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Microsoft announces purchase of 315k tonnes of CO2 removal
- version_five 3y agoHow much would have been removed if they hadn't purchased it? Edit: it's direct air capture, it's not some shell game "offset" thing which is what I assumed, that's actually very interesting.
- dkqmduems 3y agoLarge scheme of things, it's penny scale.
- adriand 3y agoYou have to start somewhere! This is a major public corporation that is making a significant investment with the goal of being carbon negative (!) by 2030. Imagine if every large corporation (and then, every corporation) made similar investments to become carbon neutral or negative. Everything big started small, and I for one am super pumped that Microsoft is doing this. It's genuine leadership on the most pressing issue that humanity faces.
- vlovich123 3y agoThe problem is that this is a physical process that’s extremely hard to scale. If I recall correctly CO2 recapture uses more energy than we got from releasing it. Now think about how much energy we burn as a species and how we’re not only supposed to offset that with fully green tech but then also expand that green tech to generate so much electricity that we can recapture carbon. Fission is really the only solution but even that is enormously expensive.
- palata 3y ago> You have to start somewhere! Yes! But not anywhere! A good first step would be to realize that we need to consume less, and that technology will not save us: we have to change society in order to consume a lot less. Doesn't mean there are no interesting engineering problems there!
- fimoreth 3y agoDirect Air Capture is slow, but I think is a better solution than the "don't cut down trees" offset that we've historically seen. I hope that continued investment in DAC leads to new solutions to make it more effective.
- andrewstuart 3y agoI wish I wasn't so skeptical of paying for carbon offsets etc. I'd do it if it was paying for trees and I actually believed that the payments results in more trees (which I am also skeptical about).
- xmprt 3y agoYou're right to be skeptical [1]. In the end it's better than nothing but it's probably not the most effective method and often times (especially with big corporations) these are bought out just as an excuse to pollute more. Even individual people are likely to use this as an excuse to put off the lifestyle changes (such as buying a new gas car instead of switching to electric or buying fewer clothes or cutting down on electricity/gas usage or installing solar panels). [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_woAb8tZ62U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_woAb8tZ62U
- kyeb 3y agoIt sounds like this is about direct carbon cature, not carbon offsets.
- willio58 3y agoHave you looked into how ineffective planting trees will be when it comes to carbon capture? I don’t remember the exact numbers but some insane number of trees planted and grown would barely make a dent in the average temps. I learned this recently so I just thought I’d mention it. Not to say planting trees isn’t good in other ways, but we’ll definitely have to come up with more creative ideas for carbon capture and storage if we want to help climate change. Plus we just need to stop it at the source and keep advancing solar and battery tech.
- tiffanyg 3y agoOk, I was all ready to attack this as simply another dodge in the unceasing dodges every industry (& corporation, especially) has ever used to "externalize 'costs'".* But, this involves funding development and use of an actual technology to actively remove CO2 from the atmosphere. Not familiar w/ the company or details in that space at the moment, but I am aware of the basic principles** apparently being used here. So, this seems somewhat more than the usual lip service, which is good to see. * Along the lines of wonderous marketing phrases like "responsible corporate citizens" (or "stewardship") ... to replace actual concern for your community, one of the "efficiencies" brought to us by 'professionalizing' business management in the form of "MBAs" / burying real lives and consequences in Microsoft(R) Excel(TM) "spreadsheets" ** Punintentional ... bit oblique, but, some might enjoy
- KennyBlanken 3y ago> But, this involves funding development and use of an actual technology to actively remove CO2 from the atmosphere. And how is that better than putting the money toward solar panels or other renewable energy sources?
- rcxdude 3y agoThe first thing to understand is that money at this stage is mostly investment: the goal is to develop the technology and try to scale it up, not to just offset the carbon in the short term (in much the same way as investment in solar was not just to generate electricity but to enable economies of scale to actually get it to be a serious contender for replacing fossil fuels). Why is such technology important to invest in? Two main reasons: firstly it could very well be the most economical means to make certain carbon-emitting processes carbon neutral, for cases where there is not currently a good means to eliminate the carbon emissions. Think aircraft emissions, for example. Secondly, even if we completely eliminate net carbon emissions, global warming will still continue for a fair few decades, as the climate takes a long time to actually reach equilibrium. If we want to avoid that equilibrium being too hot, we will need to remove carbon from the atmosphere. And while planting trees is generally a good thing, it's not really a feasible way to actually remove enough carbon from the atmosphere to make much of a dent (only growing new forests generally removes much carbon: mature forests are mostly carbon neutral, and the carbon capture process is slow). Technology like this, if it can be scaled and use renewable energy, has a chance of being able to make this difference (though the biggest question, apart from whether the technology can actually work, is who will pay for such removal, if it's not for carbon credits).
- rr808 3y agoCO2 removal sounds like its a necessary process to reverse global warming. However at this stage its kinda dumb to try to extract CO2 into solid carbon when in nearly every country in the world is still burning coal producing CO2.
- version_five 3y agoWhy is it dumb? If there isn't s substitute for coal et al we'll keep using them. Technology that can clean up the resulting CO2 makes a lot of sense.
- arcticbull 3y agoThere is, we've had nuclear power for decades.
- throwaway742 3y agoIt really sounds like a perfect use of nuclear power. If you match the NPP with the carbon capture plant you have a nice consistent load.
- mlyle 3y agoIt takes more power to get the carbon out of the atmosphere than we get from burning the coal. You'd want to stop burning the coal before you start to try and claw solid carbon back out.
- epylar 3y agoWhere is that power coming from, that they use to get the carbon out of the atmosphere?
- mlyle 3y agoIn a perfect world, from renewables and perhaps nuclear. But we should get to a point where we can use renewables to get rid of coal and natural gas generation, rather than using even more renewables to partially undo the harms of coal generation. It's great to prototype capture... but the benefit is developing a technology that will mostly only be useful after largely decarbonizing the economy.
- jakeinspace 3y agoI do like that they're funding actual carbon sequestration. Obviously this isn't a lot, it's something like 1000 business class flights saved (I'm sure MS buys at least that many every day). Still, funding technology like this early can have an outsized effect.
- palata 3y ago> Still, funding technology like this early can have an outsized effect. What about the effect of making them feel good instead of actually making useful efforts, like working on reducing consumption?
- danbruc 3y agoWhat is the logic behind this carbon capture process? They repeatedly go through the lime cycle - calcium carbonate, calcium oxyd, calcium hydroxyd and back to calcium carbonate. We are producing millions of tons of calcium oxide per year anyway, would it not make more sense to just capture the carbon dioxide from that instead of going around in a loop? Each cycle requires heating the calcium carbonate to almost 1000 °C in order to release the carbon dioxide and then you have a gas again, which you have to compress consuming even more energy and store somewhere. The calcium oxide that ends up in concrete would even permanently fixate the same amount of carbon dioxide as released during its production. And that for 35 billion tons per year just to keep the carbon dioxide concentration constant before we can even start to actually take any carbon out of the atmosphere. Would it not make much more sense to use all that energy, which has to come from renewable sources, to replace some fossil energy? And who will pay for this? Instead of burning X dollars of carbon and then paying probably roughly the same amount again to get the carbon pulled out of the atmosphere, would it not make more sense to just replace the fossil fuel with renewable energy. And sure, there are complications, availability, storage, and not all fossil fuels are easily replaceable with electricity. And for scale, if you turn 35 billion tons of carbon dioxide into dry ice, then you haven to safety get rid of 22 cubic kilometers of that stuff each year. Global oil production was 5 cubic kilometers in 2022.
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- harpooniker 3y ago"would it not make more sense to just replace the fossil fuel with renewable energy" What if people don't want to switch? They'll just elect someone who stops the progress. The carbon capture doesn't require the cooperation of the public, except for funding.
- chii 3y ago> elect someone who stops the progress but then > doesn't require the cooperation of the public, except for funding carbon capture require just as much cooperation. Just of a different form. There's no way around it, since the work to do capture does not directly produce a private benefit. You'd have to regulate it to make it work, for example, force a penalty for emitters that cost more than the capture. This means you will already need to elect someone to propose and pass the legislation. In which case, those who would end up having to pay will simply elect the opposition.
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- nimish 3y agoI wonder if it wouldn't be simpler to just sponsor forests instead. Plants have already mastered solar powered carbon capture and sequestration, of course. There's a lot of other positive externalities to increasing green cover in populated areas that this system unfortunately cannot replicate.
- hobs 3y agoAnd then they rot within a year or so, most carbon capture cannot happen through trees unless we bury them under the ground for a couple thousand years.
- nonethewiser 3y agoI think you wood need to make new forests.
- hedora 3y agoThe planet isn’t big enough for that to work. Forests simply don’t capture enough carbon per square foot per year. Even if they did, where would you store the wood?
- rgmerk 3y agoThe short answer is "no". Carbon offset schemes that involve planting trees or, even worse, not chopping down trees, are notorious for the additionality problem. Much of the time, the payments are made to plant trees that would have been planted anyway. The second problem that these schemes have is accurate measurement. This is particularly the case for "soil carbon" rather than forestry, but it's still true for forestry. All the incentives are to overestimate the amount of CO2 sequestered. The third problem these schemes have is permanence on geological timescales. Let's say you buy land to regrow rainforest in a developing country. Then there's a coup and the new government decides that a quick buck flogging off the timber is more important than contracts signed under the old legal system?
- palata 3y agoWell, at least forests are good for biodiversity, whereas CO2 removal technologies are just completely useless (except for the techno-solutionist cult).
- ChrisArchitect 3y ago[dupe]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- nforgerit 3y agoOne tiny little piece to solve the problem of our very possible extinction. On one hand, this is good since those technologies are in desperate need of funding and scaling on the other hand, make no mistake: They're much too small and will need to improve from stone-age to modern age in just a few decades. edit: typo
- palata 3y agoI disagree. There technologies are missing the point. Fundamentally, they will always require a ton of energy to remove CO2 which is emitted by... our energy consumption. At some point we just have to accept the truth: we need to work on smart solutions to consume less. Note that I did not say "to make things more efficient", because rebound effects make us consume more. I said "consume less". And that is mostly not a technology problem, it is a society problem.
- nforgerit 3y agoNo need to disagree. We’re 100% on the same side. However, the argument of “don’t develop carbon capture because it will divert society from changing” is just stupid. We will need it as much as possible.
- palata 3y agoSure, probably that was oversimplified. Let's say "don't develop carbon capture before science has found a fundamentally new way to do it without needing a lot of energy". The Silicon Valley way of "I will throw money at it and develop a product and a whole infrastructure that relies on the fact that some chemist will make a Nobel Prize in the meantime" is honestly a bit ridiculous to me. It is like developing spaceships to send humanity on another planet without realizing that we need fundamentally new physics if we ever hope to reach even the next solar system 4.5 light-years away. What's dangerous is that it convinces people that we are "on track" to do it. And actually we could not be further away: we miss fundamental science to go there. It's just that it's easier to do the engineering than to solve the fundamental science problem, and let's be honest, engineers love those problems.
- ChrisArchitect 3y agoSubmitted a number of times recently, lots of discussion on this one yesterday: Heirloom Carbon: Absorbing CO2 from the air using crushed rocks https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37435454 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37435454
- gabereiser 3y agoQuestion to those in the know about this tech: Once captured, what do we do with all that CO2 saturated limestone? From an article in late 2022, I found “Heirloom removes that CO2 by heating the limestone into a powder and stores the extracted CO2 underground” which leads me to believe this isn’t actually solving the problem, only sweeping it under the rug.
- chenxi9649 3y agoI believe one thing they're planning on doing is selling the CO2 to certain concrete manufactures. Another thing is putting the CO2 back underground through certain processes!
- gabereiser 3y agoIf you put it “back underground”, wouldn’t it just get released again TBD? Capture it, then use it for other purposes, but don’t release it again and don’t bury it hoping our grandchildren’s grandchildren will know not to go digging there.
- orlp 3y agoWhere do you think the carbon came from in the first place? Fossil fuels don't create carbon, they are carbon. It's not shoving it under the rug, it's putting it back where it came from.
- palata 3y agoCO2 removal is bullshit. It's an easy way to throw some money and buy themselves a conscience. We need to consume less, that's all. There is no silver bullet here.
- stephen_g 3y agoDefinitely from an energy perspective it doesn’t make a lot of sense - it’s unlikely (due to the thermodynamics of it) that removing a ton of CO2 will ever get to the point where it requires less energy than the energy produced from burning the fuel that created that ton of CO2. So even with clean energy, unless you have a totally clean grid with significant surplus energy, you’d do better to use the energy to put into displacing fossil fuels, because with the same amount of energy, you’d stop more CO2 being produced than you could remove with it.
- danbruc 3y ago[...] it’s unlikely (due to the thermodynamics of it) that removing a ton of CO2 will ever get to the point where it requires less energy than the energy produced from burning the fuel that created that ton of CO2. This argument only works if you want to reverse the entire process, turn the carbon dioxide back into something similar to oil or gas. If you would burn pure hydrocarbons with pure oxygen perfectly, it would be as simple as condensing the water in order to get pure carbon dioxide.
- sharlos201068 3y agoIt's not bullshit, it's necessary, we could magically stop all carbon production tomorrow and still need to remove existing CO2 from the atmosphere.
- palata 3y agoThe truth is that in a world without fossil fuels, we may not have the luxury to waste the energy needed for carbon removal. Working on carbon removal counting on the fact that someone will discover a clean energy that can actually compete with today's use of fossil fuels is close to 4D chess: we don't have that clean energy and it's pretty sure we won't have it in time. Therefore it is probably useless to throw tons of money on CO2 removal. What is necessary, though, is to stop carbon emissions. We could throw money at isolating buildings, for instance. The thing is that to reduce carbon emissions, we have to do less. And in a capitalist world, that's hard to accept. We need to change our model of society and accept that economical growth = CO2 emissions.
- imoverclocked 3y agoI’m looking forward to seeing how we turn solar energy into captured carbon energy for resale. It’s carbon neutral, after all.
- jycr753 3y agoFrom what I remember that's a major virtual signalling and quiet scamming.
- rgmerk 3y agoThis has all been discussed before but... For the vast majority of applications, it's cheaper to not emit in the first place, or capture the emissions during whatever process releases it, than capturing from the air. However, just the greenhouse gases that are already in the atmosphere are more than sufficient to cause unacceptable climate impacts, and it will take centuries to get back the pre-industrial climate. As such, we will almost certainly want to artificially remove CO2 from the atmosphere - go "net negative" rather than "net zero".
- palata 3y ago> As such, we will almost certainly want to artificially remove CO2 from the atmosphere - go "net negative" rather than "net zero". We need to change society not only to stop increasing the emissions (because that's what's happening now), but dramatically reduce them. Also we need to change society to handle the impact of climate change as well as possible (but for sure climate will make our life more difficult). Nothing is worth doing if we don't dramatically reduce our emissions. Whoever says "no but you see, I don't have to cut my emissions because I am working on CO2 removal" is lying to themselves.