ($/TON of CO2 Captured and Sequestered). There are a range of methods and approaches to do this. The average cost for Air Capture across modern approaches is $250/Ton of C02 Captured and Sequestered. There are other approaches besides Atmospheric Capture and Sequestration which hold more promise 1. High concentration C02 Emission Capture at source 2. Ocean surface capture and de-acidification Wrote a quick article describing all of them linking to specific research papers and their results here https://www.projectcelsius.com/2017/05/29/capture-methods/ https://www.projectcelsius.com/2017/05/29/capture-methods/ I expect this will follow a similar journey to how solar panel adoption went... once things tipped over the critical ($/KWH) where it made sense over grid electrical, people started to adopt. I imagine once one of the techniques reaches a critical $/TON Captured & Sequestered, governments or institutions will pay to build whatever machines to start. Right now things are too expensive using any method (i.e. using the best method, it would cost ~$12 Trillion dollars to capture and sequester ~49 Gigatons - the estimated carbon emitted in 1 year by humans in 2020)
- phreeza 6y ago
  The question is, what is that magical tipping point price? Unlike your solar vs grid example, isn't the alternative to capturing just doing nothing, which has essentially zero cost in our current economy?
  - klunger 6y ago
    This is the crux of the problem. There are no economic incentives for this, even if it became very cheap. We would simply have to agree, as a global society, to invest in carbon capture because it's the right thing to do. Given our track record with this kind of thing, this does not look very likely. It's the tragedy of the commons writ large and I don't think anyone has a sane answer to it, or we would have done it already.
    - mhh__ 6y ago
      https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2019/11/25/u-s-public-views-on-climate-and-energy/ https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2019/11/25/u-s-public-vi... Even in the US there is consensus for doing something. Thankfully by the time that something happens it will be too late thanks to lobbying by people history will not look kindly upon. Ignoring the scientific fraud behind the alternative answers, only 14% percent of "Conservative" republicans believe in man-made climate change - conserving what then?
knbknb 6y ago
Carbon capture from power plants would contain a mixture of CO2, NOx and SOx, and very few projects (see article) have ever attempted to capture this corrosive mixture, on an industrial scale, for a very long time. It is quite a complicated and energy-intensive process (collect the gases, compress/liquify/make supercritical, transport, convert P/V/T again, pump it down). I know that the Norwegians (or perhaps various multinationals) have been doing this for decades, capturing CO2 at the source, at the Sleipner giant oil field in the North sea . But that is not a power plant.
klunger 6y ago
I have been wondering about using this lately too. Why not set up carbon capture units near alternative energy sources? It is certainly not going to be cheap and there are no real economic incentives for it other than hope for future generations. So, I don't know about the political viability considering this would have to be a massive project run by multiple governments. But, if we put political viability aside for a second and just think pie in the sky here, technically, why not? As someone else pointed out, nature does this too. But those processes are simply too slow for the rate at which we are emitting. So, I think giving nature some help, at least until we have converted sufficiently to renewable is a good idea and may buy us the time we need.
- kisamoto 6y ago
  Check out carbfix in Iceland who do exactly that. Use geothermal heat to capture and store atmospheric carbon. It's early but promising. As with all technologies they need demand and development to bring efficiency up and costs down.
baxtr 6y ago
Crazy time. I was fantasizing about a complete crazy thing lately. What if there was some small device that could turn energy into carbon capturing? Let says there was such a device, we could mount it onto every bicycle on this planet and every time people drive around it might be a bit more exhausting (good for your health!), but at the same time we would capture carbon from the air. Is this a crazy idea? I guess it is... But somehow I think it must be possible! If you know how to built it, let me know. I will sell it like crazy ;)
- gonzo41 6y ago
  Crazy idea, minimize the persons right to a car. Make the electric vehicle boom, a pedal powered one. I doubt the carbon math on the Telsa (any model) breaks even over the life of the car.
- layoutIfNeeded 6y ago
  It's a stupid idea because humans breath out CO2.
- _jjkk 6y ago
  The only places where carbon capture is currently effective are very carbon-rich, like a billowing smokestack. The idea of a device like you propose is so far away, it's a pipe dream.
lovemenot 6y ago
>> The ability to generate additional power thanks to geologically stored CO2 which could be used to extract geothermal heat from the same locations in which it’s injected, producing renewable geothermal energy. The article doesn't go into detail, but this is intriguing. Has there been a prototype anywhere?
icegreentea2 6y ago
Since carbon capture is energetically expensive (by definition), industrial use of it (as opposed to some schemes like enhanced weathering or other geoengineering approaches) can only be part of a viable solution in a few manners: a) As a way to offset carbon released by tasks that cannot be feasibility (or at least easily) de-carbonized directly. Random examples might be concrete, or maybe jet airplanes. b) As a way to try to draw down atmospheric CO2 even faster once we are predominantly transition to de-carbonized energy sources. Pilot plants that exist today are just that - pilots. They may be useful as ways for us to learn what to do when we get to worlds that are well described by a) or b)... but we really gotta get there first.
qaq 6y ago
What is the probability of an event that will compensate the effects in say next 50 years? e.g. nuclear exchange of X warheads or major volcanic activity etc ?
boxed 6y ago
I wonder how much natural sources emit. Could we extract and sequester sources like Lake Nyon for example?
mrfusion 6y ago
My wife was asking why there’s never anything positive reported about climate change. I didn’t have a good answer. I mean I understand that it’s mostly all bad but you’d think any change would at least benefit a few people.
- bufferoverflow 6y ago
  It's good for countries like Russia, they get warmer winters and longer summers and more lands become viable for growing food.
jillesvangurp 6y ago
No, it's a stop gap solution promoted mainly by those looking to keep on exploiting fossil fuels for a little while longer. There are lots of companies that are looking to do this because they are knee deep into legacy infrastructure that they can't shut down overnight because it would kill them. However, continuing improvements in pricing for renewable energy (wind/solar + storage) make most such propositions increasingly less viable from both a carbon footprint point (you release more than you capture) of view and an economical perspective (spending money to make an already expensive solution less damaging). Mostly it's a strategy pursued by companies that are protecting a sunk cost in the form of existing infrastructure to stretch its economic life a little bit longer. It's also a strategy for green-washing things that really aren't that green. Ultimately it's cheaper to not bother putting CO2 in the atmosphere thus removing the need to add cost by compensating for that elsewhere. Long term, most carbon capture schemes will end up on the wrong side of a cost equation. The long term perspective for most gas and coal plants is basically extremely grim with or without carbon capture. Investors are actively divesting for this reason for most of the last decade already. There are of course still a few countries building coal plants but most are in the process of actively shutting them down and on a clear path to getting rid of them completely. IMHO, most remaining ones will not make it to their current planned retirement dates for the simple reason of it ultimately becoming unsustainable economically to keep them going. To some extent that has already played out for most coal plants. Germany went against the trend here by opening a new one recently (probably for political reasons, the brown coal lobby runs strong in parts of Germany). But it's an anomaly in a market otherwise dominated by premature closures of plants. Likewise gas plants are converting to being peaker-plants in a lot of markets that have fluctuating supply of increasing amounts of solar and wind. This vastly reduces the appeal of building new ones; but the reality is that the more renewable energy hits the market the less attractive it gets to operate gas plants. In some markets batteries form a perfectly adequate and cheaper substitute for having lots of gas peaker plants. I'd say investing in a new gas plant that supposedly will run for a few decades is at this point extremely misguided as an investment strategy. It only makes sense if there's lots of stupid money (i.e. tax payer money) involved. Put bluntly, that's what most carbon capture schemes boil down to: stupid money. It's basically tax payers paying for the privilege of paying too much for electricity and corporations helping themselves to this cash on the basis of empty promises and a green-washing strategy. We're decades away from having fossil free energy production world wide; but several countries are looking to get there in 10-15 years nevertheless.
markkat 6y ago
>In the IEA's "Clean Technology Scenario", more than 28 GtCO2 could be captured from industrial facilities between now and 2060. We emit about 35-40 GtCO2 per year. So in 40 years, we might expect carbon capture to remove less than one year of emissions. Not useless, but close, considering the investment which could be used instead to more rapidly reduce emissions by installing/improving solar, wind, geothermal, etc.
- Spooks 6y ago
  Would the increase in investment have a better chance to facilitate research and development? As with more research comes the possibility of a better capture rate down the road
- notabee 6y ago
  We do need to remove emissions, but we're likely past the point where that will be enough. We've already triggered too many feedback loops. We have to do all the above and more. https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-11/sr-cce110520.php https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-11/sr-cce110520...
  - FooHentai 6y ago
    TBH I'm starting to come around more to the climate adaptation arguments and drifting away from talks around mitigation and reversal which I'm starting to suspect will remain behind the curve past the timeframe where they could make an appreciable impact. Which is not to say I'm fatalistic to the point of leaning into continued emissions and taking no action on a personal level - I think all the information needed to make individual change is already known but we're facing the seven stages of grief with regards to the lifestyle sacrifices necessary to make them.
kumarski 6y ago
5 Billion Cubic Meters of Oil are produced Annually by humanity. 30Bn Tons of CO2 generated. 60% is un-sequesterable because it is small and/or mobile. 40% is sequestrable and large scale/stationary. 12 Billion Cubic Meters of CO2 are thus sequestrable. You must liquefy CO2 before putting it into the ground. 50% -70% efficiency in converting it to a liquid that we can shove into the ground. 6 to 8.4 Billion Cubic Meters of Liquefied CO2 are thus Sequestrable. Shoving 6 to 8.4 billion cubic meters of liquefied CO2 into ground is no small matter. Think about it this way, humanity built an entire industry focused on an annual extraction of 5Bn Cubic Meters of Oil over a time span of 100+ years with refineries and complex processes spanning multiple countries, geographies, regulations, wars, and land rights. Also, who’s going to buy sequestered carbon? The reality is that something like this will require spinning up an entire Trillion dollar market.
- EGreg 6y ago
  What about planting TREES? Also - nature seems to be doing it in the north. https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2436/co2-is-making-earth-greenerfor-now/ https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2436/co2-is-making-earth-green...
  - kumarski 6y ago
    I don't know. I'm not bullish on the "just plant trees, it will fix everything about CO2 emissions" movement....I have my doubts. Most countermeasures seem irrelevant as long as 1/3rd of the world relies on lignite ash and brown coal as primary energy sources.
    - BurningFrog 6y ago
      There is no one thing that will "fix everything". This will be solved by many small things adding up.
  - Retric 6y ago
    It’s a question of scale, if you want to actually make a difference you need to cut them down and store the wood underground, then grow new trees and repeat. Doing that takes real effort which then needs to be paid for.
bronlund 6y ago
Just plant some trees already!
hikerclimb 6y ago
I hope not. I hope global warming kills billions of people
radu_floricica 6y ago
The only reason I'm tolerating the whole carbon craze is that most legislation is also helping with the real evil of pollution, that is killing here and now. And people are proposing to start whole new industries with their own pollutants just so we can keep dirty industries running longer? <insert expletive here>
spaetzleesser 6y ago
Carbon capture seems to me similar to plastics recycling which was invented by the oil and plastics industry. They always knew that recycling wouldn’t be economically viable at scale but kept pushing it anyway. I can’t imagine how we could capture any meaningful amount of CO2 and store it in a safe and economical way. It just seems another smokescreen like “clean coal”.
blkknightarms 6y ago
There's no choice. CCS must be accomplished or the existential risk is we and almost everything else dies. 1. CCS has to be accomplished using biological processes, not mechanical or chemical industrial processes. 2. The best way to accomplish 1. is to use oceanic organisms such as kelp and phytoplankton. Recall the enormous kelp forest between Mexico and Africa that dumped many, many tons of material on Cancún's beaches. 3. Sequestration of 2. requires either sinking material to the deepest depths of the ocean, or minimizing and injecting carbonaceous material below ground. 4. 350 ppm can be achieved for under $20T USD, but the desire, intent, and coordination must occur rather than looking for excuses or shouting "It's impossible!"
boringg 6y ago
Simply put no. The cost to implement is too high and is essentially the same as what we do for Municipal Solid Waste (just bury it). I put it in a slightly less insane category than geo-engineering. The only places that I see carbon capture as potentially viable as a transition is using it to offset industrial process gases necessary. I.e. capture CO2 from coal plant for cement production - however that is niche case as siting is key and transportation is too expensive. How do we solve climate change? Deploy, deploy, deploy. We have renewable energy that is cheap and available. Change the policy incentives at the federal away from subsidizing oil and gas and incentives green energy. De-carbonize the transportation sector with EV and HZEV. Reduce Natural Gas for home heating with the injection of Hydrogen into the fuel lines (up to 20%). Invest in research and development into further productionizing effective technologies. Let's skip the wasted capital, debate and energy and move on. Also, let us not forget that Oil and Gas Majors have been deploying considerable money into this sector for decades to prolong their existence. I for one do not want to subsidize their behavior any more as they have been trying to scuttle the climate date since the 80s.
- jartelt 6y ago
  The problem is that even if we do everything you propose - rapidly deploy renewable energy tech, replace natural furnaces with heat pumps after the furnaces break, quickly transition to EVs, etc. - the best we can hope for is only 1.5 degrees C warming. Perfect behavior from here on out is not enough to prevent significant warming. There is simply too much carbon in the atmosphere and too many carbon emitting machines in use today that will emit until they reach end of life. They acknowledge this in the IPCC reports and have already baked in aggressive use of carbon capture technology in order to meet the 1.5 C target. Simply put, we need to continue to invest in carbon capture technology. This includes direct air capture, remediating soil to retain more carbon, preventing deforestation, etc. If we do not do this, we are going to blow past the 1.5 degree C mark.
  - boringg 6y ago
    Remediation of soil, preventing deforestation, reforestation are all very important options that need to be pursued. Direct capture to storage is a waste of capital (political, talent and financial) and rewards both the oil and gas historic investments and incentivizes them to continue to pursue fossil fuel production. That with it requiring specific geologic formations and on top there is a risk that there are leaks in the formations (e.g. Aliso Canyon gas leak in California).
tsjq 6y ago
Grow more trees?
- kisamoto 6y ago
  Sadly not enough at this point. Need to also invest into other removal methods (while also restoring trees, mangroves and other naturally sequestering wilderness)
hedora 6y ago
Carbon capture is certainly a viable technology. The question is whether the politicians have the will to act. Emerging carbon capture technologies can sequester atmospheric CO2 at low enough prices. Last I checked, the prices were between $15-$75 per ton, which translates into $0.15-0.75 per gallon of gasoline burnt. Other carbon fuels would have similar costs per energy produced. We need to transition to a carbon-negative economy as quickly as possible. Current atmospheric levels of CO2 are not sustainable.
- ttul 6y ago
  Eventually, the politicians will have the will to act, because everything will be either on fire or flooding. Even conservative voters are starting to come around to that realization.
  - kisamoto 6y ago
    Humanity will be reactive but hopefully some of us can be proactive.
- kisamoto 6y ago
  What technologies have you seen at that price? Most I know are $400-1000/ton...
FuckButtons 6y ago
No.
hikerclimb 6y ago
I don’t think so because humans are screwed. Expect billions of death from climate change I hope and millions once COVID evolves so no masks work...
jeffbee 6y ago
The article fails to answer the question, and the whole site appears to just be a clickbait ad farm. They have an article on hyperloop which fails to denounce it, calls it "one of the greatest leaps in transportation for generations" which tells us these articles are not reflections of critical thought.
- fastball 6y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...
- FooHentai 6y ago
  I was about to post that the article seems to consist of snippets gathered from elsewhere. The bit about using captured carbon to grow plants and carbonate fizzy drinks was the original pitch ClimeWorks AG had before they pivoted to seeking direct donations from the public. These are also uses of captured carbon that do not result in its long term sequestration and so are orthogonal to discussions about mitigating climate change. It'd be nice to have seen that noted in the article, and to see some sources cited. One critical point that article does touch on is that CCS at the point of emission is regarded by some as an unproductive distraction and that money would be better spent elsewhere (I.e. switching away from the emitting activity). That debate is a microcosm of general analysis paralysis that crops up in discussions around reducing carbon emissions - we seem to have a propensity for getting stuck searching for 'perfect' solutions at the detriment of deploying things that at least nudge the dial in the right direction (merely 'better'). We can (I'd almost argue must) do anything we can agree as merely 'better' today and then do 'perfect' if/when that becomes possible. Then again, green washing is a real and strongly incentivised phenomenon so agreeing even on what's truly 'better' is often not straightforward. At the very least I can say with relative confidence that quite often CCS = usually better and CCUS = usually green washing. But even then the devil is in the details - CCS might not be better once the total energy cost is understood or if those energy inputs are themselves not decarbonized or fully accounted for. Carbon use might be beneficial if the usage does result in sequestration for a significant period.
Asraelite 6y ago
The way I see it, it's carbon capture or geo-engineering. Pick one. We have been past the point of no return with climate change for a few years now, so only active measures can reverse it; going green will slow down the inevitable, which should still be done, but it doesn't fix the problem. I think this is a reality that will only settle into the public consciousness a few decades from now. Most people still feel like solar panels and electric cars are a solution, so they don't put as much thought into the drastic active measures we will eventually be forced to take. It's not "can we use carbon capture and geo-engineering", it's "how and when".
- tcbawo 6y ago
  It would be fascinating if we end up using green energy to synthesize hydrocarbons for carbon sequestration w/ the potential for an energy reserve.
- anonuser123456 6y ago
  Adaptation is also a viable solution. It's not out of the realm of plausibility we will be able to convert energy directly into food stocks via bioreactors. Global weather/climate induced crop failure is literally the only doomsday scenario for mankind w.r.t. climate change. If we can figure out how to synthesize carbohydrates, lipids and proteins with low energy inputs, climate change won't be such a big deal.
ActionPlankton 6y ago
What people normally call "CCS" is mostly a short-term hack to keep the coal mines running. If you're going to burn coal, then, yes, please do CCS, but pretty soon you need to stop burning coal. I also don't trust that CO2 will stay underground forever; that also makes it "short term". That said, we do need direct air capture (DAC) to repair the damage and to provide an alternative source for CO2 and hydrocarbons. ... To this end, I kind-of like algae as a low-tech solar-powered method: https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/60/9/722/238034 https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/60/9/722/238034 I feel you could do this in a moderate-sized backyard. You wouldn't want to bury the biomass directly (say as biochar) because you wouldn't want to lose the NPK nutrients -- but the above article deals with that. It describes a couple methods to extract carbon while recycling the other nutrients. None seem too difficult. ... In a completely different direction, nuclear-powered Sabatier/Bosch/electrolysis is also interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrochemical_reduction_of_carbon_dioxide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrochemical_reduction_of_c... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_reaction#International_Space_Station_life_support https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_reaction#Internationa... ... Either way, you have to combine your DAC with... not mining fossil fuels out of the ground. You have to do both. (Note: Carbon-neutral fuels (bio-, synthesized) are fine, e.g. for air travel. You just can't mine them from the earth. That's the one rule. Then the cost of recapturing CO2 has to be baked into everything else.)
timoth3y 6y ago
Environmental Carbon Capture is a terrible engineering solution. CO2 is millions of times more concentrated when it leaves the smokestack than it is in the general atmosphere. Any sensible approach would focus on removing CO2 where it is most concentrated and easiest to remove. I really want carbon capture to be viable, but so far it seems like a distraction.

108 points by scottbucks 6y ago

If the coal burning power plants are already starting to lose the bid to wind power and photovoltaics, I doubt they stand a chance with the substantial added cost of CCS. Maybe it could be used to sort of pull carbon from the atmosphere if it was combined with renewable fuels. But it does not seem likely that it's going to save fossil fuel profits.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
philwelch 6y ago
Coal is obsolete anyway, but carbon capture may be useful for natural gas, particularly for applications like peaking plants.
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  I suspect airlines could swallow the cost fairly easily as well.

david_draco 6y ago

No order of magnitude estimation and no time-scale. Carbon capture is irrelevant. This problem has to be solved at the root -- the energy demand. https://withouthotair.com/ https://withouthotair.com/

phreeza 6y ago
This book is great, but now more than a decade old and the author is sadly deceased. It would be great to get an updated version which includes advances in renewable and battery technology. It is also focussed almost exclusively on the UK. Would be nice to have a version to cover feasibilities for all countries. Edit: if memory serves, it also doesn't really cover carbon capture?
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  Virtually nothing's changed, save PV is now at or below fossil-fueled or nuclear thermal generation costs, and will continue to fall at a predictable rate for the foreseeable future, likely several decades. MacCay's principle unit of analysis is energy per unit area, available or used. This is fundamentally insensitive to cost (which annoys economists) and only moderately responsive to technology --- efficiency limits are real (which annoys technologists), meaning the real questions become what new sources can be deployed (as they become economical --- economists are not entirely useless), and how much can demand-side be reduced (ditto technologists). The sources are solar and wind (MacCay is addressing the UK). There is little untapped or available hydro or geothermal potential (exceptions exist elsewhere), tide and wave are effectively negligible and extraordinarily capital intensive, and biofuels are impractical (the UK cannot even feed itself, as it shall soon rediscover post-Brexit, let alone its automobiles, furnaces, and ovens). Nuclear is the wildcard, but is as much a problem child as ever. (MacCay was a quiet proponent.)
  - philipkglass 6y ago
    MacKay assumed that PV modules used in large solar farms would be only 10% efficient, on the grounds that "solar panels would be mass-produced on such a scale only if they were very cheap, and it’s the lower-efficiency panels that will get cheap first": https://www.withouthotair.com/c6/page_41.shtml https://www.withouthotair.com/c6/page_41.shtml A lot of solar startups foundered on this same mistaken assumption that low efficiency thin film panels would be cheaper than crystalline silicon. Considering costs for cover glass, backsheets, frames, cabling, and racking, that wasn't actually true. Crystalline silicon wins both the "premium" rooftop module market and the low cost ground mounted market. Several manufacturers now offer panels for the utility market with efficiencies reaching 20%, like this one from LONGi Solar: https://en.longi-solar.com/uploads/attach/20200423/5ea0f8bb2764c.pdf https://en.longi-solar.com/uploads/attach/20200423/5ea0f8bb2... He palmed an even more significant card at the beginning of the book. Instead of starting with actual per-capita energy consumption in the UK, he estimated consumption for "a typical moderately affluent person" living in the UK: http://www.withouthotair.com/c2/page_22.shtml http://www.withouthotair.com/c2/page_22.shtml Making the whole population "moderately affluent" yields per-capita energy demand 56 percent greater than the actual value at the time the book was written (195 vs 125): https://www.withouthotair.com/c18/page_104.shtml https://www.withouthotair.com/c18/page_104.shtml I thought that MacKay was a clever but not very quiet proponent for nuclear power. His assumptions effectively nudge the reader toward the nuclear solution. Even though some of his assumptions were dubious from the first, and others have been invalidated by subsequent developments, I still love the book for its transparent analysis.
yodsanklai 6y ago
Very interesting link, as discussions on energy are meaningless without data. My understanding is that simple back-of-the-envelope calculations show that energy demand is the fundamental issue. That being said, I've read that "without hot air" is a bit outdated and should be updated to reflect recent progress on renewable energy and battery technologies.

jos_pol 6y ago

I've been trying to figure out what the best way to become a "net zero carbon human". Although there's a clear consensus that reducing emissions is great, but what's next? What do you do with the emissions you inevitably produce? As an amateur, it's super confusing: - offsetting is criticised as "paying of your guilt without fixing the problem" - carbon capture is next to impossible as an individual because there are so few projects to sponsor, besides planting trees which has questionable returns in the long run since who can guarantee these trees will not be burned 50 years from now? Any ideas or good overviews are welcome.

adrianN 6y ago
You could always buy some cheap land somewhere, start a coppice and produce charcoal that you bury.
- rhesa 6y ago
  Unless you're in the tropics, where soil has a hard time hanging on to nutrients, you can probably skip the biochar step. Just bury the wood in hugelkultur.
  - leoedin 6y ago
    The biochar step has the advantage of giving you back a bit of energy while you're doing it.
edent 6y ago
A short list of things which are fairly easy to do. Don't have children. Switch to a vegetarian or vegan diet. Use public transport or bikes / walking rather than petrol cars. Use solar panels to offset your electricity consumption. Improve the thermal efficiency of your home to reduce energy usage. Switch to "green" energy suppliers. Lobby the companies you use to become more environmentally friendly. Ask your pension provider whether they have a low/no carbon plan - if so, switch your investments to it. Plant a small garden that you can take care of. Encourage others to do the same. Those are all things I've done. Some may be easier or not depending where in the world you are, and your financial means.

alfiedotwtf 6y ago

If civilisation as we know it is almost, at, or past, the no point of return, does it actually matter given it’s our only option?

noselasd 6y ago
There's no indication we're at or past a point of no return that would mean the end of civilization.
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  Once demand for food exceeds supply all bets are off. It's hard to see how we can keep growing enough with 3 or 4 degrees of warming.
  - bryanlarsen 6y ago
    Warmer temperatures and higher CO2 levels are great for plants. The world is fully capable of growing all necessary food inside greenhouses if necessary, all it would take would be spending 25% of GDP on food rather than 10% as we do now. There will certainly be starving people in the future, but that will be a failure of capitalism not lack of capability.
    - tonyedgecombe 6y ago
      all it would take would be spending 25% of GDP on food rather than 10% as we do now I don't know, I've grown quite sceptical about what technology can achieve against this problem. I'm pretty sure increasing food spending to 25% of GDP would involve a massive societal shift. Whatever way you look at it we are in for a lot of pain.
      - bryanlarsen 6y ago
        Greenhouses have been around for 200 years. And yes, it is a big shift with lots of pain. A massive increase in food prices would be required, which would result in riots across the third world. Easier and cheaper to spend a trillion or five to halt the increase in carbon emissions.

Hnrobert42 6y ago

I question the legitimacy of an article about carbon capture that leads off with a picture of a nuclear power plant’s steam cooling tower.

jasonwatkinspdx 6y ago
That's a coal power plant. Note the smoke stacks. Here's an aerial photo of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_Scherer#/media/File:Schererplant.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_Scherer#/media/File:Sche... That design of cooling tower is in no way exclusive to nuclear power plants.
gspr 6y ago
I question the legitimacy of a comment that tries to criticize an article for using a picture of a nuclear power plant when that picture is in fact of a coal-fired plant [1], something you'd easily see if you clicked on the picture before posting snark. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_Scherer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plant_Scherer

pydry 6y ago

Since overproduction is a good way of dealing with variability of solar + wind and because carbon capture uses quite a lot of energy this might be a good use of over produced energy (those periods when energy prices go negative). Better than mining Bitcoin.

kolinko 6y ago
Hear hear. Right now, sadly - crypto is the only thing that allows you to directly convert excess energy into money, without a surrounding infrastructure.

scottlocklin 6y ago

I don't even know why this is a question. So, people burn hydrocarbons for energy. How do you expect to capture the carbon piece into a stable compound that can be buried without expending more energy? Please draw this chemical reaction out, along with energy balances and how endothermic it is. The idea that you could do this belies total ignorance of chemistry, fossil fuel genesis and the laws of thermodynamics. Life actually does a pretty good job of turning CO2 into dirt which gets buried -encouraging that rather than building some preposterous contraption involving mineshafts seems a little more sensible.

gspr 6y ago
> So, people burn hydrocarbons for energy. How do you expect to capture the carbon piece into a stable compound that can be buried without expending more energy? Please draw this chemical reaction out, along with energy balances and how endothermic it is. If you read the article, you'd see: > Nowadays, Industrial production accounts for one-quarter of CO2 emissions from energy and industrial processes. With the demand for cement, steel and chemicals remaining strong to support a growing and increasingly urbanised global population, the future production of these materials will have to be more efficient and emit much less CO2 if governments want to meet their climate goals. In other words, this technology is not targeted at capturing carbon that is burned for energy.
- contravariant 6y ago
  Well the images of power plants as well as statements like > Carbon capture, usage and storage (CCUS) refers to a chain of different technologies aimed at capturing waste carbon dioxide (CO2), usually from large point sources of pollution like power plants or > Another drawback of carbon capture, usage and storage, is the considerable amount of extra power it requires, which would increase the cost of electricity Do give the distinct impression that they're talking about the production of energy (since 'increasing the cost of electricity' would be a weird way to phrase a pure increase in demand). If it was purely talking about processes that also happen to release CO2 then it doesn't make sense to solely talk about carbon capture vs. renewable energy like this article does as that's not an alternative. Now carbon capture might still be necessary in a fossil fuel free world, but the article puts no real arguments forward why that would be the case.

jesperlang 6y ago

A dangerous thing with this I think is that it risks cementing current unsustainable practices. It gives people and politicians, today, a sense of relief which stops them from doing the absolutely urgent actions that are needed right now (or was needed many years ago)...

kisamoto 6y ago
I think the idea is not to replace reducing with removal but to supplement it. There is no substitute for reducing emissions and completely transitioning to zero emissions but we already have such an excess of CO2 in the atmosphere that to get that is under control we also need to remove carbon. Net-zero is the ultimate, sustainable goal but we'll need to even be carbon negative for a bit to undo the gigatons of carbon humanity has pumped out.

michaelaiello 6y ago

They key metric here is how much it costs ($/TON of CO2 Captured and Sequestered). There are a range of methods and approaches to do this. The average cost for Air Capture across modern approaches is $250/Ton of C02 Captured and Sequestered. There are other approaches besides Atmospheric Capture and Sequestration which hold more promise 1. High concentration C02 Emission Capture at source 2. Ocean surface capture and de-acidification Wrote a quick article describing all of them linking to specific research papers and their results here https://www.projectcelsius.com/2017/05/29/capture-methods/ https://www.projectcelsius.com/2017/05/29/capture-methods/ I expect this will follow a similar journey to how solar panel adoption went... once things tipped over the critical ($/KWH) where it made sense over grid electrical, people started to adopt. I imagine once one of the techniques reaches a critical $/TON Captured & Sequestered, governments or institutions will pay to build whatever machines to start. Right now things are too expensive using any method (i.e. using the best method, it would cost ~$12 Trillion dollars to capture and sequester ~49 Gigatons - the estimated carbon emitted in 1 year by humans in 2020)

phreeza 6y ago
The question is, what is that magical tipping point price? Unlike your solar vs grid example, isn't the alternative to capturing just doing nothing, which has essentially zero cost in our current economy?
- klunger 6y ago
  This is the crux of the problem. There are no economic incentives for this, even if it became very cheap. We would simply have to agree, as a global society, to invest in carbon capture because it's the right thing to do. Given our track record with this kind of thing, this does not look very likely. It's the tragedy of the commons writ large and I don't think anyone has a sane answer to it, or we would have done it already.
  - mhh__ 6y ago
    https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2019/11/25/u-s-public-views-on-climate-and-energy/ https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2019/11/25/u-s-public-vi... Even in the US there is consensus for doing something. Thankfully by the time that something happens it will be too late thanks to lobbying by people history will not look kindly upon. Ignoring the scientific fraud behind the alternative answers, only 14% percent of "Conservative" republicans believe in man-made climate change - conserving what then?

knbknb 6y ago

Carbon capture from power plants would contain a mixture of CO2, NOx and SOx, and very few projects (see article) have ever attempted to capture this corrosive mixture, on an industrial scale, for a very long time. It is quite a complicated and energy-intensive process (collect the gases, compress/liquify/make supercritical, transport, convert P/V/T again, pump it down). I know that the Norwegians (or perhaps various multinationals) have been doing this for decades, capturing CO2 at the source, at the Sleipner giant oil field in the North sea . But that is not a power plant.

klunger 6y ago

I have been wondering about using this lately too. Why not set up carbon capture units near alternative energy sources? It is certainly not going to be cheap and there are no real economic incentives for it other than hope for future generations. So, I don't know about the political viability considering this would have to be a massive project run by multiple governments. But, if we put political viability aside for a second and just think pie in the sky here, technically, why not? As someone else pointed out, nature does this too. But those processes are simply too slow for the rate at which we are emitting. So, I think giving nature some help, at least until we have converted sufficiently to renewable is a good idea and may buy us the time we need.

kisamoto 6y ago
Check out carbfix in Iceland who do exactly that. Use geothermal heat to capture and store atmospheric carbon. It's early but promising. As with all technologies they need demand and development to bring efficiency up and costs down.

baxtr 6y ago

Crazy time. I was fantasizing about a complete crazy thing lately. What if there was some small device that could turn energy into carbon capturing? Let says there was such a device, we could mount it onto every bicycle on this planet and every time people drive around it might be a bit more exhausting (good for your health!), but at the same time we would capture carbon from the air. Is this a crazy idea? I guess it is... But somehow I think it must be possible! If you know how to built it, let me know. I will sell it like crazy ;)

gonzo41 6y ago
Crazy idea, minimize the persons right to a car. Make the electric vehicle boom, a pedal powered one. I doubt the carbon math on the Telsa (any model) breaks even over the life of the car.
layoutIfNeeded 6y ago
It's a stupid idea because humans breath out CO2.
_jjkk 6y ago
The only places where carbon capture is currently effective are very carbon-rich, like a billowing smokestack. The idea of a device like you propose is so far away, it's a pipe dream.

lovemenot 6y ago

>> The ability to generate additional power thanks to geologically stored CO2 which could be used to extract geothermal heat from the same locations in which it’s injected, producing renewable geothermal energy. The article doesn't go into detail, but this is intriguing. Has there been a prototype anywhere?

icegreentea2 6y ago

Since carbon capture is energetically expensive (by definition), industrial use of it (as opposed to some schemes like enhanced weathering or other geoengineering approaches) can only be part of a viable solution in a few manners: a) As a way to offset carbon released by tasks that cannot be feasibility (or at least easily) de-carbonized directly. Random examples might be concrete, or maybe jet airplanes. b) As a way to try to draw down atmospheric CO2 even faster once we are predominantly transition to de-carbonized energy sources. Pilot plants that exist today are just that - pilots. They may be useful as ways for us to learn what to do when we get to worlds that are well described by a) or b)... but we really gotta get there first.

qaq 6y ago

What is the probability of an event that will compensate the effects in say next 50 years? e.g. nuclear exchange of X warheads or major volcanic activity etc ?

boxed 6y ago

I wonder how much natural sources emit. Could we extract and sequester sources like Lake Nyon for example?

mrfusion 6y ago

My wife was asking why there’s never anything positive reported about climate change. I didn’t have a good answer. I mean I understand that it’s mostly all bad but you’d think any change would at least benefit a few people.

bufferoverflow 6y ago
It's good for countries like Russia, they get warmer winters and longer summers and more lands become viable for growing food.

jillesvangurp 6y ago

No, it's a stop gap solution promoted mainly by those looking to keep on exploiting fossil fuels for a little while longer. There are lots of companies that are looking to do this because they are knee deep into legacy infrastructure that they can't shut down overnight because it would kill them. However, continuing improvements in pricing for renewable energy (wind/solar + storage) make most such propositions increasingly less viable from both a carbon footprint point (you release more than you capture) of view and an economical perspective (spending money to make an already expensive solution less damaging). Mostly it's a strategy pursued by companies that are protecting a sunk cost in the form of existing infrastructure to stretch its economic life a little bit longer. It's also a strategy for green-washing things that really aren't that green. Ultimately it's cheaper to not bother putting CO2 in the atmosphere thus removing the need to add cost by compensating for that elsewhere. Long term, most carbon capture schemes will end up on the wrong side of a cost equation. The long term perspective for most gas and coal plants is basically extremely grim with or without carbon capture. Investors are actively divesting for this reason for most of the last decade already. There are of course still a few countries building coal plants but most are in the process of actively shutting them down and on a clear path to getting rid of them completely. IMHO, most remaining ones will not make it to their current planned retirement dates for the simple reason of it ultimately becoming unsustainable economically to keep them going. To some extent that has already played out for most coal plants. Germany went against the trend here by opening a new one recently (probably for political reasons, the brown coal lobby runs strong in parts of Germany). But it's an anomaly in a market otherwise dominated by premature closures of plants. Likewise gas plants are converting to being peaker-plants in a lot of markets that have fluctuating supply of increasing amounts of solar and wind. This vastly reduces the appeal of building new ones; but the reality is that the more renewable energy hits the market the less attractive it gets to operate gas plants. In some markets batteries form a perfectly adequate and cheaper substitute for having lots of gas peaker plants. I'd say investing in a new gas plant that supposedly will run for a few decades is at this point extremely misguided as an investment strategy. It only makes sense if there's lots of stupid money (i.e. tax payer money) involved. Put bluntly, that's what most carbon capture schemes boil down to: stupid money. It's basically tax payers paying for the privilege of paying too much for electricity and corporations helping themselves to this cash on the basis of empty promises and a green-washing strategy. We're decades away from having fossil free energy production world wide; but several countries are looking to get there in 10-15 years nevertheless.

markkat 6y ago

>In the IEA's "Clean Technology Scenario", more than 28 GtCO2 could be captured from industrial facilities between now and 2060. We emit about 35-40 GtCO2 per year. So in 40 years, we might expect carbon capture to remove less than one year of emissions. Not useless, but close, considering the investment which could be used instead to more rapidly reduce emissions by installing/improving solar, wind, geothermal, etc.

Spooks 6y ago
Would the increase in investment have a better chance to facilitate research and development? As with more research comes the possibility of a better capture rate down the road
notabee 6y ago
We do need to remove emissions, but we're likely past the point where that will be enough. We've already triggered too many feedback loops. We have to do all the above and more. https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-11/sr-cce110520.php https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2020-11/sr-cce110520...
- FooHentai 6y ago
  TBH I'm starting to come around more to the climate adaptation arguments and drifting away from talks around mitigation and reversal which I'm starting to suspect will remain behind the curve past the timeframe where they could make an appreciable impact. Which is not to say I'm fatalistic to the point of leaning into continued emissions and taking no action on a personal level - I think all the information needed to make individual change is already known but we're facing the seven stages of grief with regards to the lifestyle sacrifices necessary to make them.

kumarski 6y ago

5 Billion Cubic Meters of Oil are produced Annually by humanity. 30Bn Tons of CO2 generated. 60% is un-sequesterable because it is small and/or mobile. 40% is sequestrable and large scale/stationary. 12 Billion Cubic Meters of CO2 are thus sequestrable. You must liquefy CO2 before putting it into the ground. 50% -70% efficiency in converting it to a liquid that we can shove into the ground. 6 to 8.4 Billion Cubic Meters of Liquefied CO2 are thus Sequestrable. Shoving 6 to 8.4 billion cubic meters of liquefied CO2 into ground is no small matter. Think about it this way, humanity built an entire industry focused on an annual extraction of 5Bn Cubic Meters of Oil over a time span of 100+ years with refineries and complex processes spanning multiple countries, geographies, regulations, wars, and land rights. Also, who’s going to buy sequestered carbon? The reality is that something like this will require spinning up an entire Trillion dollar market.

EGreg 6y ago
What about planting TREES? Also - nature seems to be doing it in the north. https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2436/co2-is-making-earth-greenerfor-now/ https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2436/co2-is-making-earth-green...
- kumarski 6y ago
  I don't know. I'm not bullish on the "just plant trees, it will fix everything about CO2 emissions" movement....I have my doubts. Most countermeasures seem irrelevant as long as 1/3rd of the world relies on lignite ash and brown coal as primary energy sources.
  - BurningFrog 6y ago
    There is no one thing that will "fix everything". This will be solved by many small things adding up.
- Retric 6y ago
  It’s a question of scale, if you want to actually make a difference you need to cut them down and store the wood underground, then grow new trees and repeat. Doing that takes real effort which then needs to be paid for.

bronlund 6y ago

Just plant some trees already!

hikerclimb 6y ago

I hope not. I hope global warming kills billions of people

radu_floricica 6y ago

The only reason I'm tolerating the whole carbon craze is that most legislation is also helping with the real evil of pollution, that is killing here and now. And people are proposing to start whole new industries with their own pollutants just so we can keep dirty industries running longer? <insert expletive here>

spaetzleesser 6y ago

Carbon capture seems to me similar to plastics recycling which was invented by the oil and plastics industry. They always knew that recycling wouldn’t be economically viable at scale but kept pushing it anyway. I can’t imagine how we could capture any meaningful amount of CO2 and store it in a safe and economical way. It just seems another smokescreen like “clean coal”.

blkknightarms 6y ago

There's no choice. CCS must be accomplished or the existential risk is we and almost everything else dies. 1. CCS has to be accomplished using biological processes, not mechanical or chemical industrial processes. 2. The best way to accomplish 1. is to use oceanic organisms such as kelp and phytoplankton. Recall the enormous kelp forest between Mexico and Africa that dumped many, many tons of material on Cancún's beaches. 3. Sequestration of 2. requires either sinking material to the deepest depths of the ocean, or minimizing and injecting carbonaceous material below ground. 4. 350 ppm can be achieved for under $20T USD, but the desire, intent, and coordination must occur rather than looking for excuses or shouting "It's impossible!"

boringg 6y ago

Simply put no. The cost to implement is too high and is essentially the same as what we do for Municipal Solid Waste (just bury it). I put it in a slightly less insane category than geo-engineering. The only places that I see carbon capture as potentially viable as a transition is using it to offset industrial process gases necessary. I.e. capture CO2 from coal plant for cement production - however that is niche case as siting is key and transportation is too expensive. How do we solve climate change? Deploy, deploy, deploy. We have renewable energy that is cheap and available. Change the policy incentives at the federal away from subsidizing oil and gas and incentives green energy. De-carbonize the transportation sector with EV and HZEV. Reduce Natural Gas for home heating with the injection of Hydrogen into the fuel lines (up to 20%). Invest in research and development into further productionizing effective technologies. Let's skip the wasted capital, debate and energy and move on. Also, let us not forget that Oil and Gas Majors have been deploying considerable money into this sector for decades to prolong their existence. I for one do not want to subsidize their behavior any more as they have been trying to scuttle the climate date since the 80s.

jartelt 6y ago
The problem is that even if we do everything you propose - rapidly deploy renewable energy tech, replace natural furnaces with heat pumps after the furnaces break, quickly transition to EVs, etc. - the best we can hope for is only 1.5 degrees C warming. Perfect behavior from here on out is not enough to prevent significant warming. There is simply too much carbon in the atmosphere and too many carbon emitting machines in use today that will emit until they reach end of life. They acknowledge this in the IPCC reports and have already baked in aggressive use of carbon capture technology in order to meet the 1.5 C target. Simply put, we need to continue to invest in carbon capture technology. This includes direct air capture, remediating soil to retain more carbon, preventing deforestation, etc. If we do not do this, we are going to blow past the 1.5 degree C mark.
- boringg 6y ago
  Remediation of soil, preventing deforestation, reforestation are all very important options that need to be pursued. Direct capture to storage is a waste of capital (political, talent and financial) and rewards both the oil and gas historic investments and incentivizes them to continue to pursue fossil fuel production. That with it requiring specific geologic formations and on top there is a risk that there are leaks in the formations (e.g. Aliso Canyon gas leak in California).

tsjq 6y ago

Grow more trees?

kisamoto 6y ago
Sadly not enough at this point. Need to also invest into other removal methods (while also restoring trees, mangroves and other naturally sequestering wilderness)

hedora 6y ago

Carbon capture is certainly a viable technology. The question is whether the politicians have the will to act. Emerging carbon capture technologies can sequester atmospheric CO2 at low enough prices. Last I checked, the prices were between $15-$75 per ton, which translates into $0.15-0.75 per gallon of gasoline burnt. Other carbon fuels would have similar costs per energy produced. We need to transition to a carbon-negative economy as quickly as possible. Current atmospheric levels of CO2 are not sustainable.

ttul 6y ago
Eventually, the politicians will have the will to act, because everything will be either on fire or flooding. Even conservative voters are starting to come around to that realization.
- kisamoto 6y ago
  Humanity will be reactive but hopefully some of us can be proactive.
kisamoto 6y ago
What technologies have you seen at that price? Most I know are $400-1000/ton...

FuckButtons 6y ago

No.

hikerclimb 6y ago

I don’t think so because humans are screwed. Expect billions of death from climate change I hope and millions once COVID evolves so no masks work...

jeffbee 6y ago

The article fails to answer the question, and the whole site appears to just be a clickbait ad farm. They have an article on hyperloop which fails to denounce it, calls it "one of the greatest leaps in transportation for generations" which tells us these articles are not reflections of critical thought.

fastball 6y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...
FooHentai 6y ago
I was about to post that the article seems to consist of snippets gathered from elsewhere. The bit about using captured carbon to grow plants and carbonate fizzy drinks was the original pitch ClimeWorks AG had before they pivoted to seeking direct donations from the public. These are also uses of captured carbon that do not result in its long term sequestration and so are orthogonal to discussions about mitigating climate change. It'd be nice to have seen that noted in the article, and to see some sources cited. One critical point that article does touch on is that CCS at the point of emission is regarded by some as an unproductive distraction and that money would be better spent elsewhere (I.e. switching away from the emitting activity). That debate is a microcosm of general analysis paralysis that crops up in discussions around reducing carbon emissions - we seem to have a propensity for getting stuck searching for 'perfect' solutions at the detriment of deploying things that at least nudge the dial in the right direction (merely 'better'). We can (I'd almost argue must) do anything we can agree as merely 'better' today and then do 'perfect' if/when that becomes possible. Then again, green washing is a real and strongly incentivised phenomenon so agreeing even on what's truly 'better' is often not straightforward. At the very least I can say with relative confidence that quite often CCS = usually better and CCUS = usually green washing. But even then the devil is in the details - CCS might not be better once the total energy cost is understood or if those energy inputs are themselves not decarbonized or fully accounted for. Carbon use might be beneficial if the usage does result in sequestration for a significant period.

Asraelite 6y ago

The way I see it, it's carbon capture or geo-engineering. Pick one. We have been past the point of no return with climate change for a few years now, so only active measures can reverse it; going green will slow down the inevitable, which should still be done, but it doesn't fix the problem. I think this is a reality that will only settle into the public consciousness a few decades from now. Most people still feel like solar panels and electric cars are a solution, so they don't put as much thought into the drastic active measures we will eventually be forced to take. It's not "can we use carbon capture and geo-engineering", it's "how and when".

tcbawo 6y ago
It would be fascinating if we end up using green energy to synthesize hydrocarbons for carbon sequestration w/ the potential for an energy reserve.
anonuser123456 6y ago
Adaptation is also a viable solution. It's not out of the realm of plausibility we will be able to convert energy directly into food stocks via bioreactors. Global weather/climate induced crop failure is literally the only doomsday scenario for mankind w.r.t. climate change. If we can figure out how to synthesize carbohydrates, lipids and proteins with low energy inputs, climate change won't be such a big deal.

ActionPlankton 6y ago

What people normally call "CCS" is mostly a short-term hack to keep the coal mines running. If you're going to burn coal, then, yes, please do CCS, but pretty soon you need to stop burning coal. I also don't trust that CO2 will stay underground forever; that also makes it "short term". That said, we do need direct air capture (DAC) to repair the damage and to provide an alternative source for CO2 and hydrocarbons. ... To this end, I kind-of like algae as a low-tech solar-powered method: https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/60/9/722/238034 https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/60/9/722/238034 I feel you could do this in a moderate-sized backyard. You wouldn't want to bury the biomass directly (say as biochar) because you wouldn't want to lose the NPK nutrients -- but the above article deals with that. It describes a couple methods to extract carbon while recycling the other nutrients. None seem too difficult. ... In a completely different direction, nuclear-powered Sabatier/Bosch/electrolysis is also interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrochemical_reduction_of_carbon_dioxide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrochemical_reduction_of_c... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_reaction#International_Space_Station_life_support https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabatier_reaction#Internationa... ... Either way, you have to combine your DAC with... not mining fossil fuels out of the ground. You have to do both. (Note: Carbon-neutral fuels (bio-, synthesized) are fine, e.g. for air travel. You just can't mine them from the earth. That's the one rule. Then the cost of recapturing CO2 has to be baked into everything else.)

timoth3y 6y ago

Environmental Carbon Capture is a terrible engineering solution. CO2 is millions of times more concentrated when it leaves the smokestack than it is in the general atmosphere. Any sensible approach would focus on removing CO2 where it is most concentrated and easiest to remove. I really want carbon capture to be viable, but so far it seems like a distraction.