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FTA: > A company backed by BlackRock has abandoned plans to build a 1,300-mile pipeline across the US Midwest to collect and store carbon emissions from the co

by wiz21c 3y ago

FTA: > A company backed by BlackRock has abandoned plans to build a 1,300-mile pipeline across the US Midwest to collect and store carbon emissions from the corn ethanol industry following opposition from landowners and some environmental campaigners. A 1300 miles pipeline is not exactly a cheap/easy project. From what I know, carbon capture over a field is not exactly a solved problem. So what does BlackRock know that allows them to think it's a worthwhile investment ?

PoignardAzur 3y ago
It does sound weird. Maybe it has potential for dual use as a regular pipeline?
- bparsons 3y ago
  The economics for these projects make sense under incentives created by the Inflation Reduction Act. They get a big rebate on the capital costs for the infrastructure, and then get to sell the environmental attributes on the open market. Environmentalists don't like CCUS, but it is one of the thousand tools we are going to have to use if we are serious about decarbonizing heavy industry.
_Nat_ 3y ago
> From what I know, carbon capture over a field is not exactly a solved problem. Doesn't appear to be capture-capture over a field. Instead: > Navigator’s project would have laid pipelines across five US states—South Dakota, Nebraska, Minnesota, Iowa, and Illinois—to collect CO₂ from ethanol and fertilizer plants and pipe the gas to an underground storage site in Illinois. Sounds like they were planning on point-source capture, which is generally a good bit more efficient than open-air capture. If it were carbon-capture over a field, then it'd probably be under the category of "open-air capture" -- which is technically easy to do (as capture in general is; we've had CO2-capture technology since the 1930's), just more costly (since it's less thermodynamically efficient to capture from a low-concentration source like the atmosphere, relative to capture from a high-concentration source like the flue-gas from a plant). Capturing CO2 from point-sources (like the flue-gas from plants) tends to be relatively efficient, which seems to work out better both economically and environmentally.

by wiz21c 3y ago

PoignardAzur 3y ago

It does sound weird. Maybe it has potential for dual use as a regular pipeline?

bparsons 3y ago
The economics for these projects make sense under incentives created by the Inflation Reduction Act. They get a big rebate on the capital costs for the infrastructure, and then get to sell the environmental attributes on the open market. Environmentalists don't like CCUS, but it is one of the thousand tools we are going to have to use if we are serious about decarbonizing heavy industry.

_Nat_ 3y ago

> From what I know, carbon capture over a field is not exactly a solved problem. Doesn't appear to be capture-capture over a field. Instead: > Navigator’s project would have laid pipelines across five US states—South Dakota, Nebraska, Minnesota, Iowa, and Illinois—to collect CO₂ from ethanol and fertilizer plants and pipe the gas to an underground storage site in Illinois. Sounds like they were planning on point-source capture, which is generally a good bit more efficient than open-air capture. If it were carbon-capture over a field, then it'd probably be under the category of "open-air capture" -- which is technically easy to do (as capture in general is; we've had CO2-capture technology since the 1930's), just more costly (since it's less thermodynamically efficient to capture from a low-concentration source like the atmosphere, relative to capture from a high-concentration source like the flue-gas from a plant). Capturing CO2 from point-sources (like the flue-gas from plants) tends to be relatively efficient, which seems to work out better both economically and environmentally.