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We currently produce around 50 gigatons (50.000.000.000) of CO2 per year. The cost estimates for removing one ton of CO2 range between 100-10.000 USD. Let's ass

We currently produce around 50 gigatons (50.000.000.000) of CO2 per year. The cost estimates for removing one ton of CO2 range between 100-10.000 USD. Let's assume we can really get to 100 USD. That means just in order to capture a single year worth of CO2 output will cost us 5 Trillion USD (5.000.000.000.000), which is around 6 % of the worlds' GDP. And that doesn't even take into account if we'll actually be able to do it (which I strongly doubt). So IMHO all these carbon removal efforts are just the next magic technology that's proposed in order to keep us from effecting real change. We already know how to stop climate change (rapidly decrease our CO2 output), but instead of doing that we're chasing solutions that might never become viable. And once it will become clear that CO2 capture won't work the next magic solution will probably be geo-engineering, which is just as unrealistic IMHO. BTW I'm not saying that CO2 capture or geo-engineering will never work, just that it probably won't work in the timespan that's available to us.

azeirah 5y ago
The main idea carbon capture as I always understood it is that it will become cheaper per ton as more is invested. Just like how solar panels lowered in price drastically over the past decades. Right now carbon capture as a technology is in its infancy.
- gumby 5y ago
  I’m not commenting to contradict you (I agree with your point on a macro scale). But I have to point out that a lot of proposed techniques only work at certain concentrations (e.g. all the limestone techniques I’ve seen) and even the ones that don’t change their const structure (e.g. require more energy/g removed). None of which means we shouldn’t be trying. I’m working on CH4 removal myself, even though there is less of it than CO2
tnorthcutt 5y ago
That means just in order to capture a single year worth of CO2 output will cost us 5 Trillion USD (5.000.000.000.000), which is around 6 % of the worlds' GDP. That seems easily worth it, and ignores the possibility of lower costs in the future, this working in tandem with efforts to decrease emissions, etc.
- alexbouchard 5y ago
  Exactly, 6% of GPD is shockingly low cost to pay for net 0 annual growth in CO2. Now that doesn't mean you can practically deploy that capital but it makes me more bullish on carbon removal.
boxed 5y ago
You are correct in that it's not a feasible approach to neutralize emissions. But that's not why this tech is so important. We need it to undo the damage we've already done. Will it be expensive as hell? Probably. But we need to do it. And if we cut emissions hard and fast we won't need to do carbon removal in panic but can do it more slowly.
dntrkv 5y ago
> but instead of doing that I keep hearing this like there is nobody working on this problem. There are a significant amount of resources being dedicated to this problem. Is it enough? No, of course not. These types of global coordinated efforts are more difficult than any technological problem we have ever faced. In developed countries, per capita CO2 emissions are decreasing at a steady rate. Adoption of EVs and renewables will accelerate this decline. The problem is in the developing countries (especially China and India) where these rates are increasing. But we can't exactly tell these countries to stop developing. So our only option is to continue to develop technology that will make it cheaper to use renewables over fossil fuels. And that's all well under way. Carbon capture is just another tool for us to explore that may scale as more entities adopt it. The idea that because it costs too much to do now, we shouldn't explore it is silly. Solar was not financially feasible just a decade or two ago. Battery storage was the same. Point is, we should explore every option. That does not mean all our progress in EVs and renewables stops, it's just another avenue for us to reduce our carbon footprint.
- ThePhysicist 5y ago
  No, the problem is not mainly China and India. China emits just half as much CO2 per capita as the US and has already effectively halted further increase several years ago [1]. India is at 1/10th of the per capita emissions of the US. You can of course explore every option but there's already an option that works, so we should start implementing that. [1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC?locations=CN https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC?location...
  - dntrkv 5y ago
    I am well aware that the US, Canada, and Australia have the highest CO2 emissions per capita. They all have a lot of work to do. I am not dismissing their major contribution to the problem. The US in particular has reduced per capita emissions significantly and continues to do so. The reason I pointed out China and India is that they are still developing and a large chunk of their population has yet to modernize. In the process, they will significantly increase their emissions. I am not blaming them. Any other country would do the same in their place. My point is that the only way we can reduce their coming impact (and all of the other developing countries) is by developing renewables and battery storage tech to be a viable alternative to fossil fuels.
hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
The thing I'd like to understand about carbon capture is that, I would assume that once the process is scaled and costs come down that most of the cost would come from the energy to run the process. But then, of course, the energy to run that process needs to come from a renewable, non-carbon emitting source, or else the whole thing is moot. So my question is that if we had all this renewable energy to run carbon capture systems, wouldn't it just make more sense to have this renewable energy put to use to offset fossil fuels in the first place?
- zardo 5y ago
  I don't see scaling direct air capture of CO2 beyond demo facilities until we are near zero CO2 emissions. But fixed concentrated CO2 streams should have had CO2 capture decades ago. The problem of course is that no matter how cheap CO2 capture gets, it's not likely to beat dumping it to the atmosphere for free.
  - cameronbrown 5y ago
    The best carbon capture technology is to plant trees. As in, billions of trees per year, which is carbon negative only if the net number of trees is growing. Maybe even get creative on the biology side of things to make them easier to plant in harsh environments.
    - FredPret 5y ago
      Genetically engineered ultratrees in the Sahara! Of course this would have impacts on rainfall patterns in Europe and South America and might backfire (the large amounts of Saharan dust apparently helps form raindrops and new soil in both places)
    - philwelch 5y ago
      > As in, billions of trees per year, which is carbon negative only if the net number of trees is growing. Or if you chop the trees down and use them as building materials. Your hardwood floors and wood wall paneling are also sequestering carbon!
sailingparrot 5y ago
> We already know how to stop climate change (rapidly decrease our CO2 output) No we don't. Even if we stopped all emissions starting today, climate change would not be stopped, it's already too late for that. Now, assuming the most ambitious but realistic reduction plan, we will still be emitting massive amounts of CO2 over the next few decades, so we are guaranteed to have to endure significant global warning. And this is why we need both reduction and removal. Reduction is the most efficient medium term solution by far, but long term we absolutely need removal as well. I wish people would stop pitting reduction vs removal, wind vs solar vs nuclear etc. There isn't a single technology or policy that will save us, we need advances on all fronts and the solution will come from a mix of many different complimentary contributions. However you are right that we need to be careful to not use the possibility of future carbon removal as an excuse to not reduce our GHG emissions.
- boplicity 5y ago
  > I wish people would stop pitting reduction vs removal, wind vs solar vs nuclear etc. There isn't a single technology or policy that will save us, we need advances on all fronts and the solution will come from a mix of many different complimentary contributions. Agreed. Twenty years ago, we had the luxury of being able to "pick and choose" the "right" path forward. Unfortunately, the wrong path was chosen, so we now have to do everything we can to mitigate the looming disaster. The cost of doing too little is just so very, very high. (And yet, doing too little seems to be exactly the path we're on.)
a13n 5y ago
> We already know how to stop climate change (rapidly decrease our CO2 output) Yeah all we have to do is convince China, US, and India to rapidly decrease CO2 output, no big deal at all.
FredPret 5y ago
> “We already know how to stop climate change (rapidly decrease our CO2 output)” Who knew it could be this simple? All we have to do is go nowhere, buy nothing, sell nothing, eat nothing, do nothing, and freeze to death in the darkness.
- anakaine 5y ago
  This is not a helpful stance to have. There are developments and solutions for industries, processes, and individual households all drawing to the same goal. Renewable energy generation looks to be pricing coal and gas powered energy generation out of the market by being cheaper to build, deploy, and maintain, for example. Bonus, it comes with its own industry.
DennisP 5y ago
Another way to look at it: burning a gallon of gasoline emits about 20 pounds of CO2, or a hundredth of a ton. So at $100/ton, charging purchasers to clean up their emissions would cost a dollar a gallon. If we were to charge that, then many people would likely find it more efficient to switch to electric cars and so on. But for those applications where it's very expensive or infeasible to cut emissions (e.g. long-haul jets), having tech like this available makes net-zero feasible anyway. Besides, at this point we're going to need to actually reduce atmospheric CO2, and as you point out it's a hard problem, so we'd best start scaling the tech for it now.
jasonlaramburu 5y ago
>That means just in order to capture a single year worth of CO2 output will cost us 5 Trillion USD (5.000.000.000.000), which is around 6 % of the worlds' GDP. The US is expected to spend a total of $6T on COVID relief with the passage of the Biden Plan (around $4T was already spent under the Trump administration)[1]. It's debatable whether or not this spend 'worked' as intended. Investing in carbon removal will create entirely new industries. Rather than paying people to stay at home, it will create skilled tech jobs for Americans. In terms of justification, emissions reductions alone won't stop climate change at this point. It will take centuries for natural processes alone to remove our historical greenhouse gas emissions [2]. [1] https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/us-spending-on-covid-relief-poised-to-hit-6t https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/us-spending-on-covid-rel... [2] https://www.npr.org/2021/04/14/981333730/carbon-emissions-could-plummet-the-atmosphere-will-lag-behind https://www.npr.org/2021/04/14/981333730/carbon-emissions-co...
s17n 5y ago
I mean 6% of GDP is a lot, obviously, but it's also just as obviously a cost that can be paid. The important questions are: - Is it more expensive than simply reducing emissions? - Is it easier (politically or economically) to deploy? I see no reason to believe that development of carbon removal tech has had any impact on CO2 emission reduction efforts.
- mijamo 5y ago
  I have. Many political parties are trying to aim at carbon neutrality nearly only through carbon removal and technological improvements in efficiency. This is actually a huge point of debate in a lot of countries.
apendleton 5y ago
> We already know how to stop climate change (rapidly decrease our CO2 output) Yes, but we don't know how to do that. The technology exists now in many domains; with adequate public will and money we could probably rapidly electrify surface transportation, for example, and maybe electricity production (though long-duration storage is probably still a ways from production readiness), but the technology to produce concrete or aluminum without emissions just doesn't exist yet at anything other than (at best) the concept stage. Likewise for trans-oceanic shipping, or long-haul aviation, or fertilizer production, or... (etc., etc.). People think first about cars and electricity because they're tangible in people's daily lives, but industrial CO2 is a big, very much not-yet-solved problem. Work is absolutely happening in all of these domains, but it will take time and resources, and we don't know which efforts will or won't succeed, or if any will succeed fast enough to meet IPCC targets for keeping warming below 1.5C without carbon capture as well.
rufus_foreman 5y ago
World GDP is growing (well in non-pandemic years) at 3% or so a year. If the cost of removing a year's CO2 is 6% of GDP, then the world has the choice of giving up a couple years growth to 100% keep CO2 in the atmosphere from increasing. Or giving up 3 years GDP growth to start decreasing it back to where it was in the pre-industrial era. The are plenty of ways to deal with CO2 from an engineering perspective. They just have no political support. In America, if a solution costs $1 a month per person, the majority of the public is in favor, if a solution costs $10 a month per person, the majority of the public is opposed.

azeirah 5y ago

The main idea carbon capture as I always understood it is that it will become cheaper per ton as more is invested. Just like how solar panels lowered in price drastically over the past decades. Right now carbon capture as a technology is in its infancy.

gumby 5y ago
I’m not commenting to contradict you (I agree with your point on a macro scale). But I have to point out that a lot of proposed techniques only work at certain concentrations (e.g. all the limestone techniques I’ve seen) and even the ones that don’t change their const structure (e.g. require more energy/g removed). None of which means we shouldn’t be trying. I’m working on CH4 removal myself, even though there is less of it than CO2

tnorthcutt 5y ago

That means just in order to capture a single year worth of CO2 output will cost us 5 Trillion USD (5.000.000.000.000), which is around 6 % of the worlds' GDP. That seems easily worth it, and ignores the possibility of lower costs in the future, this working in tandem with efforts to decrease emissions, etc.

alexbouchard 5y ago
Exactly, 6% of GPD is shockingly low cost to pay for net 0 annual growth in CO2. Now that doesn't mean you can practically deploy that capital but it makes me more bullish on carbon removal.

boxed 5y ago

You are correct in that it's not a feasible approach to neutralize emissions. But that's not why this tech is so important. We need it to undo the damage we've already done. Will it be expensive as hell? Probably. But we need to do it. And if we cut emissions hard and fast we won't need to do carbon removal in panic but can do it more slowly.

dntrkv 5y ago

> but instead of doing that I keep hearing this like there is nobody working on this problem. There are a significant amount of resources being dedicated to this problem. Is it enough? No, of course not. These types of global coordinated efforts are more difficult than any technological problem we have ever faced. In developed countries, per capita CO2 emissions are decreasing at a steady rate. Adoption of EVs and renewables will accelerate this decline. The problem is in the developing countries (especially China and India) where these rates are increasing. But we can't exactly tell these countries to stop developing. So our only option is to continue to develop technology that will make it cheaper to use renewables over fossil fuels. And that's all well under way. Carbon capture is just another tool for us to explore that may scale as more entities adopt it. The idea that because it costs too much to do now, we shouldn't explore it is silly. Solar was not financially feasible just a decade or two ago. Battery storage was the same. Point is, we should explore every option. That does not mean all our progress in EVs and renewables stops, it's just another avenue for us to reduce our carbon footprint.

ThePhysicist 5y ago
No, the problem is not mainly China and India. China emits just half as much CO2 per capita as the US and has already effectively halted further increase several years ago [1]. India is at 1/10th of the per capita emissions of the US. You can of course explore every option but there's already an option that works, so we should start implementing that. [1] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC?locations=CN https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC?location...
- dntrkv 5y ago
  I am well aware that the US, Canada, and Australia have the highest CO2 emissions per capita. They all have a lot of work to do. I am not dismissing their major contribution to the problem. The US in particular has reduced per capita emissions significantly and continues to do so. The reason I pointed out China and India is that they are still developing and a large chunk of their population has yet to modernize. In the process, they will significantly increase their emissions. I am not blaming them. Any other country would do the same in their place. My point is that the only way we can reduce their coming impact (and all of the other developing countries) is by developing renewables and battery storage tech to be a viable alternative to fossil fuels.

hn_throwaway_99 5y ago

The thing I'd like to understand about carbon capture is that, I would assume that once the process is scaled and costs come down that most of the cost would come from the energy to run the process. But then, of course, the energy to run that process needs to come from a renewable, non-carbon emitting source, or else the whole thing is moot. So my question is that if we had all this renewable energy to run carbon capture systems, wouldn't it just make more sense to have this renewable energy put to use to offset fossil fuels in the first place?

zardo 5y ago
I don't see scaling direct air capture of CO2 beyond demo facilities until we are near zero CO2 emissions. But fixed concentrated CO2 streams should have had CO2 capture decades ago. The problem of course is that no matter how cheap CO2 capture gets, it's not likely to beat dumping it to the atmosphere for free.
- cameronbrown 5y ago
  The best carbon capture technology is to plant trees. As in, billions of trees per year, which is carbon negative only if the net number of trees is growing. Maybe even get creative on the biology side of things to make them easier to plant in harsh environments.
  - FredPret 5y ago
    Genetically engineered ultratrees in the Sahara! Of course this would have impacts on rainfall patterns in Europe and South America and might backfire (the large amounts of Saharan dust apparently helps form raindrops and new soil in both places)
  - philwelch 5y ago
    > As in, billions of trees per year, which is carbon negative only if the net number of trees is growing. Or if you chop the trees down and use them as building materials. Your hardwood floors and wood wall paneling are also sequestering carbon!

sailingparrot 5y ago

> We already know how to stop climate change (rapidly decrease our CO2 output) No we don't. Even if we stopped all emissions starting today, climate change would not be stopped, it's already too late for that. Now, assuming the most ambitious but realistic reduction plan, we will still be emitting massive amounts of CO2 over the next few decades, so we are guaranteed to have to endure significant global warning. And this is why we need both reduction and removal. Reduction is the most efficient medium term solution by far, but long term we absolutely need removal as well. I wish people would stop pitting reduction vs removal, wind vs solar vs nuclear etc. There isn't a single technology or policy that will save us, we need advances on all fronts and the solution will come from a mix of many different complimentary contributions. However you are right that we need to be careful to not use the possibility of future carbon removal as an excuse to not reduce our GHG emissions.

boplicity 5y ago
> I wish people would stop pitting reduction vs removal, wind vs solar vs nuclear etc. There isn't a single technology or policy that will save us, we need advances on all fronts and the solution will come from a mix of many different complimentary contributions. Agreed. Twenty years ago, we had the luxury of being able to "pick and choose" the "right" path forward. Unfortunately, the wrong path was chosen, so we now have to do everything we can to mitigate the looming disaster. The cost of doing too little is just so very, very high. (And yet, doing too little seems to be exactly the path we're on.)

a13n 5y ago

> We already know how to stop climate change (rapidly decrease our CO2 output) Yeah all we have to do is convince China, US, and India to rapidly decrease CO2 output, no big deal at all.

FredPret 5y ago

> “We already know how to stop climate change (rapidly decrease our CO2 output)” Who knew it could be this simple? All we have to do is go nowhere, buy nothing, sell nothing, eat nothing, do nothing, and freeze to death in the darkness.

anakaine 5y ago
This is not a helpful stance to have. There are developments and solutions for industries, processes, and individual households all drawing to the same goal. Renewable energy generation looks to be pricing coal and gas powered energy generation out of the market by being cheaper to build, deploy, and maintain, for example. Bonus, it comes with its own industry.

DennisP 5y ago

Another way to look at it: burning a gallon of gasoline emits about 20 pounds of CO2, or a hundredth of a ton. So at $100/ton, charging purchasers to clean up their emissions would cost a dollar a gallon. If we were to charge that, then many people would likely find it more efficient to switch to electric cars and so on. But for those applications where it's very expensive or infeasible to cut emissions (e.g. long-haul jets), having tech like this available makes net-zero feasible anyway. Besides, at this point we're going to need to actually reduce atmospheric CO2, and as you point out it's a hard problem, so we'd best start scaling the tech for it now.

jasonlaramburu 5y ago

>That means just in order to capture a single year worth of CO2 output will cost us 5 Trillion USD (5.000.000.000.000), which is around 6 % of the worlds' GDP. The US is expected to spend a total of $6T on COVID relief with the passage of the Biden Plan (around $4T was already spent under the Trump administration)[1]. It's debatable whether or not this spend 'worked' as intended. Investing in carbon removal will create entirely new industries. Rather than paying people to stay at home, it will create skilled tech jobs for Americans. In terms of justification, emissions reductions alone won't stop climate change at this point. It will take centuries for natural processes alone to remove our historical greenhouse gas emissions [2]. [1] https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/us-spending-on-covid-relief-poised-to-hit-6t https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/us-spending-on-covid-rel... [2] https://www.npr.org/2021/04/14/981333730/carbon-emissions-could-plummet-the-atmosphere-will-lag-behind https://www.npr.org/2021/04/14/981333730/carbon-emissions-co...

s17n 5y ago

I mean 6% of GDP is a lot, obviously, but it's also just as obviously a cost that can be paid. The important questions are: - Is it more expensive than simply reducing emissions? - Is it easier (politically or economically) to deploy? I see no reason to believe that development of carbon removal tech has had any impact on CO2 emission reduction efforts.

mijamo 5y ago
I have. Many political parties are trying to aim at carbon neutrality nearly only through carbon removal and technological improvements in efficiency. This is actually a huge point of debate in a lot of countries.

apendleton 5y ago

> We already know how to stop climate change (rapidly decrease our CO2 output) Yes, but we don't know how to do that. The technology exists now in many domains; with adequate public will and money we could probably rapidly electrify surface transportation, for example, and maybe electricity production (though long-duration storage is probably still a ways from production readiness), but the technology to produce concrete or aluminum without emissions just doesn't exist yet at anything other than (at best) the concept stage. Likewise for trans-oceanic shipping, or long-haul aviation, or fertilizer production, or... (etc., etc.). People think first about cars and electricity because they're tangible in people's daily lives, but industrial CO2 is a big, very much not-yet-solved problem. Work is absolutely happening in all of these domains, but it will take time and resources, and we don't know which efforts will or won't succeed, or if any will succeed fast enough to meet IPCC targets for keeping warming below 1.5C without carbon capture as well.

rufus_foreman 5y ago

World GDP is growing (well in non-pandemic years) at 3% or so a year. If the cost of removing a year's CO2 is 6% of GDP, then the world has the choice of giving up a couple years growth to 100% keep CO2 in the atmosphere from increasing. Or giving up 3 years GDP growth to start decreasing it back to where it was in the pre-industrial era. The are plenty of ways to deal with CO2 from an engineering perspective. They just have no political support. In America, if a solution costs $1 a month per person, the majority of the public is in favor, if a solution costs $10 a month per person, the majority of the public is opposed.