4 ms·

I don't know why it matters that the existing users of carbon capture are oil companies. Sure, that means it hasn't yet been used to sequester carbon in other

I don't know why it matters that the existing users of carbon capture are oil companies. Sure, that means it hasn't yet been used to sequester carbon in other contexts, but there's no reason it can't be. It's like trying to discredit nuclear fission in 1950 by saying that it's a poor source of energy because all existing users of fission tech are weapons designers.

abdullahkhalids 4y ago
From OP > Captured carbon has mostly been used for enhanced oil recovery (EOR): enhancing oil production is not a climate solution. > Using carbon capture as a greenlight to extend the life of fossil fuels power plants is a significant financial and technical risk: history confirms this. Also from OP > Some applications of CCS in industries where emissions are hard to abate (such as cement) could be studied as an interim partial solution with careful consideration. Unlike nuclear fission in 1950, we don't have twenty years to continue extracting oil and gas. Most oil and gas extraction should have been hard stopped twenty years ago.
- andrewmutz 4y ago
  Yes I read the article, but none of this discredits carbon capture. It discredits burning oil and gas. You don't need to capture carbon to pump out the oil and gas, and you don't need to pump oil and gas to capture and sequester the carbon. Just because that's what oil companies are doing at the moment, doesnt mean that that's the best way to use carbon capture tech. Let's keep doing the carbon capture and stop burning the oil and gas.
  - abdullahkhalids 4y ago
    This is just a first-order analysis of the problem. Just because the things don't need to happen in an ideal world, doesn't discredit the fact that in our complex econo-political system, oil/gas companies can lobby to change laws and get out of legal cases, use loop holes in laws, and in particular engage in greenwashing to continue doing net harmful actions. In this case, carbon capture is being used to enhance oil production, i.e. doing more net harm to our world. The second-order analysis here is that unless one has a credible way, that has been demonstrated to work in real life, of stopping oil/gas companies from greenwashing, there is little point in supporting carbon capture technology. Or to make a general point, a technology is worth supporting that when deployed in the real world results in almost immediate and permanent reduction in climate-change effects. If not, don't let the fossil fuel/capitalism lobbies distract you.
    - godelski 4y ago
      > This is just a first-order analysis of the problem. > Just because the things don't need to happen in an ideal world, doesn't discredit the fact that in our complex econo-political system Truth be told, first order analysis (and even second) often gives naive or harmful solutions. Complex problems are complex because they require high order solutions and principle components have relatively low contributions to problems as compared to less complex problems. If you're thinking of complex topics like climate through low order lenses, you're going to get bad results. It is a topic that heavily requires reliance through expert consensus as it is not a topic that even a singular expert cannot fully capture. There is a reason why we call this (one of if not) the largest crisis humanity has ever faced.
    - btilly 4y ago
      The amount of oil being extracted is mostly driven by demand, not supply. Not entirely. After all extra supply means lower prices and therefore increased demand. But demand is fairly inelastic - that's why prices can change so rapidly and consumption remains fairly steady. Therefore the choice of extraction technology makes little difference to how much oil we get. It just affects which marginal wells are worthwhile, and the likelihood of other kinds of environmental damage. Therefore if you inject biofuel instead of water, you really have altered the net result. Not enough to encourage extracting fuel just to store biofuel, but enough to be better than a kick in the teeth. Ideally we'll get to injecting fuel into stopped wells and start undoing damage. And in the meantime, current efforts mean that we'll have the technology when that point comes. And so this activity is on a path towards what we want. (There are similar arguments for natural gas. Natural gas is a natural complement to highly variable renewable energy. So you want to add renewables, add natural gas plans, and use the natural gas to balance the grid. In the long run you replace natural gas with storage such as batteries. But in the short term, natural gas is on a path towards a sustainable future.)
- godelski 4y ago
  I think my, personal, problem is that people point to EOR as a reason for why we shouldn't use artificial forms of CCS. These same people appear to be big supporters of tree planting (despite young forests being carbon sources instead of sinks). They also seem to be unaware of better natural sequestration methods through land management. At least these are the people I run into and so it is hard to not conflate groups like this. Armchair experts often get in the way of a lot of progress and actual discussions because now we need to define our personal sides because the signaling mechanism is more noisy. Personally, I don't see a major issue with EOR. If they make the technology, they make the technology. Ultimately it will come down to government regulations and through mechanisms such as: carbon taxes, emission/pollution taxes, investments, and subsidies. Energy isn't a free market right now and free markets aren't going to solve this because Climate Change is a tragedy of the commons. Our current economic models do not price in ToC and we only do so through government action. So I rather see the EOR discussion as often tangential to the actual broader discussion of sequestration (natural or artificial)
- yyyk 4y ago
  > Most oil and gas extraction should have been hard stopped twenty years ago. This invariably would have meant increased energy prices and more funds for foreign dictatorships, at least until a full transition can be done (ETA: min. 20 years).
- isityouyesitsme 4y ago
  "we don't have 20 years to continue extraction." Define. There have been way too many climate-induced doomsday predictions with such imminence as to force hysteria to take you at face value. There were also about 145 billion predictions that the world would be out of oil by now. Both are dubious claims to start with, and totally neglected how the technologies changed over time to reduce emissions, which is just good for everyone regardless of whether it is contributing to climate change. I'm counting down the seconds until someone writes back "climate denier!!" despite the fact that I'm not.
lozenge 4y ago
Sure but carbon capture is useless without the storage component. If you just sell the CO2 for food manufacturing or any industrial use it will just go back into the atmosphere. Unfortunately fossil fuel companies and politicians are throwing around the term "carbon capture and storage" as if it will solve everything and allow fossil fuel power plants and fossil fuel extraction to keep running. All the evidence is that it can't.
- andrewmutz 4y ago
  I absolutely agree that we can't just keep burning fossil fuels and use CCS to fix the problem. But it doesn't matter if no one buys the carbon we capture. Sequestering it underground is a good outcome. And yes, it's not currently profitable for anyone to capture carbon and send it underground, but it is a positive externality and that's where government needs to step in. The government pays companies to do all sorts of things, and CCS should be one of them
  - boplicity 4y ago
    > Sequestering it underground is a good outcome. This is the great irony of the CCS discussion. Plenty of carbon has already been sequestered underground. The general idea is to extract carbon from underground, then pump it into the atmosphere, and then extract it from the atmosphere and pump it back into the ground. Yikes. We live in a pretty screwed up world to make that even seem like a necessary option.
    - sdenton4 4y ago
      Carbon capture as discussed here is usually more a matter of catching carbon byproducts of industrial processes. In which case it's typically more concentrated and easier to catch than random carbon molecules drifting around in the atmosphere.

abdullahkhalids 4y ago

From OP > Captured carbon has mostly been used for enhanced oil recovery (EOR): enhancing oil production is not a climate solution. > Using carbon capture as a greenlight to extend the life of fossil fuels power plants is a significant financial and technical risk: history confirms this. Also from OP > Some applications of CCS in industries where emissions are hard to abate (such as cement) could be studied as an interim partial solution with careful consideration. Unlike nuclear fission in 1950, we don't have twenty years to continue extracting oil and gas. Most oil and gas extraction should have been hard stopped twenty years ago.

andrewmutz 4y ago
Yes I read the article, but none of this discredits carbon capture. It discredits burning oil and gas. You don't need to capture carbon to pump out the oil and gas, and you don't need to pump oil and gas to capture and sequester the carbon. Just because that's what oil companies are doing at the moment, doesnt mean that that's the best way to use carbon capture tech. Let's keep doing the carbon capture and stop burning the oil and gas.
- abdullahkhalids 4y ago
  This is just a first-order analysis of the problem. Just because the things don't need to happen in an ideal world, doesn't discredit the fact that in our complex econo-political system, oil/gas companies can lobby to change laws and get out of legal cases, use loop holes in laws, and in particular engage in greenwashing to continue doing net harmful actions. In this case, carbon capture is being used to enhance oil production, i.e. doing more net harm to our world. The second-order analysis here is that unless one has a credible way, that has been demonstrated to work in real life, of stopping oil/gas companies from greenwashing, there is little point in supporting carbon capture technology. Or to make a general point, a technology is worth supporting that when deployed in the real world results in almost immediate and permanent reduction in climate-change effects. If not, don't let the fossil fuel/capitalism lobbies distract you.
  - godelski 4y ago
    > This is just a first-order analysis of the problem. > Just because the things don't need to happen in an ideal world, doesn't discredit the fact that in our complex econo-political system Truth be told, first order analysis (and even second) often gives naive or harmful solutions. Complex problems are complex because they require high order solutions and principle components have relatively low contributions to problems as compared to less complex problems. If you're thinking of complex topics like climate through low order lenses, you're going to get bad results. It is a topic that heavily requires reliance through expert consensus as it is not a topic that even a singular expert cannot fully capture. There is a reason why we call this (one of if not) the largest crisis humanity has ever faced.
  - btilly 4y ago
    The amount of oil being extracted is mostly driven by demand, not supply. Not entirely. After all extra supply means lower prices and therefore increased demand. But demand is fairly inelastic - that's why prices can change so rapidly and consumption remains fairly steady. Therefore the choice of extraction technology makes little difference to how much oil we get. It just affects which marginal wells are worthwhile, and the likelihood of other kinds of environmental damage. Therefore if you inject biofuel instead of water, you really have altered the net result. Not enough to encourage extracting fuel just to store biofuel, but enough to be better than a kick in the teeth. Ideally we'll get to injecting fuel into stopped wells and start undoing damage. And in the meantime, current efforts mean that we'll have the technology when that point comes. And so this activity is on a path towards what we want. (There are similar arguments for natural gas. Natural gas is a natural complement to highly variable renewable energy. So you want to add renewables, add natural gas plans, and use the natural gas to balance the grid. In the long run you replace natural gas with storage such as batteries. But in the short term, natural gas is on a path towards a sustainable future.)
godelski 4y ago
I think my, personal, problem is that people point to EOR as a reason for why we shouldn't use artificial forms of CCS. These same people appear to be big supporters of tree planting (despite young forests being carbon sources instead of sinks). They also seem to be unaware of better natural sequestration methods through land management. At least these are the people I run into and so it is hard to not conflate groups like this. Armchair experts often get in the way of a lot of progress and actual discussions because now we need to define our personal sides because the signaling mechanism is more noisy. Personally, I don't see a major issue with EOR. If they make the technology, they make the technology. Ultimately it will come down to government regulations and through mechanisms such as: carbon taxes, emission/pollution taxes, investments, and subsidies. Energy isn't a free market right now and free markets aren't going to solve this because Climate Change is a tragedy of the commons. Our current economic models do not price in ToC and we only do so through government action. So I rather see the EOR discussion as often tangential to the actual broader discussion of sequestration (natural or artificial)
yyyk 4y ago
> Most oil and gas extraction should have been hard stopped twenty years ago. This invariably would have meant increased energy prices and more funds for foreign dictatorships, at least until a full transition can be done (ETA: min. 20 years).
isityouyesitsme 4y ago
"we don't have 20 years to continue extraction." Define. There have been way too many climate-induced doomsday predictions with such imminence as to force hysteria to take you at face value. There were also about 145 billion predictions that the world would be out of oil by now. Both are dubious claims to start with, and totally neglected how the technologies changed over time to reduce emissions, which is just good for everyone regardless of whether it is contributing to climate change. I'm counting down the seconds until someone writes back "climate denier!!" despite the fact that I'm not.

lozenge 4y ago

Sure but carbon capture is useless without the storage component. If you just sell the CO2 for food manufacturing or any industrial use it will just go back into the atmosphere. Unfortunately fossil fuel companies and politicians are throwing around the term "carbon capture and storage" as if it will solve everything and allow fossil fuel power plants and fossil fuel extraction to keep running. All the evidence is that it can't.

andrewmutz 4y ago
I absolutely agree that we can't just keep burning fossil fuels and use CCS to fix the problem. But it doesn't matter if no one buys the carbon we capture. Sequestering it underground is a good outcome. And yes, it's not currently profitable for anyone to capture carbon and send it underground, but it is a positive externality and that's where government needs to step in. The government pays companies to do all sorts of things, and CCS should be one of them
- boplicity 4y ago
  > Sequestering it underground is a good outcome. This is the great irony of the CCS discussion. Plenty of carbon has already been sequestered underground. The general idea is to extract carbon from underground, then pump it into the atmosphere, and then extract it from the atmosphere and pump it back into the ground. Yikes. We live in a pretty screwed up world to make that even seem like a necessary option.
  - sdenton4 4y ago
    Carbon capture as discussed here is usually more a matter of catching carbon byproducts of industrial processes. In which case it's typically more concentrated and easier to catch than random carbon molecules drifting around in the atmosphere.