7 ms·

Let's not forget the massive CO2 generated by mining, processing, and transporting crushed rock. I used to work on SAG (semiautonomous grind) mills for fine gr

by chinchilla2020 3y ago

Let's not forget the massive CO2 generated by mining, processing, and transporting crushed rock. I used to work on SAG (semiautonomous grind) mills for fine grind on copper-bearing ore. Grinding rock is incredibly energy inefficient. I would suspect this entire process is carbon-positive despite the atmospheric capture. It seems we will do anything to avoid the obvious - we need to reduce energy use and transition to green generation.

klysm 3y ago
what about using rock that's already being crushed for processes like that? Still have the transport but may as well use the ground stuff for something.
- chinchilla2020 3y ago
  Possibly. I am not familiar with the sort of basalt they are using here. It may very well make sense under those conditions.
  - kisamoto 3y ago
    Olivine is in ready supply as a by-product from the mining industry. There are piles of it laying around (which don't have the same effect as spreading it out) although they do need to be transported to projects.
    - klysm 3y ago
      By-product is the word I was looking for. Hopefully there isn’t a need for primary production
- kansface 3y ago
  We are talking about adding it to farmland so we really care about yields and safety.
fudged71 3y ago
Do you think gravity-assisted rock crushing could be feasible?
- CityOfThrowaway 3y ago
  To use gravity, you only have two options: 1. Knock things down that are already high up and hope they break at the bottom. Or, 2. Haul things up and then knock them down. #1 only works in an extremely limited number of cases and gets exhausted quickly. #2 spends more energy hauling up than it gains.
- dessimus 3y ago
  Yes, drop a large enough rock from, say, orbital height and there might be zero carbon emissions going forward.
  - progne 3y ago
    For a rock to extinguish all life on and in Earth from an orbital drop it would have to be quite large. I suppose Jupiter would be big enough.
    - mkl 3y ago
      Just human life would do, not all life. But just a drop wouldn't have the relative speed of most asteroid impacts.
- salynchnew 3y ago
  "Join my asteroid bombardment startup...." /s
- chinchilla2020 3y ago
  You just invented block cave mining https://www.e-education.psu.edu/geog000/node/911 https://www.e-education.psu.edu/geog000/node/911 It's been in use for a long time and is great for fragmenting large rocks and boulders. It does still need grind after the main fragmentation is done. SAG Mills use the same concept to grind rock to a finer level. Most of the abrasion is rock-on-rock inside the mill.
scythe 3y ago
>I would suspect this entire process is carbon-positive despite the atmospheric capture. Consider the napkin math. One mole of MgSiO3 reacts with one mole of CO2 to give MgCO3 + SiO2. The embodied energy in CO2 from C + O2 is 393 kJ/mol. One mole of MgSiO3 weighs 100 grams (almost exactly) and has a specific heat of roughly 1 kJ/kg-K. That works out to roughly the amount of energy required to heat the olivine by 3930 Kelvins, although this is well beyond the point at which specific heat becomes nonlinear and would most likely melt the sample. Since it is uncommon for rocks to melt when grinding we can conclude that the embodied energy in the carbon absorbed is way larger than the energy required to grind the material. The inefficiency of electric generation certainly comes into play but even if we use a factor of 1/5 we still find a temperature rise of 786 Kelvin which would be extremely damaging to equipment if it actually occurred, and the actual temperature rise is probably less than 100 Kelvin. This still gives a comfortable margin of inefficiency for the carbonation process. And we have assumed that all of the energy is coming from inefficient coal-burning plants, which are in reality a minority of the global energy mix. Consequently, we can conclude unequivocally that olivine grinding absorbs more carbon than it emits even under relatively pessimistic assumptions, and dramatically more carbon than it emits under realistic assumptions. While the energy of grinding is large, the embodied energy of CO2 is very large — this is why carbonaceous fuels became popular. There are downsides to the process — most obviously but with a distant horizon, sequestration of carbon in this manner is precisely the process expected to eventually destroy the biosphere by carbon starvation in a few hundred million years, and using olivine to stop global warming is slightly accelerating the inevitable doom of all life on Earth. Also, it takes up a lot of space and costs a lot of money. And inevitable doom. But you know, priorities.
- chinchilla2020 3y ago
  I am talking about the actual milling of the olivine. Chemistry has nothing to do with it. There will be specific curves for the ore they are grinding. They will look something like this. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/43497937_Milling_curves_as_a_tool_for_characterising_SAG_mill_performance https://www.researchgate.net/publication/43497937_Milling_cu... Obviously this is not related to olivine, so we would need to call around to get the appropriate ones. This isn't like computer work where you can just google it.
ilyt 3y ago
> It seems we will do anything to avoid the obvious - we need to reduce energy use and transition to green generation. Well if you haven't noticed yet, that's the hard part and some emission is inevitable at least for near future. We won't get rid of fossil fueled planes or cargo ships anytime soon
BurningFrog 3y ago
> It seems we will do anything to avoid the obvious - we need to reduce energy use and transition to green generation. Most of the world is doing just that. It's much, much easier said than done.
- xmprt 3y ago
  It's pretty easily done too. It's just that it's not a very fun thing to do. Like eating vegetables. It's pretty easily done but that doesn't mean everyone does it.
  - bheadmaster 3y ago
    Are you implying that living a life without fun is easy?
    - xmprt 3y ago
      Maybe I should have rephrased it. There are fun ways to live a life without emitting a bunch of carbon just as there are tasty ways to cook vegetables. It's just that people don't want to and more importantly, governments don't want to.
      - bheadmaster 3y ago
        So, it's easy, but people don't want to do it because... they're evil?
        NumberWangMan 3y ago
        It’s multipolar trap/ coordination problem. The costs of carbon emissions are diffuse and borne by everyone, while the costs of changing your behavior are mostly borne by you. It’s just a sad fact of life, and to solve it the only feasible way is to change the rules to making decarbonizing cheaper than continuing to use fossil fuels.
        3y ago
stronglikedan 3y ago
Once they're there, they keep doing their thing for years, so maybe only carbon-positive for a limited time.
schiffern 3y ago
>Grinding rock is incredibly energy inefficient. I would suspect this entire process is carbon-positive despite the atmospheric capture. Grinding the olivine to this study's grain size of 83 microns[0] will consume roughly ~14 kWh/tonne[1]. One tonne of olivine absorbs about 1.25 tonne of CO2, so that's 11 kWh/tonne for grinding, which is indeed likely to be the majority energy consumer. Clearly the solution is... build roads from olivine! :D Collectively, roadways are "naturally" subject to a huge amount of mechanical weathering, which currently mostly just generates asphalt microplastics. No doubt the cost/geotechnics doesn't work out, but it's an amusing thought nonetheless. Maybe it could even be made workable, somehow... [0] https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2515-7620/acfd89/meta https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2515-7620/acfd89/... [1] https://worksinprogress.co/issue/olivine-weathering/ https://worksinprogress.co/issue/olivine-weathering/
- s0rce 3y ago
  Seems like US average is 0.855 pounds of CO2 emissions per kWh so this process looks like a significant win. Also grinding a ton of rocks doesn't use much energy if its just 14 kwh... https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=74&t=11 https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=74&t=11
  - bagels 3y ago
    Hard to follow all the units, but, just for grinding, using these numbers: grinding: ~14 kWh/tonne olivine absorption: 1.25 tonne of CO2 per tonne of olivine emissions: 0.855 lbs CO2 / kWh emissions: 5.4 kg CO2 per 1.25 tonne CO2 (1250 kg) absorbed
    - pfdietz 3y ago
      > emissions: 0.855 lbs CO2 / kWh Why do there have to be CO2 emissions?
      - oldbbsnickname 3y ago
        There don't. The problem is a lack of remote industrial equipment that are EVs powered by renewable electricity sources rather than diesel fuel.
silentsanctuary 3y ago
> It seems we will do anything to avoid the obvious - we need to reduce energy use and transition to green generation. The idea behind carbon capture projects is this: for years, we have been given warnings that "if we cut all emissions now, we will still be okay", to "if we cut all emissions now, it won't be too bad", and now we're at the stage where even if we meet our emission targets, things are still going to be bad. If we want to avert disaster, we now need not only to cut emissions, but ALSO to actively remove carbon from the atmosphere. So, these projects are here to try and fill that unfortunate new need, because just cutting emissions will no longer... cut it.
- meandmycode 3y ago
  Sure, but where does the energy come from to actively remove? Because that's usually the point, the energy creation created more than the removal removed.
  - silentsanctuary 3y ago
    It'll depend on the specific project in question (there are quite a few methods under investigation), but for enhanced weathering (the type under discussion), I found some articles in a quick search that suggest the energy cost of grinding and transporting the rocks is significantly smaller than the carbon removed by the programme, e.g. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322664372_Potential_and_costs_of_carbon_dioxide_removal_by_enhanced_weathering_of_rocks https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322664372_Potential...
  - ipqk 3y ago
    Arbitrage it from places where green energy is cheap or free. For example, iceland has pretty much 100% renewable energy sources. Already it has an extensive aluminum industry because energy there is cheap, and aluminum is energy-intensive to use it. So, in theory, if you use green energy to produce a carbon-offset product, it's still a useful product.
    - chinchilla2020 3y ago
NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago
>It seems we will do anything to avoid the obvious - we need to reduce energy use and transitio I'm not sure how this is supposed to be obvious. It's using vague language that makes it sound as if this is a trivial lifestyle change. "reduce energy use" at the rate you're hinting at strongly means things like: * Eat less food, and worse food * Wear worse clothes longer, perhaps until they fall apart * Live in smaller, cramped housing that is colder in the winter and hotter in the summer * Go fewer places, but not just as a tourist, also for practical needs, limiting the job opportunities of many * Have less entertainment * Use less water, the bulk of which for any given person is used for hygiene Now that I have done the actual work of making it obvious what you suggest, are you still saying we need to do those things, and if you aren't saying that, just where do you imagine energy can be reduced?
- chinchilla2020 3y ago
  * less consumption of manufactured goods * less travel, both of humans and freight * high density housing instead of SFHs That can significantly reduce CO2 in the short term. Sure you won't be able to buy as many widgets on Amazon - but we won't be on hackernews discussing silly carbon capture methods to make marginal gains that will never feasibly happen on a global scale.
- dTal 3y ago
  I don't agree with most of those bullet points. Some of them don't follow at all, but in every category there is at least a 90th percentile change we could make that wouldn't be some terrible imposition. It boils down to class war: the people who would have to make the most sacrifice are the people who are already using way more than their fair share. So for each of your points where you use words like "less" and "worse", we must ask: Less than, worse than? First world people eat entirely too much, and unhealthily. Not hard to imagine diets better for humans and the ecosystem. Hell, 1.5 billion people are already vegetarian and doing fine. People will complain about eating less steak but it's a first world problem. Worse than? Durable clothes are better for the environment, and classier. Disposable "fast fashion", made of plastic and sewn by quasi-slaves in sweatshops is the real problem. People will complain about losing a dopamine button but it's a first world problem. Smaller than? It's completely possible to improve thermal efficiency without altering size. Maybe, if you live in a sprawling poorly insulated McMansion, you should invest in better insulation - or a better house - instead of powering through by burning energy. Apartment blocks are already far more efficient for climate control (square/cube law), so it's squarely a rich person's problem. Fewer places than? Are people taking jet airplanes to work every day? Yeah, they should probably stop that. People taking the train are probably in the clear. This isn't even a first world problem, it's a superrich problem. Of course they'll complain... What "entertainment"? This doesn't follow at all. "Entertainment" isn't a particularly energy-hungry category. Maybe if you're entertained by mining bitcoin? The most entertaining thing I own, besides my laptop, is a Synthstrom Deluge Groovebox, which runs for 9 hours on a single 18650 lithium cell. Water: Another one that doesn't follow. I suspect the bulk of water for a given person is actually agricultural, so see point 1. But as important as it is to preserve freshwater ecosystems, I don't see the direct bearing on energy consumption. Most municipal water comes from reservoirs, not desalination.
matznerd 3y ago
I don't know why you have to "suspect," when you can read the linked papers or any others... "A life cycle assessment (LCA) about the potential of basaltic rocks for enhanced weathering and soil carbonation (Section 5.1.) found transportation (related to the distance between the quarry and the place of application) as the major process negatively affecting CO2 sequestration, whereas grinding had less effects on the CO2 budget, which could however be related to the relative coarseness (<5 mm) of the particles." A lot of companies doing this use fines or waste material, but it can still be done efficiently. One thing you seem to be missing coming from the copper world is that the ore for copper is very low percentage of copper and has a maybe 3:1 stripping ratio, so you need to mine and grind and use 300-400 tonnes to get 1 tonne of copper out. With ultramafic and mafic rocks, you can have huge continuous bodies of these minerals, with very high usage and efficient ratio. One tonne of olivine removes more than 1 tonne of resultant carbon based on its Mg cation content. Transport is electrifying and so is the grid that powers those vehicles, therefore in the long run you can assume these will become more and more efficient. Potential and costs of carbon dioxide removal by enhanced weathering of rocks https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aaa9c4 https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aaa9c4 Environmental life cycle assessment of CO2 sequestration through enhanced weathering of olivine https://legacy.projectvesta.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Environmental-life-cycle-assessment-of-CO2-sequestration-through-enhanced-weathering-of-olivine.pdf https://legacy.projectvesta.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/E...
- chinchilla2020 3y ago
  The reason I "suspect" is because I've seen so many papers and sources that do not include the total cost. Or they choose a very particular process that reduces their carbon output. This is true especially of minerals that have a high place value (aggregates, etc)
BenFranklin100 3y ago
I think the lesson is that must accept the inevitable - worldwide energy usage will continue to increase, especially as the third world modernizes, and the only way to manage this increase in a low carbon manner is to accept that nuclear along with renewables will play an integral part in this green transition.
oldbbsnickname 3y ago
Clinker manufacturing for cement and concrete is amongst the worst offenders. This can be made greener with closed-loop production and CCS, and there are already efforts nearing or at commercial production with it.
- Muromec 3y ago
  Or reduce cement consumption by building with wood, which carbon negative
forgetfreeman 3y ago
There's the obvious thing everyone's trying to avoid: reduce energy usage, and then there's the obvious thing everyone's REALLY trying to avoid: cut global population by 2/3.
- Muromec 3y ago
  Isn’t it what we had 5g with Covid sponsored by WEF for?
  - forgetfreeman 3y ago
    You joke and yet our power generation and transportation systems aren't the only aspects of human existence that are utterly unsustainable. We've bricked every major marine fishery on the planet and our agriculture requires non-renewable inputs and unsustainable amounts of water.
  - DeepSeaTortoise 3y ago
    I'll belief the likes of Davos and the WEF have anything in mind but tearing down any remainig class mobility, restricting people from moving to wherever the grass is greener and reintroducing a 21st century style of slavery, when they start pushing for a ban on private combustion powered megayachts, private jets and an upper powerlimit for pool heaters. Instead they're interested in blocking out the sun t̶o̶ ̶m̶a̶k̶e̶ ̶f̶a̶r̶m̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶p̶r̶i̶v̶a̶t̶e̶ ̶g̶a̶r̶d̶e̶n̶s̶ ̶i̶m̶p̶o̶s̶s̶i̶b̶l̶e̶ limit solar heating.
onetimeuse92304 3y ago
> Grinding rock is incredibly energy inefficient. Fortunately, there is a relatively cheap way of producing that energy with solar or wind installations. Your rock grinding machine can actually improve electrical grid by using excess energy and being a first candidate to be turned off in case of electricity shortage. Another way of looking at this is that a rock grinding machine is a way to convert excess renewable electricity into oil. By converting renewable electricity into sequestered carbon you can allow amount of oil being used for net zero carbon footprint. Yes, it costs more (but not as much as some people think -- excess energy is actually much cheaper and in some cases can have negative value). We kinda now there isn't going to be a solution that will be as cheap as what we have been doing up to this point.

klysm 3y ago

what about using rock that's already being crushed for processes like that? Still have the transport but may as well use the ground stuff for something.

chinchilla2020 3y ago
Possibly. I am not familiar with the sort of basalt they are using here. It may very well make sense under those conditions.
- kisamoto 3y ago
  Olivine is in ready supply as a by-product from the mining industry. There are piles of it laying around (which don't have the same effect as spreading it out) although they do need to be transported to projects.
  - klysm 3y ago
    By-product is the word I was looking for. Hopefully there isn’t a need for primary production
kansface 3y ago
We are talking about adding it to farmland so we really care about yields and safety.

fudged71 3y ago

Do you think gravity-assisted rock crushing could be feasible?

CityOfThrowaway 3y ago
To use gravity, you only have two options: 1. Knock things down that are already high up and hope they break at the bottom. Or, 2. Haul things up and then knock them down. #1 only works in an extremely limited number of cases and gets exhausted quickly. #2 spends more energy hauling up than it gains.
dessimus 3y ago
Yes, drop a large enough rock from, say, orbital height and there might be zero carbon emissions going forward.
- progne 3y ago
  For a rock to extinguish all life on and in Earth from an orbital drop it would have to be quite large. I suppose Jupiter would be big enough.
  - mkl 3y ago
    Just human life would do, not all life. But just a drop wouldn't have the relative speed of most asteroid impacts.
salynchnew 3y ago
"Join my asteroid bombardment startup...." /s
chinchilla2020 3y ago
You just invented block cave mining https://www.e-education.psu.edu/geog000/node/911 https://www.e-education.psu.edu/geog000/node/911 It's been in use for a long time and is great for fragmenting large rocks and boulders. It does still need grind after the main fragmentation is done. SAG Mills use the same concept to grind rock to a finer level. Most of the abrasion is rock-on-rock inside the mill.

scythe 3y ago

>I would suspect this entire process is carbon-positive despite the atmospheric capture. Consider the napkin math. One mole of MgSiO3 reacts with one mole of CO2 to give MgCO3 + SiO2. The embodied energy in CO2 from C + O2 is 393 kJ/mol. One mole of MgSiO3 weighs 100 grams (almost exactly) and has a specific heat of roughly 1 kJ/kg-K. That works out to roughly the amount of energy required to heat the olivine by 3930 Kelvins, although this is well beyond the point at which specific heat becomes nonlinear and would most likely melt the sample. Since it is uncommon for rocks to melt when grinding we can conclude that the embodied energy in the carbon absorbed is way larger than the energy required to grind the material. The inefficiency of electric generation certainly comes into play but even if we use a factor of 1/5 we still find a temperature rise of 786 Kelvin which would be extremely damaging to equipment if it actually occurred, and the actual temperature rise is probably less than 100 Kelvin. This still gives a comfortable margin of inefficiency for the carbonation process. And we have assumed that all of the energy is coming from inefficient coal-burning plants, which are in reality a minority of the global energy mix. Consequently, we can conclude unequivocally that olivine grinding absorbs more carbon than it emits even under relatively pessimistic assumptions, and dramatically more carbon than it emits under realistic assumptions. While the energy of grinding is large, the embodied energy of CO2 is very large — this is why carbonaceous fuels became popular. There are downsides to the process — most obviously but with a distant horizon, sequestration of carbon in this manner is precisely the process expected to eventually destroy the biosphere by carbon starvation in a few hundred million years, and using olivine to stop global warming is slightly accelerating the inevitable doom of all life on Earth. Also, it takes up a lot of space and costs a lot of money. And inevitable doom. But you know, priorities.

chinchilla2020 3y ago
I am talking about the actual milling of the olivine. Chemistry has nothing to do with it. There will be specific curves for the ore they are grinding. They will look something like this. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/43497937_Milling_curves_as_a_tool_for_characterising_SAG_mill_performance https://www.researchgate.net/publication/43497937_Milling_cu... Obviously this is not related to olivine, so we would need to call around to get the appropriate ones. This isn't like computer work where you can just google it.

ilyt 3y ago

> It seems we will do anything to avoid the obvious - we need to reduce energy use and transition to green generation. Well if you haven't noticed yet, that's the hard part and some emission is inevitable at least for near future. We won't get rid of fossil fueled planes or cargo ships anytime soon

BurningFrog 3y ago

> It seems we will do anything to avoid the obvious - we need to reduce energy use and transition to green generation. Most of the world is doing just that. It's much, much easier said than done.

xmprt 3y ago
It's pretty easily done too. It's just that it's not a very fun thing to do. Like eating vegetables. It's pretty easily done but that doesn't mean everyone does it.
- bheadmaster 3y ago
  Are you implying that living a life without fun is easy?
  - xmprt 3y ago
    Maybe I should have rephrased it. There are fun ways to live a life without emitting a bunch of carbon just as there are tasty ways to cook vegetables. It's just that people don't want to and more importantly, governments don't want to.
    - bheadmaster 3y ago
      So, it's easy, but people don't want to do it because... they're evil?
      - NumberWangMan 3y ago
        It’s multipolar trap/ coordination problem. The costs of carbon emissions are diffuse and borne by everyone, while the costs of changing your behavior are mostly borne by you. It’s just a sad fact of life, and to solve it the only feasible way is to change the rules to making decarbonizing cheaper than continuing to use fossil fuels.
        3y ago

stronglikedan 3y ago

Once they're there, they keep doing their thing for years, so maybe only carbon-positive for a limited time.

schiffern 3y ago

>Grinding rock is incredibly energy inefficient. I would suspect this entire process is carbon-positive despite the atmospheric capture. Grinding the olivine to this study's grain size of 83 microns[0] will consume roughly ~14 kWh/tonne[1]. One tonne of olivine absorbs about 1.25 tonne of CO2, so that's 11 kWh/tonne for grinding, which is indeed likely to be the majority energy consumer. Clearly the solution is... build roads from olivine! :D Collectively, roadways are "naturally" subject to a huge amount of mechanical weathering, which currently mostly just generates asphalt microplastics. No doubt the cost/geotechnics doesn't work out, but it's an amusing thought nonetheless. Maybe it could even be made workable, somehow... [0] https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2515-7620/acfd89/meta https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2515-7620/acfd89/... [1] https://worksinprogress.co/issue/olivine-weathering/ https://worksinprogress.co/issue/olivine-weathering/

s0rce 3y ago
Seems like US average is 0.855 pounds of CO2 emissions per kWh so this process looks like a significant win. Also grinding a ton of rocks doesn't use much energy if its just 14 kwh... https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=74&t=11 https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=74&t=11
- bagels 3y ago
  Hard to follow all the units, but, just for grinding, using these numbers: grinding: ~14 kWh/tonne olivine absorption: 1.25 tonne of CO2 per tonne of olivine emissions: 0.855 lbs CO2 / kWh emissions: 5.4 kg CO2 per 1.25 tonne CO2 (1250 kg) absorbed
  - pfdietz 3y ago
    > emissions: 0.855 lbs CO2 / kWh Why do there have to be CO2 emissions?
    - oldbbsnickname 3y ago
      There don't. The problem is a lack of remote industrial equipment that are EVs powered by renewable electricity sources rather than diesel fuel.

silentsanctuary 3y ago

> It seems we will do anything to avoid the obvious - we need to reduce energy use and transition to green generation. The idea behind carbon capture projects is this: for years, we have been given warnings that "if we cut all emissions now, we will still be okay", to "if we cut all emissions now, it won't be too bad", and now we're at the stage where even if we meet our emission targets, things are still going to be bad. If we want to avert disaster, we now need not only to cut emissions, but ALSO to actively remove carbon from the atmosphere. So, these projects are here to try and fill that unfortunate new need, because just cutting emissions will no longer... cut it.

meandmycode 3y ago
Sure, but where does the energy come from to actively remove? Because that's usually the point, the energy creation created more than the removal removed.
- silentsanctuary 3y ago
  It'll depend on the specific project in question (there are quite a few methods under investigation), but for enhanced weathering (the type under discussion), I found some articles in a quick search that suggest the energy cost of grinding and transporting the rocks is significantly smaller than the carbon removed by the programme, e.g. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322664372_Potential_and_costs_of_carbon_dioxide_removal_by_enhanced_weathering_of_rocks https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322664372_Potential...
- ipqk 3y ago
  Arbitrage it from places where green energy is cheap or free. For example, iceland has pretty much 100% renewable energy sources. Already it has an extensive aluminum industry because energy there is cheap, and aluminum is energy-intensive to use it. So, in theory, if you use green energy to produce a carbon-offset product, it's still a useful product.
  - chinchilla2020 3y ago

NoMoreNicksLeft 3y ago

>It seems we will do anything to avoid the obvious - we need to reduce energy use and transitio I'm not sure how this is supposed to be obvious. It's using vague language that makes it sound as if this is a trivial lifestyle change. "reduce energy use" at the rate you're hinting at strongly means things like: * Eat less food, and worse food * Wear worse clothes longer, perhaps until they fall apart * Live in smaller, cramped housing that is colder in the winter and hotter in the summer * Go fewer places, but not just as a tourist, also for practical needs, limiting the job opportunities of many * Have less entertainment * Use less water, the bulk of which for any given person is used for hygiene Now that I have done the actual work of making it obvious what you suggest, are you still saying we need to do those things, and if you aren't saying that, just where do you imagine energy can be reduced?

chinchilla2020 3y ago
* less consumption of manufactured goods * less travel, both of humans and freight * high density housing instead of SFHs That can significantly reduce CO2 in the short term. Sure you won't be able to buy as many widgets on Amazon - but we won't be on hackernews discussing silly carbon capture methods to make marginal gains that will never feasibly happen on a global scale.
dTal 3y ago
I don't agree with most of those bullet points. Some of them don't follow at all, but in every category there is at least a 90th percentile change we could make that wouldn't be some terrible imposition. It boils down to class war: the people who would have to make the most sacrifice are the people who are already using way more than their fair share. So for each of your points where you use words like "less" and "worse", we must ask: Less than, worse than? First world people eat entirely too much, and unhealthily. Not hard to imagine diets better for humans and the ecosystem. Hell, 1.5 billion people are already vegetarian and doing fine. People will complain about eating less steak but it's a first world problem. Worse than? Durable clothes are better for the environment, and classier. Disposable "fast fashion", made of plastic and sewn by quasi-slaves in sweatshops is the real problem. People will complain about losing a dopamine button but it's a first world problem. Smaller than? It's completely possible to improve thermal efficiency without altering size. Maybe, if you live in a sprawling poorly insulated McMansion, you should invest in better insulation - or a better house - instead of powering through by burning energy. Apartment blocks are already far more efficient for climate control (square/cube law), so it's squarely a rich person's problem. Fewer places than? Are people taking jet airplanes to work every day? Yeah, they should probably stop that. People taking the train are probably in the clear. This isn't even a first world problem, it's a superrich problem. Of course they'll complain... What "entertainment"? This doesn't follow at all. "Entertainment" isn't a particularly energy-hungry category. Maybe if you're entertained by mining bitcoin? The most entertaining thing I own, besides my laptop, is a Synthstrom Deluge Groovebox, which runs for 9 hours on a single 18650 lithium cell. Water: Another one that doesn't follow. I suspect the bulk of water for a given person is actually agricultural, so see point 1. But as important as it is to preserve freshwater ecosystems, I don't see the direct bearing on energy consumption. Most municipal water comes from reservoirs, not desalination.

matznerd 3y ago

I don't know why you have to "suspect," when you can read the linked papers or any others... "A life cycle assessment (LCA) about the potential of basaltic rocks for enhanced weathering and soil carbonation (Section 5.1.) found transportation (related to the distance between the quarry and the place of application) as the major process negatively affecting CO2 sequestration, whereas grinding had less effects on the CO2 budget, which could however be related to the relative coarseness (<5 mm) of the particles." A lot of companies doing this use fines or waste material, but it can still be done efficiently. One thing you seem to be missing coming from the copper world is that the ore for copper is very low percentage of copper and has a maybe 3:1 stripping ratio, so you need to mine and grind and use 300-400 tonnes to get 1 tonne of copper out. With ultramafic and mafic rocks, you can have huge continuous bodies of these minerals, with very high usage and efficient ratio. One tonne of olivine removes more than 1 tonne of resultant carbon based on its Mg cation content. Transport is electrifying and so is the grid that powers those vehicles, therefore in the long run you can assume these will become more and more efficient. Potential and costs of carbon dioxide removal by enhanced weathering of rocks https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aaa9c4 https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aaa9c4 Environmental life cycle assessment of CO2 sequestration through enhanced weathering of olivine https://legacy.projectvesta.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Environmental-life-cycle-assessment-of-CO2-sequestration-through-enhanced-weathering-of-olivine.pdf https://legacy.projectvesta.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/E...

chinchilla2020 3y ago
The reason I "suspect" is because I've seen so many papers and sources that do not include the total cost. Or they choose a very particular process that reduces their carbon output. This is true especially of minerals that have a high place value (aggregates, etc)

BenFranklin100 3y ago

I think the lesson is that must accept the inevitable - worldwide energy usage will continue to increase, especially as the third world modernizes, and the only way to manage this increase in a low carbon manner is to accept that nuclear along with renewables will play an integral part in this green transition.

oldbbsnickname 3y ago

Clinker manufacturing for cement and concrete is amongst the worst offenders. This can be made greener with closed-loop production and CCS, and there are already efforts nearing or at commercial production with it.

Muromec 3y ago
Or reduce cement consumption by building with wood, which carbon negative

forgetfreeman 3y ago

There's the obvious thing everyone's trying to avoid: reduce energy usage, and then there's the obvious thing everyone's REALLY trying to avoid: cut global population by 2/3.

Muromec 3y ago
Isn’t it what we had 5g with Covid sponsored by WEF for?
- forgetfreeman 3y ago
  You joke and yet our power generation and transportation systems aren't the only aspects of human existence that are utterly unsustainable. We've bricked every major marine fishery on the planet and our agriculture requires non-renewable inputs and unsustainable amounts of water.
- DeepSeaTortoise 3y ago
  I'll belief the likes of Davos and the WEF have anything in mind but tearing down any remainig class mobility, restricting people from moving to wherever the grass is greener and reintroducing a 21st century style of slavery, when they start pushing for a ban on private combustion powered megayachts, private jets and an upper powerlimit for pool heaters. Instead they're interested in blocking out the sun t̶o̶ ̶m̶a̶k̶e̶ ̶f̶a̶r̶m̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶p̶r̶i̶v̶a̶t̶e̶ ̶g̶a̶r̶d̶e̶n̶s̶ ̶i̶m̶p̶o̶s̶s̶i̶b̶l̶e̶ limit solar heating.

onetimeuse92304 3y ago

> Grinding rock is incredibly energy inefficient. Fortunately, there is a relatively cheap way of producing that energy with solar or wind installations. Your rock grinding machine can actually improve electrical grid by using excess energy and being a first candidate to be turned off in case of electricity shortage. Another way of looking at this is that a rock grinding machine is a way to convert excess renewable electricity into oil. By converting renewable electricity into sequestered carbon you can allow amount of oil being used for net zero carbon footprint. Yes, it costs more (but not as much as some people think -- excess energy is actually much cheaper and in some cases can have negative value). We kinda now there isn't going to be a solution that will be as cheap as what we have been doing up to this point.