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What's the cheapest Carbon Capture system we can imagine - $100 per tonne? Most are running at about $500/tonne right now. At just $15/tonne of Carbon Tax, we

What's the cheapest Carbon Capture system we can imagine - $100 per tonne? Most are running at about $500/tonne right now. At just $15/tonne of Carbon Tax, we halve CO2 output, mainly by destroying the economics of coal: https://www.pgpf.org/budget-basics/what-is-a-carbon-tax-how-would-it-affect-the-economy https://www.pgpf.org/budget-basics/what-is-a-carbon-tax-how-... All the effort and funding currently spent on carbon capture should instead go towards lobbying for carbon taxes. The impact will be significantly greater. The best use of Carbon Capture technology would be in building ventilation systems. If we can capture and exhaust CO2 from inside air, we can reduce ventilation requirements, and potentially reach lower-than-atmospheric CO2 levels (which could have extraordinary benefits for cognition and sleep quality).

human_person 4y ago
Even if we got emissions to zero tomorrow we’d still be in serious trouble. We need carbon capture. Emission reduction just reduces our rate of acceleration towards destruction. We need to hit the brakes.
toomuchtodo 4y ago
> At just $15/tonne of Carbon Tax, we halve CO2 output, mainly by destroying the economics of coal Here is page 122 of NextEra’s investor deck. They are closing all coal plants by 2028 as they are no longer profitable to run. Even without a carbon adder per MWh, coal is dead (“near firm” solar and wind are renewables with battery backing to make them dispatchable when called on by the grid operator). Even existing combined cycle natural gas is under pressure! And their note: “We expect further technology improvements and cost declines will extend the competitiveness of onshore renewables and storage.” https://cleantechnica.com/files/2022/06/lcoe-small.jpg?mrf-size=m https://cleantechnica.com/files/2022/06/lcoe-small.jpg?mrf-s... Japan is opting out of financing coal plants further in Indonesia and Bangladesh, cancelling ~3GW worth of coal plant projects. https://news.mongabay.com/2022/06/planned-coal-plants-fizzle-as-japan-ends-financing-in-indonesia-bangladesh/ https://news.mongabay.com/2022/06/planned-coal-plants-fizzle... So we’re seeing some progress in avoiding electrical thermal emissions, which is the cheapest emissions offset. (Oahu, Hawaii’s last coal fired plant turns down in September after the Tesla Megapacks replacing their frequency response capability are installed, another 200MW of coal taken offline)
- gumby 4y ago
  > They are closing all coal plants by 2028 Also, despite the coal subsidies from congress, even families in coal country don’t want their kids becoming miners. They just want some other way to make a living.
  - throwaway5959 4y ago
    They should probably do what everyone else did. Move away and find something else to do. Coal mines employ a fraction of the miners they employed 100 years ago and produce more coal. Maybe have them look up what they did.
    - toomuchtodo 4y ago
      We could’ve just put federal gov satellite offices there. Train these folks for white collar jobs the federal gov will always need (IRS, SSA, VA, etc). It’s not that many people, there are more people who work at Arbys than in the coal industry.
  - mrguyorama 4y ago
    You say that but the big coal areas of america giddily voted for the guy promising to bring coal and coal mining back
    - jessaustin 4y ago
      Did we really expect "big coal areas" to vote for the other candidate?
      - mrguyorama 4y ago
        As the parent said: >even families in coal country don’t want their kids becoming miners. But that doesn't seem to be the case, as those same families voted heavily for the politicians who claimed they could bring back coal jobs and the industry. So they obviously want someone to be digging coal, and who else but the next generation?
landemva 4y ago
Rather than a broad tax that hurts the poor, maybe your effort could go toward taxing specific indoor growers who burn gas to generate CO2 to get more growth from their MJ plants.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  Or instead of going after pot growers, maybe your effort could go towards making my neighbor stop BBQing every weekend?
  - dijonman2 4y ago
    Your neighbor has the right to BBQ, there’s a point where we need to live our lives and stop advocating for denial of comfort.
    - tito 4y ago
      This is an interesting point but I can't see any way that we create a sustainable system that works like this. Carbon dioxide is an unaccounted part of the system. Inevitably, whether it's now or in 1,000 years, a functional society will need to account for these kinds of externalities. "The bill for magical thinking arrives with unpredictable timing but thunderous force." -pmarca
    - pessimizer 4y ago
      > Your neighbor has the right to BBQ Not constitutionally. I demand that people stop advocating for general solutions and instead focus their action on my petty personal grievances for a marginal return.
      - landemva 4y ago
        Well, yes, the federal constitution provides no rights including to bbq. It is a negative document which details restrictions on government.
    - saalweachter 4y ago
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
rayiner 4y ago
We need CO2 capture because China and India will never go along with western efforts to tamp down on fossil fuel use before those countries fully industrialize. Beating that dead horse will only distract from efforts that could actually be useful.
- SapporoChris 4y ago
  Never is such a big word. Any country will relinquish fossil fuel use when it is economically feasible.
  - buywarbonds 4y ago
    You mean any country will relinquish fossil fuel use when it's economically profitable. Only some countries will choose to do it when it's simply feasible.
- gumby 4y ago
  I didn’t say we don’t need to get rid of past CO2, I just don’t believe air-sucking machines are a viable way to do so. And it seems only Northern Europe and China even give a shit about the climate. Yes, China is expanding coal plants but they are also worrying more about the climate than others.
  - wizofaus 4y ago
    I assume you mean "out of countries that are actually in a position to do something about it". Plenty of countries that are immediately threatened by rising seas levels and increasingly erratic rainfall affecting agriculture etc. are pretty worried about it. But they're all tiny emitters... OTOH I'm not that convinced northern Europe gives a shit about it, given how much oil/gas Norway is drilling and how reluctant Germany has been to reduce its fossil fuel dependence (and now geo-politics has forced its hand on oil, it's ramping up coal usage again!). The evidence is pretty hard to ignore though - nobody who can really do anything about it is going to give a shit until it's all too late.
    - 4y ago
hedora 4y ago
I find $/ton to be confusing. $100 / ton is $1 / gallon of gasoline equivalent, and is probably feasible with some current technologies, assuming economies of scale. A $1/gallon tax on gasoline is rounding error compared to all the other disasters hitting these days.
- mrguyorama 4y ago
  Are you kidding me? Gas goes up a few cents and suddenly most of the country thinks the free market is a total failure and wants Biden to singlehandedly be pumping out that crude.
  - google234123 4y ago
    Gas is many dollars more expensive now. And Biden is doing a pretty good job at ignoring all the people crying
gumby 4y ago
I think an algae system could be in the pennies per tonne. Russ George has an algae scheme that could even be profitable, though possibly scaling only into the hundreds of Gt.
jiggawatts 4y ago
> should instead go towards lobbying for carbon taxes Yes, but then you see, existing business will become unprofitable. And these business are currently profitable, and using those profits to pay bribes. This is the fundamental issues behind all proposed solutions to climate change -- fossil fuel based companies are here now to pay the required corruption fees to keep themselves going. Renewable energy companies might be able to pay the same bribes in the future, but... not now. In the future. Now is now, and politicians want to retire to a cushy consulting job when they lose reelection election, which could be any year now, not decades in the future. If you want to understand why corruption is inherently bad and can never be tolerated, just think back to this scenario and thousands like this. Our very future -- our survival as a species -- is being undermined by a handful of people in exchange for bribes as low as a few thousand dollars.
JudasGoat 4y ago
"What's the cheapest Carbon Capture system we can imagine - $100 per tonne?" Considering that I pay around a dollar a pound for bottled CO2 for horticultural use and commercial CO2 is produced from methane. Someone could get fairly wealthy getting paid for removing CO2 from the atmosphere and selling the "undesirable" product for a profit.

human_person 4y ago

Even if we got emissions to zero tomorrow we’d still be in serious trouble. We need carbon capture. Emission reduction just reduces our rate of acceleration towards destruction. We need to hit the brakes.

toomuchtodo 4y ago

> At just $15/tonne of Carbon Tax, we halve CO2 output, mainly by destroying the economics of coal Here is page 122 of NextEra’s investor deck. They are closing all coal plants by 2028 as they are no longer profitable to run. Even without a carbon adder per MWh, coal is dead (“near firm” solar and wind are renewables with battery backing to make them dispatchable when called on by the grid operator). Even existing combined cycle natural gas is under pressure! And their note: “We expect further technology improvements and cost declines will extend the competitiveness of onshore renewables and storage.” https://cleantechnica.com/files/2022/06/lcoe-small.jpg?mrf-size=m https://cleantechnica.com/files/2022/06/lcoe-small.jpg?mrf-s... Japan is opting out of financing coal plants further in Indonesia and Bangladesh, cancelling ~3GW worth of coal plant projects. https://news.mongabay.com/2022/06/planned-coal-plants-fizzle-as-japan-ends-financing-in-indonesia-bangladesh/ https://news.mongabay.com/2022/06/planned-coal-plants-fizzle... So we’re seeing some progress in avoiding electrical thermal emissions, which is the cheapest emissions offset. (Oahu, Hawaii’s last coal fired plant turns down in September after the Tesla Megapacks replacing their frequency response capability are installed, another 200MW of coal taken offline)

gumby 4y ago
> They are closing all coal plants by 2028 Also, despite the coal subsidies from congress, even families in coal country don’t want their kids becoming miners. They just want some other way to make a living.
- throwaway5959 4y ago
  They should probably do what everyone else did. Move away and find something else to do. Coal mines employ a fraction of the miners they employed 100 years ago and produce more coal. Maybe have them look up what they did.
  - toomuchtodo 4y ago
    We could’ve just put federal gov satellite offices there. Train these folks for white collar jobs the federal gov will always need (IRS, SSA, VA, etc). It’s not that many people, there are more people who work at Arbys than in the coal industry.
- mrguyorama 4y ago
  You say that but the big coal areas of america giddily voted for the guy promising to bring coal and coal mining back
  - jessaustin 4y ago
    Did we really expect "big coal areas" to vote for the other candidate?
    - mrguyorama 4y ago
      As the parent said: >even families in coal country don’t want their kids becoming miners. But that doesn't seem to be the case, as those same families voted heavily for the politicians who claimed they could bring back coal jobs and the industry. So they obviously want someone to be digging coal, and who else but the next generation?

landemva 4y ago

Rather than a broad tax that hurts the poor, maybe your effort could go toward taxing specific indoor growers who burn gas to generate CO2 to get more growth from their MJ plants.

pessimizer 4y ago
Or instead of going after pot growers, maybe your effort could go towards making my neighbor stop BBQing every weekend?
- dijonman2 4y ago
  Your neighbor has the right to BBQ, there’s a point where we need to live our lives and stop advocating for denial of comfort.
  - tito 4y ago
    This is an interesting point but I can't see any way that we create a sustainable system that works like this. Carbon dioxide is an unaccounted part of the system. Inevitably, whether it's now or in 1,000 years, a functional society will need to account for these kinds of externalities. "The bill for magical thinking arrives with unpredictable timing but thunderous force." -pmarca
  - pessimizer 4y ago
    > Your neighbor has the right to BBQ Not constitutionally. I demand that people stop advocating for general solutions and instead focus their action on my petty personal grievances for a marginal return.
    - landemva 4y ago
      Well, yes, the federal constitution provides no rights including to bbq. It is a negative document which details restrictions on government.
  - saalweachter 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

rayiner 4y ago

We need CO2 capture because China and India will never go along with western efforts to tamp down on fossil fuel use before those countries fully industrialize. Beating that dead horse will only distract from efforts that could actually be useful.

SapporoChris 4y ago
Never is such a big word. Any country will relinquish fossil fuel use when it is economically feasible.
- buywarbonds 4y ago
  You mean any country will relinquish fossil fuel use when it's economically profitable. Only some countries will choose to do it when it's simply feasible.
gumby 4y ago
I didn’t say we don’t need to get rid of past CO2, I just don’t believe air-sucking machines are a viable way to do so. And it seems only Northern Europe and China even give a shit about the climate. Yes, China is expanding coal plants but they are also worrying more about the climate than others.
- wizofaus 4y ago
  I assume you mean "out of countries that are actually in a position to do something about it". Plenty of countries that are immediately threatened by rising seas levels and increasingly erratic rainfall affecting agriculture etc. are pretty worried about it. But they're all tiny emitters... OTOH I'm not that convinced northern Europe gives a shit about it, given how much oil/gas Norway is drilling and how reluctant Germany has been to reduce its fossil fuel dependence (and now geo-politics has forced its hand on oil, it's ramping up coal usage again!). The evidence is pretty hard to ignore though - nobody who can really do anything about it is going to give a shit until it's all too late.
  - 4y ago

hedora 4y ago

I find $/ton to be confusing. $100 / ton is $1 / gallon of gasoline equivalent, and is probably feasible with some current technologies, assuming economies of scale. A $1/gallon tax on gasoline is rounding error compared to all the other disasters hitting these days.

mrguyorama 4y ago
Are you kidding me? Gas goes up a few cents and suddenly most of the country thinks the free market is a total failure and wants Biden to singlehandedly be pumping out that crude.
- google234123 4y ago
  Gas is many dollars more expensive now. And Biden is doing a pretty good job at ignoring all the people crying

gumby 4y ago

I think an algae system could be in the pennies per tonne. Russ George has an algae scheme that could even be profitable, though possibly scaling only into the hundreds of Gt.

jiggawatts 4y ago

> should instead go towards lobbying for carbon taxes Yes, but then you see, existing business will become unprofitable. And these business are currently profitable, and using those profits to pay bribes. This is the fundamental issues behind all proposed solutions to climate change -- fossil fuel based companies are here now to pay the required corruption fees to keep themselves going. Renewable energy companies might be able to pay the same bribes in the future, but... not now. In the future. Now is now, and politicians want to retire to a cushy consulting job when they lose reelection election, which could be any year now, not decades in the future. If you want to understand why corruption is inherently bad and can never be tolerated, just think back to this scenario and thousands like this. Our very future -- our survival as a species -- is being undermined by a handful of people in exchange for bribes as low as a few thousand dollars.

JudasGoat 4y ago

"What's the cheapest Carbon Capture system we can imagine - $100 per tonne?" Considering that I pay around a dollar a pound for bottled CO2 for horticultural use and commercial CO2 is produced from methane. Someone could get fairly wealthy getting paid for removing CO2 from the atmosphere and selling the "undesirable" product for a profit.