9 ms·
Shell’s carbon capture plant is emitting more than it’s capturing
- throw8932894 5y agoAnd? My country produces electricity mostly from coal, ICE uses way less energy, but everyone will argue tooth and nail electric vehicles are CO2 neutral and green! Why this creative statistics should not be used in this plant? For example carbon capture could be in one country, while energy production and negative externalities in second! Boom, we captured N millions tons of CO2!
- Comevius 5y agoAnother way of looking at it is that they captured 6 million tonnes of CO2, which is not a bad demonstration for the technology. Shell never claimed that they can achieve zero or negative emission. It's a hydrogen plant, it creates hydrogen and CO2. They managed to capture almost half of the CO2. Still not climate-friendly, but it's something.
- JoeyBananas 5y agoIt's not like Shell would make a carbon capture plant for nefarious purposes. They wouldn't set up a carbon capture plant just to accelerate global warming.
- WesolyKubeczek 5y agoThey don’t think along this axis at all, I’m afraid. They try to maximize profits while having more compliance checkboxes checked than their competition does. Good/bad for planet is more of a marketing sort of issue.
- JoeyBananas 5y agoEven if Shell is a completely amoral company (they're really not) setting up a carbon capture plant that emits carbon is still not even rational.
- brazzy 5y agoAs the first comment in this tree pointed out, it's not, in fact a "a carbon capture plant". It's an oil refinery with added facilities to capture the CO2 that the refinery emits. And now it turns out that it captures less than half of the overall emissions. Which is better than nothing, but not nearly good enough.
- tsimionescu 5y agoIf they're not amoral, they are morally evil, since they have repeatedly tried to cover up global warming, oil spills, and have many many other sins to their name.
- WesolyKubeczek 5y agoI don’t think it comes from being evil as such. Not a hollywood villain evil, at any rate. Antropomorphic personifications of Shell or BP would sure come out as very ruthless businessmen with enormous egos, deeply afraid of criticism and dealing with it dirty at times. But people who make up those corporations and direct them and so on are often driven by desires to do their jobs as efficiently as they can, make their dime, and deeply wishing that could please some unintended consequences of their jobs please be someone else’s problem. Please? “Will no one rid me of this turbulent environmental activist?” In other words, a pretty normal situation in a big company.
- tsimionescu 5y agoSure, but that would mean that the company as an entity is amoral, which the previous comment claimed "they are really not".
- fsckboy 5y agobut you're conflating amoral with immoral; they are not the same
- tsimionescu 5y ago
- Comevius 5y agoI mean I agree that carbon capture should not be used as an excuse to prolong the fossil fuel industry, but we sort of need to produce hydrogen to produce ammonia. It's hard to get out of this trap, because ammonia is critical for the agriculture, and this is not a sustainable practice, but it's a Sophie's choice. Starve now or kick the can down the road and likely face bigger problems. The fossil fuel industry gets the angry letters, but in this case agriculture is the one that needs to be reinvented first.
- VintageCool 5y agoGreen hydrogen is a thing. It is not economically viable now, but the costs of electrolyzers are falling. The world in 2020 had 300 MW of electrolyzer capacity, but multiple companies (Cummins, thyssenkrupp, etc) are building factories with the capacity to build 1 GW of electrolyzers per year. The IEA anticipates 17 GW of installed electrolyzer capacity in 2026. https://www.iea.org/articles/could-the-green-hydrogen-boom-lead-to-additional-renewable-capacity-by-2026 https://www.iea.org/articles/could-the-green-hydrogen-boom-l... Green hydrogen could be cost-competitive in a few years.
- zapataband1 5y agoThey set it up for the purpose of staying in business and staying in business for them means continuing to extract petrol. So yeah they are doing this to continue to accelerate global warming.
- stjohnswarts 5y agoStaying in business is all the ultimately care about. If they can use their expertise to make green energy in an economical way that is on par with their current money flow they would have no issues with that. It's all about money in the end with investors.
- dasil003 5y agoOkay, but why is the government subsidizing this? That just encourages increasing the volume of production that increases emissions over time. Instead we need to progressively ramp up taxes on fossil fuels to drive down demand over time.
- mlyle 5y agoGovernment should do both: tax carbon and use it to pay for pilot projects and moonshots that could be valuable in the fight against AGW.
- lukifer 5y agoIt was definitely a light-bulb moment, recognizing that in some cases, taxation is not a necessary evil, but a positive good (in this case, pricing externalities) [0]. At this point, I care less about what carbon taxes pay for, than making sure they exist at all, enough to shift incentives on both production and consumption. (That said: the dividend strategy certainly does seem to have advantages for political viability, and avoiding "yellow-vest" backlash to regressive taxation.) [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigovian_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigovian_tax
- jeromegv 5y agoCanada carbon tax is interesting because it’s meant to be almost a zero-sum game. They take the money and you get it back in your tax refund. So it is more about pricing externality and ensure we slowly switch to better alternatives without disproportionately taxing us.
- theluketaylor 5y agoMy understanding is that it’s designed to be zero-sum for someone who emits the average amount of carbon for a Canadian. If you emit less personally (say by taking public transit and living in an energy efficient apartment) you’ll actually get more back than you pay. If you are a big emitter it is a net tax in your activity. I like that design, since wealth is highly correlated with carbon emissions. I do want to see more programs to make rental units more energy efficient, since renters tend to be less wealthy and are in less control of how much they emit. If their landlord refuses to insulate more, switch from gas heat (or worse they are stuck with baseboard electric) there is very little someone can do to reduce their emissions and any incentives from the carbon pricing just become the punitive tax critics say carbon pricing is.
- petermcneeley 5y agoThis is like selling 10 dollar bills for 9 dollars.
- lukifer 5y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar_auction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar_auction
- caminante 5y agoThen why is Shell Canada's operating profit margin hitting 29%? [0] https://reports.shell.com/tax-contribution-report/2018/our-tax-data/americas/canada.html https://reports.shell.com/tax-contribution-report/2018/our-t...
- pharmakom 5y agoBecause they are selling the tax payers dollar bills.
- caminante 5y agoYou need to clarify. 1. Who is "they"? 2. What is $10? 3. What is $9? I linked an article showing Shell paid $8B to Canada in taxes in 2018 alone. With this CC project, GHG emissions are being stored for the foreseeable future. Without the CC project, the core refinery would be emitting a net increase of GHG. The value destruction analogy doesn't work.
- rosndo 5y agoYou should try to read beyond the headline, I’m sure you can do it :) This is like selling 10 dollar bills for 9 dollars and 1 euro.
- zapataband1 5y agoPetroleum companies have captured our governments and are subsidizing bs technology to stay relevant on our dime, it has never been about zero emissions for them.
- fatbird 5y agoAs someone else said: "We lose money on every sale, but we're hoping to make it up in volume!"
- lvs 5y agoNo it is nothing. It has concocted a way to launder fossil fuel demand through another product stream.
- NotACop182 5y agoIt takes as much or more energy to capture the co2 as it took to create it in the first place. It’s just the laws of the universe.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ajb 5y agoThe way the capture guys argue is that if you have a plant that captures 50% of carbon emissions, then you run it on >50% renewable fuel, and it ends up carbon neutral or negative.
- rosndo 5y agoOf course it’s fun to laugh at the “capture guys” for not understanding basic math, but do you have an actual source for this accusation?
- ajb 5y agoThe "basic math" here is straightforward: 100 tonnes of carbon in fuel. 50 are captured, 50 go to the atmosphere. If more than 50 tonnes originally came from the atmosphere recently, then the net flow to the atmosphere is negative. There may be other issues with carbon capture (its expensive, doesn't necessarily prevent other pollutants, can be part of a greenwashing scheme). But snark about math isn't useful, especially when you are wrong.
- gmuslera 5y agoIt would had captured more carbon (or at least, less carbon in the atmosphere) if you didn't turn it on. It would be great a carbon capture technology, on which companies should invest billions in a technology that turns carbon into (natural) gas, liquid (oil) or solid (coal) form and bury them deep underground. In the same way with that plant, not extracting them in the first place would be a more efficient solution. But instead we have this kind of placebo technology that not only does nothing, but worsen the problem, and with some creative accounting gives them an excuse to extract even more fossil fuels and delays even more the urgent actions needed to mitigate the devastating consequences that warming at the current rate will bring.
- kuratkull 5y agoSounds like a great plan... if you don't need electricity
- gmuslera 5y agoCould those billions be used to change all electrical generation facilities to not use fossil fuels? And then turn all public transport in the world to electric ones? And then private cars, heating, and so on? Yes, that could be expensive, but you don't want to know how expensive will be to do nothing. In fact, billions were already used in denialism campaigns by Shell and other companies, if they can use billions for that then well we may charge them trillions to mitigate what they put all of us into. But no, the chosen way will be to blame others, try to reach a mythical net-zero and increase extraction of fossil fuels and pumping it into the environment while they last.
- bluefirebrand 5y ago> Could those billions be used to change all electrical generation facilities to not use fossil fuels? Probably only if you're willing to invest in Nuclear. Solar, Batteries and Wind and such are just not there yet. And may not ever be.
- 5y ago
- StreamBright 5y agoWhat is the point then? Don't we have alternative means do reduce Co2 while producing electricity?
- entropicgravity 5y agoJust like nuclear fusion they're trying to get to break even.
- kmlx 5y agoyeah, this is actually pretty great. but i think we’ll need a lot more investment in CCS before we can deploy this everywhere. also the costs i assume would be high, even in the long run.
- fallingknife 5y agoCorrect me if I'm wrong here but it sounds like "emitting more than captured" here just means reduced emissions by less than 50% but still a lot. Seems misleading.
- lvs 5y agoIt's a massive government subsidy for fossil fuel demand. That's not helping anything.
- simondotau 5y agoCorrecting you because you're wrong. They're talking specifically about emissions caused by the capture plant being greater than emissions it captures. The carbon footprint would be lower if the plant didn't exist. The plant was not penalised for emissions it failed to capture.
- rank0 5y agoThe original study is considering the emissions of the entire hydrogen plant, not just the carbon capture portion. Its a hydrogen plant with a carbon capture piece on top. Not a “carbon capture plant.”
- simondotau 5y agoCorrect but irrelevant. Operation of the plant resulted in more emissions than were captured. The fact that hydrogen was also produced is a net neutral in that equation. If you want to describe this in terms of a hydrogen produced with a particular net emissions footprint, that's fine. It's dirty hydrogen that's been made less less dirty.
- ars 5y agoAnd that's a good thing, not a bad thing. As usual, environmentalists are the environment's worst enemies "dirty hydrogen"? Seriously? We need hydrogen, that's not something optional. They made it better, yet you are calling them names.
- codewithcheese 5y agoThey run this same scam in Australia, see this honest government ad https://youtu.be/MSZgoFyuHC8 https://youtu.be/MSZgoFyuHC8
- Mildlypolite 5y agoExactly it's just a scam (until now).
- kolinko 5y agoFlagging as a clickbait title. The title seems to suggest that shell has a carbon capture plant that is emitting more than producing, where in reality it's a hydrogen generation plan that captures some, but not all co2. This article is way less better: https://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/fossil-gas/shell-hydrogen-true-emissions/ https://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/fossil-gas/shell-...
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- _Nat_ 5y agoLooks like you're right. [This fact-sheet](https://sequestration.mit.edu/tools/projects/quest.html https://sequestration.mit.edu/tools/projects/quest.html ) lists the plant has intending a 35% capture-rate. And while that's a weirdly low target-(capture-rate), it doesn't seem hidden. Looks like [a Canadian-government-hosted report from 2011](https://open.alberta.ca/publications/quest-carbon-capture-and-storage-project-report-2011 https://open.alberta.ca/publications/quest-carbon-capture-an... ) also includes this in the executive-summary: > The purpose of the Quest Project is to deploy technology to capture CO2 produced at the Scotford Upgrader and to transport, compress and inject the CO2 for permanent storage in a saline formation near Thorhild, Alberta. Over one million tonnes of CO2 per year will be captured, representing greater than 35% capture of the CO2 produced from the Upgrader. Quest is a part of the Athabasca Oil Sands Project (AOSP), an oil sands joint venture operated by Shell and owned by Shell Canada, Chevron Canada and Marathon Oil. So if they're capturing ~38.4% when they proposed "greater than 35% capture" to the government, then... that sounds kinda like they're doing what they said they'd do.
- DoingIsLearning 5y agoThe issue still stands why are governments subsidizing this dead end research? 5.6 trillion dollars of taxpayer money went to Fossil Fuel subsidies. That's almost 7% of the world's gdp, or about 11 million dollars per minute just in 2020 [0] Oil companies continue to capture trillions in subsidies while deflecting blame and misleading the public along the way. [0] https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2021/09/23/Still-Not-Getting-Energy-Prices-Right-A-Global-and-Country-Update-of-Fossil-Fuel-Subsidies-466004 https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2021/09/23/Sti...
- _Nat_ 5y agoIt sounds like this was intended. It looks like the project may've been based on winning a grant [from this call [PDF]](https://www.alberta.ca/release.cfm?xID=2638932A61D80-09C7-C9F7-CCD99F5E0113E39A https://www.alberta.ca/release.cfm?xID=2638932A61D80-09C7-C9... ) from 2009, which wanted: > The first round of commercial scale projects is expected to achieve annual carbon dioxide reductions by 2015 equivalent to taking approximately one-million vehicles, or about a third of all registered vehicles in the province, off of the road. Sounds like the Canadian-government was looking for projects that'd remove a lot of CO2 for the money, rather than necessarily a high portion of CO2 from the source. Then from the executive-summary of [this report from 2011](https://open.alberta.ca/publications/quest-carbon-capture-and-storage-project-report-2011 https://open.alberta.ca/publications/quest-carbon-capture-an... ): > Over one million tonnes of CO2 per year will be captured, representing greater than 35% capture of the CO2 produced from the Upgrader. Plus [this project-database](https://sequestration.mit.edu/tools/projects/quest.html https://sequestration.mit.edu/tools/projects/quest.html ) also listed it as being intended to capture ~35%. It's kinda weird to capture just ~35%, but apparently they didn't need to go higher to meet the project-specification.
- partomniscient 5y agoHere's (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSZgoFyuHC8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSZgoFyuHC8) a satirical 'honest government ad' on carbon capture from an Australian viewpoint. We're attempting to apply dodgy accounting tricks to reality. It doesn't work. (I know there's greater transparency without it, but I too would really like []() markup for links on HN.)
- JulianMorrison 5y agoIt's capturing money.
- trembonator 5y ago
- ab-dm 5y ago“Australian Science Writing 2021” has a fascinating short story called “Hail Hydrogen: Powering the debate on future fuel” that touches on this exact project, and provides much more nuance and background detail that I found an enjoyable and informing read. Highly recommend the above if you want what felt like a more neutral take. (In fact the entire book so far has been great)
- fallingfrog 5y agoYou can always remove a huge amount of co2 from the air, if you’re willing to burn an even greater amount to do it. Carbon capture is not going to save us, folks. Once again we must review the laws of conservation of mass and energy. All forms of negative emissions are a scam. You’re better off just using the solar power than you are burning oil and then using solar power to un-burn the oil, or worse, using other fossil fuels to capture the first fossil fuels.
- tamaharbor 5y agoThis machine does the work of ten men. Unfortunately, it takes twenty men to operate it.
- Proven 5y ago