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US takes $1.2B gamble on carbon-sucking vacuums
- WallyFunk 3y agoDefund the weather engineering programs and re-allocate that money into this. It's a no-brainer.
- sillywalk 3y agoTL;DR: 2 DAC facilities, one in Louisiana, one in Texas hope to capture ~1million tonnes/year / facility, starting 2025/2026... The largest currently operating one is Orca in Iceland and it can only do 4k tonnes.
- mrweiner 3y agoAlso: “The Texas project will be led by the American company Occidental and other partners, including Carbon Engineering. It could be developed to eliminate up to 30 million tons of CO2 per year, according to a statement from Occidental.” And if anybody else was wondering: “In 2021, U.S. greenhouse gas emissions totaled 6,340.2 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents, or 5,586.0 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents after accounting for sequestration from the land sector.” https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/inventory-us-greenhouse-gas-emissions-and-sinks#:~:text=In%202021%2C%20U.S.%20greenhouse%20gas,sequestration%20from%20the%20land%20sector https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/inventory-us-greenhouse-gas....
- alex_young 3y agoSounds like carbon neutral would take ~200 of these things.
- sillywalk 3y agoMore like at least 20,000 or more, plus whatever emissions it takes to construct, transport and operate the plants.
- tito 3y agoThe goal of these systems isn't to neutralize the planet's emissions (edit: by themselves). We need to both massively decarbonize and remove carbon from the air. The goal of these removal systems is to clean up the last bit. That's because removing carbon from the air is very expensive. It's more efficient not to emit it in the first place.
- alex_young 3y agoWhy not both? If we can power these things with clean energy and build hundreds of them it seems like a great addition to a carbon tax or whatever other system we can implement to change our energy system.
- tito 3y agoBoth are required! (did I make it seem like it was either/or, lemme know)
- sillywalk 3y agoCarbon Neutral requires the removal of Billions of Tonnes of emissions. That is what CARBON NEUTRAL means. Cut emissions to zero, and for "CARBON NEUTRAL" you still need to remove billions of tonnes from the atmosphere. At least 20,000 or more, plus whatever emissions it takes to construct, transport and operate the plants.
- tito 3y agoAh you're totally right, my bad. Better to say "The goal of these systems isn't to neutralize the planet's emissions all by themselves"
- sillywalk 3y ago"Each site would have carbon-sucking vacuums that could eliminate up to one million tons of carbon dioxide annually. This is equal to the yearly emissions of 445,000 gas-powered cars." Another way to put it is, if we could instantly build 10,000 of these facilities today (which don't exist and are supposed to capture orders of magnitude more CO2 than any existing plant) and ignoring the cost/emissions from the construction and operation, and they instantly stored their ~1million tonnes of emissions, this would almost be enough to sequester ~1/3rd of last years emissions.
- mrweiner 3y agoHow’s your math work? If they sequester 1 million per year and we produce 5,600 million per year, 10,000 of these would capture nearly 2x one year of emissions, not 1/3.
- sillywalk 3y agoI'm terrible at math, so here goes: Global emissions of around 36+ Billion Tonnes/yr, so 10k facilities * 1Mtonnes_removed/year/facility = 10 Billion Tonnes removed /year. = < 1/3rd global emissions. not included: + all the wildfire emissions + whatever emissions it takes to actually create 10k+ DAC facilities, and operate them forever,
- mrweiner 3y agoAh, global emissions. I was confused because you’d responded to the comment about US emissions. Thanks for clarifying.
- cma 3y agoBy the time you add oxygen to the coal, this is about one or two trainload's worth of coal offset per year, ignoring the carbon costs of manufacturing and running it.
- cumshitpiss 3y ago[dead]
- egberts1 3y agoMeanwhile literal bleeding-edge greenhouses are pumping CO2 into these buildings. I smell a profit coming.
- avmich 3y agoTerraform Industries plans to manufacture hydrocarbons from the CO2 in the air... with water, of course, and green electricity.
- dkqmduems 3y agoThe thermodynamics make so little sense but ok.
- whynotmaybe 3y agoEli5?
- mouse_8b 3y agoIt takes a lot of energy to pull carbon out of the air. The energy needs to come from somewhere, but if it involves burning oil then it's going to create more mess than it cleans up.
- tito 3y agoYes, burning fossil fuels is really inefficient. We should stop doing that. We have better options now. And, climate models say we need to remove 10 billion tons of carbon dioxide from the air every year in 2050. It's really inefficient but there's already too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
- black_13 3y ago[dead]
- haswell 3y agoThis recent TED talk by Al Gore is worth watching [0]. This is the first time I’ve heard him speak in quite some time, and I’m not sure if the fiery anger is new, but it seems appropriate. It’s good to see real action, but it’s only scratching the surface. And even more problematic is the industry response that this tech gives them “license to keep operating”. https://www.ted.com/talks/al_gore_what_the_fossil_fuel_industry_doesn_t_want_you_to_know https://www.ted.com/talks/al_gore_what_the_fossil_fuel_indus...
- tito 3y agoYes it's only scratching the surface. Carbon removal needs to effectively become a $1T/year industry in the next 27 years to meet climate models. That's a top 20 industry by today's standards.
- otterley 3y agoSeems like this could be done much simpler and in harmony with nature by reserving more land for forests and planting trees? Technology is not a solution to every problem.
- avmich 3y agoDidn't calculations show that trees aren't fast enough to help us with this problem?
- tito 3y agoYes, those types of things are part of the solution. Climate models say we need to be removing about 10 billion tons per year of carbon dioxide from the air by 2050, in addition to massive decarbonization. So we need trees, this stuff, and a lot more. A new $1T industry in the next 27 years.
- ianburrell 3y agoOne big one is weathering rocks. Some rocks need to be crushed to absorb CO2, some need to be crushed and dumped into the sea. The advantage is that it uses technology we already have. It can also be scaled easily. And can run off cheap electricity when needed.
- herewulf 3y agoI wanted to read more and found this. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-65648361 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-65648361 I wonder about energy used in the weathering capture process. Obviously it's all fossil fuel powered at this point.
- seltzered_ 3y agoThere's debate about that, I think it boils down to: - How afforestation efforts are done and what the cultural and labor dynamics are. There's plenty of stories of doing things wrong in the course of carbon afforestation per earlier REDD standards ( see 'REDD alert' - https://youtu.be/FPFPUhsWMaQ https://youtu.be/FPFPUhsWMaQ ) - What kinds of risks there are in sustaining a nature-based effort, from labor to simply whether an event wipes out the forest and expected carbon storage. - Realizing afforestation depends a lot on the biome and such and in some cases can make the climate worse - there's a lot of debate about this but this thread from Forrest Fleischman comes to mind ( https://twitter.com/ForrestFleisch1/status/1306221474802532354 https://twitter.com/ForrestFleisch1/status/13062214748025323... ) - How there's systems-theory perspectives (while possibly a bit reductionistic) arguing afforestation won't be enough to deal with carbon sequestration & storage. See https://archive.is/rNJTE https://archive.is/rNJTE which references John Sterman and En-Roads. Theres a bigger debate around forms of conservation (e.g. 'preserving' or 'rewilding' forests a la John Muir conservation vs. a more participation with nature framework of biocultural restoration as well)
- avmich 3y ago> The Texas project will be led by the American company Occidental and other partners, including Carbon Engineering. It could be developed to eliminate up to 30 million tons of CO2 per year, according to a statement from Occidental. Isn't it so small scale comparing to this particular world problem as to be almost irrelevant?
- ttt3ts 3y agoYes but so is the cost TBH. E.g. the bay bridge into SF cost 6.5B.
- tito 3y agoYes the scale today is small. But climate models say we need to be removing about 10 billion tons per year of carbon dioxide from the air by 2050, in addition to massive decarbonization. Net negative. Therefore, it's not an "if" but a "how". We must scale our ability to remove carbon from the air.
- rcme 3y agoCurrent emissions are like 40 billion tons. So if you built like a 1000 of them you would make a sizable dent in emissions. 1.2T might sound like a lot, but global GDP is over 100T. Spending 1.2T to keep the climate steady seems well worth it.
- codersfocus 3y agoWhat is the efficiency of this vs algae based systems like brilliantplanet.com?
- iamthemonster 3y agoThat's not such a bad result. $1.2bn is a small amount of money to throw down the drain, assuming we learn the lesson that DAC is a complete irrelevance to our current efforts to mitigate climate change. This "throw money at whatever companies ask us to" phase of climate change mitigation is pretty wasteful but hopefully we will learn some hard lessons at least.
- londons_explore 3y agoWhen you've spent $1.2b, you will have a whole industry around it. And that industry will have employees. And you know how employees hate to be fired... And they will vote for anyone willing to protect their industry...
- euroderf 3y agoI'd like to think that state-of-the-art CO2 removal could set an appropriate level for a carbon tax.