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It'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.
by JoeyBananas 5y ago
It'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 agoI am not. You can claim that Shell and other oil companies are either amoral (they are not moral entities, their decisions are not subject to moral considerations), which is what you were saying; or, you can claim that they are immoral (they are moral entities, and have been making the wrong moral choices). But I don't think there is any way to see them as moral (as in morally good).
- erosenbe0 5y agoIt's all relative though. The EV and solar industry certainly lies about the carbon footprint of their tech, exploitation of workers in developing countries, mining pollution, etc.
- 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.