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Why bother with 400ppm when there are so many, well, "burning sites" untapped? The intuitive counter-argument is that long term there shouldn't be any "burning

by usrusr 5y ago

Why bother with 400ppm when there are so many, well, "burning sites" untapped? The intuitive counter-argument is that long term there shouldn't be any "burning sites" left and that capturing all burning sites would only ever get us to zero but not to negative emissions, but that's not true when you include burning sites that run on biological sources. Let plants deal with the 400ppm problem, use those plants as fuel, sequester where those plants are burnt. Negative emissions.

markcyffka 5y ago
Thanks for the question, copying from an earlier comment which touches on similar point -- "Great question. We'd love to capture point-source CO2 from factory flue gas where it is orders of magnitude more concentrated (often >10%) than in air (~400ppm). And fundamentally, there is no reason our process cannot be applied for this type of CO2 capture. For now, we are choosing to focus on air for 2 reasons: 1) Market. Early buyers of CO2 credits are primarily looking to get very clean accounting of who gets credit for the CO2 removed, and will pay a premium for anyone who can do it. If a buyer (say, a software company) pays for a polluting chemical factory or power plant to capture some of its emissions, it requires complex multi-party contracts & the incentives between the parties are often conflicting. That being said, point-source CO2 removal is absolutely needed & a huge opportunity/problem and more work is needed from a technology/policy side. 2) The "extreme user" case. If we give 100% focus to solving the more challenging problem of removing CO2 from air, we may gain learnings & knowledge that will translate to an improved point-source capture process, whether from an energy/efficiency/cost perspective."
- usrusr 5y ago
  Ah, ok. "We try to tackle the crazy problem because if we can almost do that we should be quite good at the reasonable ones" sounds like a communication problem unnecessarily attached to the physical one.

by usrusr 5y ago

markcyffka 5y ago

Thanks for the question, copying from an earlier comment which touches on similar point -- "Great question. We'd love to capture point-source CO2 from factory flue gas where it is orders of magnitude more concentrated (often >10%) than in air (~400ppm). And fundamentally, there is no reason our process cannot be applied for this type of CO2 capture. For now, we are choosing to focus on air for 2 reasons: 1) Market. Early buyers of CO2 credits are primarily looking to get very clean accounting of who gets credit for the CO2 removed, and will pay a premium for anyone who can do it. If a buyer (say, a software company) pays for a polluting chemical factory or power plant to capture some of its emissions, it requires complex multi-party contracts & the incentives between the parties are often conflicting. That being said, point-source CO2 removal is absolutely needed & a huge opportunity/problem and more work is needed from a technology/policy side. 2) The "extreme user" case. If we give 100% focus to solving the more challenging problem of removing CO2 from air, we may gain learnings & knowledge that will translate to an improved point-source capture process, whether from an energy/efficiency/cost perspective."

usrusr 5y ago
Ah, ok. "We try to tackle the crazy problem because if we can almost do that we should be quite good at the reasonable ones" sounds like a communication problem unnecessarily attached to the physical one.