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It would take around £12k a year to offset my carbon footprint in the UK, where it is below average. That's a significant part of my take-home salary. I could

by clnq 3y ago

It would take around £12k a year to offset my carbon footprint in the UK, where it is below average. That's a significant part of my take-home salary. I could spend maybe £1-2k a year, especially given the futility of this (I would be one of the 0.00...01% of people doing this, large industries will continue to increase pollution, there is no political will for meaningful measures to reduce emissions). There really isn't a lot of value in this. I'd rather invest in a green energy company, or even just pay the bills of a large energy producer decarbonising (replacing a pollution-heavy power plant with something near carbon zero). Can some company do this carbon filtering at the source more cost-effectively (potentially at no cost to the source/industry/plant producing CO2 now)? I'd rather buy carbon offset from them and pay for that operation. I think they could sequester 10T a year for far below £10k.

marcosdumay 3y ago
> Can some company do this carbon filtering at the source more cost-effectively? If you have some centralized source like that, you should invest on replacing it with something that doesn't emit CO2. It's always a better deal. Carbon capture is for sources where you just can't plug something like this.
- clnq 3y ago
  The source might have other incentives. But I agree with the sentiment. I think CO2 offsets could be more effective if done through a fund that funds specific de-carbonisation projects for our industries. For example, they could fund a transition from coal power plants to renewable power plants for power companies, so long as the power companies agree to not increase their carbon emissions and decommission their coal power plants in the process. Or even a fund that simply subsidizes carbon filters for sources of pollution. Or a lobbying fund that's actually for the good of humanity, not for greed. There are many creative solutions that could offset a ton of CO2 emissions cheaper. But not the carbon-offset grift we have now. Instead, actual programs with actual reports, auditing, and accountability. If such a fund claims they've recaptured one tonne of CO2, I would expect that there is at least 273kg-heavy pile of carbon or, more realistically, some kilograms of some carbonated substance somewhere.
fwlr 3y ago
Source filtering can definitely be done more cost-effectively, quite dramatically so. https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/19427 https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/19427 has a lot of details and citations on various processes that achieve this. Just to give an idea of the different scale - they quote a few simulations showing $55/ton on a 300MW coal plant (capturing 60kg per second) and $35/ton on natural gas power plants - which means your bill for total decarbonisation would be under £500 for the year. The only issue is that, ironically, source capture is a limited resource. Once that 60kg/s worth of cheap carbon offsets are bought up, the next person has to buy offsets from a slightly more expensive source capture setup. Eventually all the output of all the power plants will be captured in this way and you have to start capturing from smaller sources like vehicles. I don’t know the state of the art in automobile exhaust capture but I do recall the math on a basic temperature swing adsorption system for diesel trucks that relies on waste engine heat to avoid performance penalties and could capture 90% of CO2 emissions. A full tank of diesel emissions is roughly one ton of CO2 and you needed something ridiculous like ten tons of adsorbent to capture that. (I am sure it is possible to do much better.) It probably makes sense for ships, maybe for trucks, probably not for cars, and I can’t see it ever being sensible for aircraft. The nice thing about direct air capture is that it provides a simple economic limit. You don’t need to figure out how to do carbon capture on a plane, you just capture it from the air after the fact.

by clnq 3y ago

marcosdumay 3y ago

> Can some company do this carbon filtering at the source more cost-effectively? If you have some centralized source like that, you should invest on replacing it with something that doesn't emit CO2. It's always a better deal. Carbon capture is for sources where you just can't plug something like this.

clnq 3y ago
The source might have other incentives. But I agree with the sentiment. I think CO2 offsets could be more effective if done through a fund that funds specific de-carbonisation projects for our industries. For example, they could fund a transition from coal power plants to renewable power plants for power companies, so long as the power companies agree to not increase their carbon emissions and decommission their coal power plants in the process. Or even a fund that simply subsidizes carbon filters for sources of pollution. Or a lobbying fund that's actually for the good of humanity, not for greed. There are many creative solutions that could offset a ton of CO2 emissions cheaper. But not the carbon-offset grift we have now. Instead, actual programs with actual reports, auditing, and accountability. If such a fund claims they've recaptured one tonne of CO2, I would expect that there is at least 273kg-heavy pile of carbon or, more realistically, some kilograms of some carbonated substance somewhere.

fwlr 3y ago

Source filtering can definitely be done more cost-effectively, quite dramatically so. https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/19427 https://encyclopedia.pub/entry/19427 has a lot of details and citations on various processes that achieve this. Just to give an idea of the different scale - they quote a few simulations showing $55/ton on a 300MW coal plant (capturing 60kg per second) and $35/ton on natural gas power plants - which means your bill for total decarbonisation would be under £500 for the year. The only issue is that, ironically, source capture is a limited resource. Once that 60kg/s worth of cheap carbon offsets are bought up, the next person has to buy offsets from a slightly more expensive source capture setup. Eventually all the output of all the power plants will be captured in this way and you have to start capturing from smaller sources like vehicles. I don’t know the state of the art in automobile exhaust capture but I do recall the math on a basic temperature swing adsorption system for diesel trucks that relies on waste engine heat to avoid performance penalties and could capture 90% of CO2 emissions. A full tank of diesel emissions is roughly one ton of CO2 and you needed something ridiculous like ten tons of adsorbent to capture that. (I am sure it is possible to do much better.) It probably makes sense for ships, maybe for trucks, probably not for cars, and I can’t see it ever being sensible for aircraft. The nice thing about direct air capture is that it provides a simple economic limit. You don’t need to figure out how to do carbon capture on a plane, you just capture it from the air after the fact.