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Terraform makes carbon neutral natural gas
- airstrike 3y agoI'm more used to seeing the other Terraform on HN so I would have perhaps titled this "Terraform Industries..."
- playingalong 3y ago"Terraform stinks" seems to match both.
- leesec 3y agoWhy the hatred buddy? Does anyone on Hackernews like technology anymore?
- LastTrain 3y agoIs not liking some software and making a mild joke about it considered hate now?
- trueismywork 3y agoYes
- k8sToGo 3y agoRust or bust!
- dvfjsdhgfv 3y ago> "Terraform stinks" seems to match both. As compared to what, IaC-wise?
- whirlwin 3y agoCDKTF. Or in other words, shit camouflaged by a pleasant clown outfit
- marcosdumay 3y agoLooks like a bad joke made by somebody confused about the composition of farts.
- Hamuko 3y agoOpenTofu?
- _Microft 3y agoNatural gas doesn’t stink. It’s the additives that are there for exactly the reason to be able to smell it if there is a leak.
- ilc 3y agoApril 1 date on the article. Wordpress site. I ain't saying it ain't true, but I await their next press release.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- pseudosudoer 3y agoHere's their company page. Might explain the use of word press... https://terraformindustries.com/ https://terraformindustries.com/
- ilc 3y agoIt makes something ring hollow then. Why do the whole high and mightly we're using ASCII thing, then to throw me to WordPress. Certainly a bit of HTML with a few inline images fit the overall goal better. That said, I wish them the best, and I hope that they dominate their market. :)
- rbliss 3y agoReally exciting for Terraform to hit this mark. Hopefully true, and not an April 1st joke. Casey Handmer (founder) is a pretty interesting guy. He also helped with the initial analysis of the crackle on the Vesuvius challenge scrolls that contributed to the breakthrough of reading the first passages from the scrolls. See https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2023/08/05/reading-ancient-scrolls/ https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2023/08/05/reading-ancien... Highly recommend checking out more articles on the Terraform Industries blog and Casey's personal blog.
- whirlwin 3y agoI would like to see Terraform succeed with their green goals! When I can run 'terrform plan' on my entire infra without using a billion joules of energy, I'll chip in
- pfdietz 3y agoOne can make natural gas from CO2 captured from air and with hydrogen electrolysed form water. But then one has to ask: why not just use hydrogen directly and skip the inefficiency and cost of direct air capture of CO2 and of making methane? If one is dead set on making a carbon-containing synfuel, why methane and not something more storable, like methanol or higher hydrocarbons? Or, why not use the hydrogen to deoxygenate biomass (including waste biomass like paper) instead of laboriously collecting completely oxidized CO2 from air?
- papercrane 3y agoMy guess is that the answer is taking advantage of existing NG infrastructure.
- carbonguy 3y ago> why not just use hydrogen directly and skip the inefficiency and cost of direct air capture of CO2 and of making methane? Broadly speaking, one key reason is that we've already got the infrastructure in place for using methane (and other hydrocarbons) whereas we do not have this for hydrogen. Another point is that this really isn't an either-or proposition: if people want hydrogen, then the Terraform electrolyzer can in principle provide it.
- ajb 3y agoIn the UK, our gas infrastructure actually used to be used for hydrogen[1], so a lot of it should still work if we were to switch back. [1] Actually "town gas" which was a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide. But I imagine not including the CO would not be a problem.
- _aavaa_ 3y agoNeglecting the CO will absolutely be a problem. The material properties required for handling hydrogen are very different than those for other gasses, especially methane. Increasing the concentration of hydrogen significantly increases the difficulty.
- carbonguy 3y agoAs a "carbon industry" observer, this is pretty exciting news. I've had my eye on Terraform Industries for a while and love what they're doing; they're one of the few groups that actually seem to understand the implications of what it will take to shift to a carbon-neutral economy, and their core insight about the economics of atmospheric fuel synthesis is one of those "obvious when you hear it" ideas: solar electricity is trending ever-cheaper, so rather than trying to maximize efficiency in an expensive piece of kit you can make cheap 'inefficient' equipment and get lower overall costs, which in turn unlocks scale. Their recent post on "Terraformer Environmental Calculus" is a great read, if you are interested in this space: https://terraformindustries.wordpress.com/2024/02/06/terraformer-environmental-calculus/ https://terraformindustries.wordpress.com/2024/02/06/terrafo... Congratulations to the team!
- groby_b 3y agoIt's an excellent way forward because it's not only carbon-neutral, it can also "fall back" to pure CO2 capture should we ever get a decent enough grid & storage mechanisms to afford that. Really exciting work!
- joe_the_user 3y agoIt looks good. I wish their headline was "natural gas from solar power" 'cause many things labeled "carbon neutral" wind-up being conventional petrochemicals plus some worthless "offsets" baloney.
- tgtweak 3y agoIn theory you can use any power source - hydroelectric, geothermal, nuclear, wind - but the benefit to solar is that you can fully utilize it when the sun is shining and store the output (compressed natural gas) for storage, transportation and use off-hours. You could also technically use this as a grid-battery, taking in excess grid energy when it is cheap and converting it into natural gas that can be run back through a gas peaking plant that spins up to meet peak demand. You could also look into SOFC fuel cell plants [1] to convert the stored natural gas into electricity at 60% and heat at 30% (the heat is high temperature which is good for cogeneration or as a direct heat source). There would need to be some very large spreads in margin on those to make up for the fact you're likely double-dipping on inefficiencies when going from electricity in -> natgas production -> storage -> generation -> electricity out. On that same note though - in some free and open energy markets it is not unheard of to buy at <$10/MWh during excess production periods and sell at >$200/MWh at peak on-demand - plenty of margin for arbitrage there - as the tesla megapack facilities have demonstrated in Australia. In comparison a 4MWh megapack facility (2MW in/2MW out) is priced at $1.9M before installation [2] [1]https://assets.bosch.com/media/en/global/stories/sofc/solid-oxide-fuel-cell.pdf https://assets.bosch.com/media/en/global/stories/sofc/solid-... [2]https://twitter.com/SawyerMerritt/status/1643488856946122754/photo/1 https://twitter.com/SawyerMerritt/status/1643488856946122754... (updated for M/Mega - thanks)
- rhelz 3y agoFraking has made natural gas so cheap, I can't see these being used for anything but virtue signaling. They claim a breakthrough in converting hydrogen to natural gas, but natural gas is by far the cheapest source of H2. And, given that methane is 80 times more potent of a greenhouse gas than CO2 is, is it really a good idea to be manufacturing it? Inevitably there would be leakage, and it wouldn't take much to leak enough gas to more than compensate for any C02 sucked out of the air.
- alexb_ 3y ago> They claim a breakthrough in converting hydrogen to natural gas, but natural gas is by far the cheapest source of H2. Are you serious? Water is right there!
- jfengel 3y agoWater is right there, but the hydrogen is really closely bound to the oxygen, and extremely hard to get out. It's considerably easier to get H2 out of methane. Unfortunately, that process also yields CO2, so it's not helping the greenhouse gas situation. Hydrogen proponents suggest a route where we start with "blue hydrogen" from natural gas. Then, when we've got a good H2 infrastructure going and a lot of excess electricity from solar, we can switch over to "green hydrogen" from water. Skeptics point out that this is incredibly stupid, and that "hydrogen proponents" tend to be closely in bed with the fossil fuel industry. It looks an awful lot like an excuse to delay the elimination of fossil-fuel replacements like wind and solar.
- pfdietz 3y agoThere is this really dumb internet meme, that hydrogen is just there as a plot by the fossil fuel industry to keep selling fossil fuels. What this ignores is that hydrogen must still be made even in a post-fossil fuel economy. It's not optional. Production of ammonia requires hydrogen, and without ammonia-derived nitrogen fertilizer billions of people will starve. About half the nitrogen atoms in your body came from synthetic ammonia. The meme is really weird. In all other applications, we assume that fossil fuels will be displaced, by law and force if necessary. But somehow SMR will always be used to make hydrogen; the technology will somehow be immune to the forces that will be deployed against all other fossil fuel uses. It's really crazy when examined closely.
- samatman 3y agoLast time I looked into this, Terraform's 1MW reactor can fill a normal LNG truck in 145 days of operation. Or if you prefer, 145 such reactors would be needed to fill one (1) LNG truck per day. The work they're doing will help prove out DAC, moving it further down the tech adoption curve, which is good. The task of making methane from the air should be performed with multi-GW nuclear reactors, which produce full power 90% of the time they exist, and which can use heat instead of electrolysis to free hydrogen, which is more energetically efficient. The use of an extensive and intermittent power source which only produces electricity is a severe limitation here.
- rbliss 3y agoWould love to see nuclear do this, but the challenges to getting nuclear built are myriad. Regulatory burdens, cost to build reactors, painfully slow learning rate for nuclear reactor design and buildout. Solar, while certainly not ideal, is comparatively trivial to build out. Functionally you buy and lay out cheap panels. Far smaller political challenges. Some friction around land use and interconnect, but compared to nuclear, orders of magnitude easier and the way forward seems clear with the existing political realities and economies of scale in action for solar panels.
- tyler569 3y agoThe best part about using nuclear for fuel generation is that you get to sidestep the biggest problem with nuclear - when you build a power plant you want to build it near people (who may object on safety grounds), but you can build a DAC fuel generator way out in the middle of nowhere. Even better, you could build your nuclear DAC fuel generator in an old natural gas field, where there's ready-made transportation infrastructure for your product to where it's needed!
- Kon5ole 3y ago>The best part about using nuclear for fuel generation The main point of this operation is to utilize free surplus energy from solar and wind to store fuel for days where solar and wind can't produce enough. Free-as-in-beer surplus, since the energy would otherwise be wasted or sold at negative prices, like what we have been seeing lately in certain markets. Nuclear can always produce electricity, so converting to fuel has no benefits it's just a loss compared to using the electricity directly. Also, nuclear electricity is never free but always very expensive because you need a large amount of very highly educated people and expensive infrastructure to deal with it. >you can build a DAC fuel generator way out in the middle of nowhere. If things go very badly with a nuclear reactor, there's no such thing as a "middle of nowhere" that's far enough away. The fallout from Chernobyl made certain foods as far away as the arctic circle unsuitable for human consumption.
- leesec 3y agoNatural gas is just the beginning, they'll be able to make any hydrocarbon in time
- _Microft 3y agoCasey is also very bullish on Musk and his Mars plans. I wouldn‘t be surprised if half of the plan is to have the tech ready to build the methane generation infrastructure for Musk‘s Mars colony.
- leesec 3y agoIn fact he started this company after looking into how they're going to make gas when they get to Mars
- kartoffelmos 3y agoHow will this address methane leakage, which is a substantial source of athmospheric greenhouse gas emissions? Converting Co2 to methane is not carbon neutral if/when leaked...
- tombert 3y agoYou beat me to it, because I was going to say the same thing; wouldn't it only be carbon neutral if you had some means of guaranteeing that there's no leaks? It seems like converting CO2 to methane could actually make things worse...
- bamboozled 3y agoIf we're converting CO₂ that already exists in the atmosphere, how could it make things worse? Isn't problem making new CO₂ from burning fossil fuels, not converting existing Co2 into other things?
- jtsiskin 3y agoYes if you're considering the terms 'carbon neutral' at face value; but in terms of global warming, methane traps a lot more heat per carbon atom
- arcanemachiner 3y agoMethane is a 30x stronger greenhouse gas than CO2. So if 4% of the converted methane leaked into the atmosphere, you would be worse off (from a climate heating perspective) than if you had done nothing. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/plant-science/articles/10.3389/fpls.2018.00273/full https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/plant-science/articles/...
- bamboozled 3y agoOk thanks. Well we're super fucked then because I've read that all the freaking / coal seam gas infra leaks million of tons of methane every year.
- maerF0x0 3y agoWhat are some applications where its worth taking the highest grade energy (electricity) and turning it into a lower grade (eg liquid fuels), rather than electrifying the application? Electricity to motion is significantly more efficient per input energy than burning fuel->heat-> gaseous expansion->drive a piston->convert to rotation chain. What am I missing about this?
- Loggias 3y ago[dead]
- rini17 3y agoSeasonal storage. Large amounts of gas can be stored underground.
- DenseComet 3y agoEnergy density is much higher, which is important for applications such as aviation.
- dr_kretyn 3y agoLack of sockets is likely the main one. Then, lack of the long long cable to the nearest socket.
- megaman821 3y agoSeasonal storage of energy is likely only practical in fuel form. Also, there is no easy pathway to electricity to high temperature heat.
- maerF0x0 3y agoI'm guessing you mean high temperature + high energy (ie lots of watts). Cause lasers can do high temp rn, right?
- trueismywork 3y agoYes
- car 3y agoHow does this compare to using microbes to produce hydrocarbons from CO2 and other waste gases? (NB, not from atmospheric CO2) Here a recent article on the topic, specifically for making jet fuel, for an industry that would be impossible to electrify. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41587-024-02136-z https://www.nature.com/articles/s41587-024-02136-z
- avmich 3y agoIt's interesting that aviation is said to be industry impossible to electrify, and at the same time we have electric airplanes for some time and keep developing the technology.
- outworlder 3y agoWhich electric airplanes are you talking about, other than electric demonstrators?
- avmich 3y agoAn example of commercially used electric airplane today could be one of this - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqF55MjU9jc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqF55MjU9jc , Green Flight Academy in Sweden, used to train pilots.
- avmich 3y agoSome more arguments for electric airplanes are here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aH4b3sAs-l8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aH4b3sAs-l8 .
- rgmerk 3y agoThere's never been any doubt that you can make a small, short-range battery electric airplane. We will probably be able to make short-range battery electric and fuel cell airliners. There is no prospect whatsoever of making an intercontinental battery electric airliner; there is no plausible battery chemistry with enough energy density to give you sufficient range. There are slightly better prospects of hydrogen-powered intercontinental airliners, but even that is very challenging given how bulky the hydrogen propellant required will be. The only realistic medium-term prospect appears to be sustainable aviation fuel, though I wonder if future generations might one day have a crack at nuclear aviation.
- Kon5ole 3y ago"TL;DR: The future of energy is solar+batteries+synthetics." Basically infinite energy with clean water as a byproduct, and all signs point to it being financially viable compared even to fossil fuels. It's like a dream. I can't wait to see a bunch of companies being successful in this area.
- skeledrew 3y agoI see this, and I like how it sounds on the surface. But I can't help but raise an eyebrow when I see "carbon neutral". Got me wondering how they'll be delivering the gas, if they won't be using trucks or building other infra that uses fossil fuel-consuming equipment. If they actually have resolved this end-to-end, super great! But otherwise, I feel like they're still ignoring crucial externalities.
- r3trohack3r 3y ago> Got me wondering how they'll be delivering the gas, if they won't be using trucks or building other infra that uses fossil fuel-consuming equipment. Sounds like you’ve answered your own question. Time for you to get to work on an end-to-end natural gas powered supply chain that can run on the natural gas they’re pulling out of thin air. Lots of fun problems for you to solve. A lifetime of fulfilling work ahead.
- skeledrew 3y agoHah, interesting problems but already have my hands+brain full working on problems in my main area of interest.
- SamBam 3y agoCouldn't these systems be built much closer to municipalities' distribution centers (compared to existing NG wells), and so require even less transportation than what currently exists?
- triceratops 3y agoYou can run the trucks on liquified natural gas. Or run a natural gas power plant next to the Terraform module that can charge an electric truck's battery.
- orthecreedence 3y agoOne thing comes to mind: don't transport it. It's sitting right next to a solar power plant...one that shuts down at night. Why not store the gas locally and use it as a battery when the sun isn't shining?
- willio58 3y agoWhile this is impressive to some degree I just today watched Climate Town’s “Natural Gas is Scamming America” (https://youtu.be/K2oL4SFwkkw https://youtu.be/K2oL4SFwkkw) and the entire natural gas industry is tainted beyond belief for me now. It’s not like they were a positive thing in my view before, but on the whole natural gas seems to be just as if not more detrimental than coal for climate change mainly due to how much is leaked out but also how much energy it takes to ship natural gas to other countries. The idea of creating carbon neutral natural gas seems great, but can we maybe avoid holding energy in one of the most climate-change inducing gases out there?
- _cenw 3y agoGreen hydrogen and other "e-fuels" are an attempt to keep the gas industries infrastructure alive and relevant. If you see someone break down the math it makes zero sense, it just sounds nice.
- dzhiurgis 3y agoKeeping existing infrastructure is the whole beauty of it. Ships, pipelines, factories, supply chains that you can keep using if/until other technology replaces it.
- _cenw 3y agoIt would be - if the math added up. But it mostly ends up being lobby work to lengthen the lifespan of industry investments.
- Latty 3y agoIndeed, and they claim it is "easily transportable": it seems to be the two are mutually exclusive, if you are going to shove it into the existing systems that leak methane habitually, it's horrific for climate change.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
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- goodguy29495 3y agoThere's a song about this already: https://music.apple.com/us/album/powered-by-renewables-ep/1738699363 https://music.apple.com/us/album/powered-by-renewables-ep/17... "time to terraform" by Big Bear and the Sierra Serenaders
- denysvitali 3y agoLet's hope they don't switch to the BSL license too
- FuriouslyAdrift 3y agoWow... what can't Terraform do?!? https://www.terraform.io/ https://www.terraform.io/
- mattjaynes 3y agoFor more, I'd recommend Jason Carman's recently released videos on Terraform: Overview and tour (~20min): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NngCHTImH1g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NngCHTImH1g Deeper Interview (~40min): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekEdq6PhC0Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekEdq6PhC0Q
- consumer451 3y agoThank you so much for these recommendations! This is excellent and I highly recommend everybody watches both, starting with shorter one. Casey, the CEO is super interesting and inspiring.
- julienchastang 3y agoTheir minimalist website is awesome: https://terraformindustries.com/ https://terraformindustries.com/ complete with plain text chemical equations. "Why does our website look like this? At TI we believe we can change the world by displacing fossil hydrocarbon production at global scale. Like our website, our machines are simple so we can build millions of them as quickly as possible. Our website embodies our cultural commitment to allocating resources where they solve the most important problems."
- cqqxo4zV46cp 3y ago“Like our machines, our website looks awful on a phone.” Someone could’ve spent literally 5 minutes making this look reasonable on the world’s most popular web browsing device form facto, whilst still retaining the site’s retro virtue signalling aesthetic, AND it wouldn’t have taken away from their ‘core mission’ or whatever. If you don’t care, don’t have a website at all.
- dullcrisp 3y agoWho left you in charge?
- mulmen 3y agoSometimes the children really are wrong.
- ihumanable 3y agoOn my phone the website looks essentially identical to how it looks on my desktop browser. Does it look different on yours. It's just a plaintext website with white text on a black background and it's fast to load and easy to read for me. What's wrong with it?
- mplewis 3y agoThe text is too small to read on a phone without scrolling sideways.
- 3y ago
- zhivota 3y agoThe pictures look oddly fake to me.
- pstrateman 3y agoDid I miss it or does this not actually say what the cost of methane priced by them is? I see H2, DC power, and CO2 DAC, costs but no total.
- bryanlarsen 3y agoTheir whitepaper uses $10/kcf.
- pstrateman 3y agoI assume the whitepaper missed details of production that they have since had to account for. I'm quite curious what their cost is today.
- lucisferre 3y agoI have not done the math here in a long time, but as I understand it: You could produce about 8KG of CH4 with 2KG of H2 and 6KG of C or 22KG of CO2. At $250/MT would work out to about $5.50 and the 2kg of H2 would be $5 assuming $2.50/kg so lets say $10 for simplicity. 1kg of CH4 at STP is 1,396L (according to GPT since I'm lazy right now) which is about 50cf. That's not even close to $10kcf (assuming that this means killo-cubic-feet which as a Canadian makes me cringe).
- bryanlarsen 3y agoInteresting, let me try: A tonne of CO2 is 12/44 C, or 273kg. So let's call it $1/kg because 250 ~= 273. A kg of CH4 is 12/16 C and 4/16 H, so a kg is $0.75 for C + $2.50/4 for H = ~$1.40/kg. https://www.epa.gov/cmop/updated-coal-mine-methane-units-converter https://www.epa.gov/cmop/updated-coal-mine-methane-units-con... says 1000 cubic feet of methane is 19.26 kg. Call it 20 because we're doing it in our head. $1.40 * 20 = $28 / kcf.
- lucisferre 3y agoArrrg, this is what I get for answering this while distracted, I did not multiply by 8. So it was 400cf or 0.4kcf for $10, so yeah you are right. That's actually not terribly far off their white paper actually. It's not as good as current market prices $12/kcf but it is not so far off, particularly if you consider potential subsidies for capturing carbon. Thanks for that.
- joking 3y agoIs there any place where they say how many kWh of electricity they need to get one kWh equivalent of gas?
- salynchnew 3y agoIt's pretty amazing to have an actually carbon-neutral way to create natural gas.
- elzbardico 3y agoWell, that's really stretching the concept of Infrastructure as Code /grin
- garfieldnate 3y ago1) Does this require that the atmosphere forever stay at the current CO2 concentration, or will it continue to work well if we manage to clean the atmosphere properly? 2) Does this also pave the way for more permanent CO2 cleanup of the atmosphere? 3) Since they have really economical extraction of H2, could they just ramp down the CO2 extraction and instead buy in CO2 emitted from industrial processes? I'm not sure if this is an interesting suggestion or not, since the CO2 goes into the atmosphere either way, but at least we would be getting two usages out of it.
- fb03 3y agoI was extremely confused on why an IaC solution/package company would have a leg on the natural gas business lol
- darby_eight 3y agoAre there any third parties that have comments on this process? A press release isn't too much to go off of.
- cdelsolar 3y agoWow, can Cloudformation claim that?
- logtempo 3y agoit's time to stop calling methane "natural gas".
- trueismywork 3y agoYou're right. That's hydrogen sulfide
- logtempo 3y agohttps://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10311-021-01322-8 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10311-021-01322-8
- XorNot 3y agoThey're putting a lot of effort into carefully not including easily comparable numbers on their website. There's numbers, they might be impressive for the technology, but where do they sit relative to commercial production? It can be more but by how much? To me, the consumer, "renewable hydrocarbons" is worth a pretty substantial premium, but they're not enthusiastic to tell me what that is or where they think it's headed.
- thinkerswell 3y ago[dead]
- TechnoTopian 3y agoIf the CO2 concentrator could be minimized, it would make an excellent addition to HVAC systems - would minimize the need for outside fresh air if you could just capture the CO2 exhaust from human occupants and expel that. Could even have houses and offices with sub-atmospheric CO2 concentrations!
- jefftk 3y agoWill the oil industry will copy the meat industry and say this is misleading consumers because it's actually artificial gas?
- whimsicalism 3y agothe hydrogen stuff being enabled by the IRA is extremely exciting. i'm familiar with a number of startups that are able to use methane with e. coli to produce plastics & synthetic fibers where it has only become cost competitive since the IRA
- guender 3y ago[dead]
- jack_riminton 3y agoSo how many can we put on Mars and how long would they take to do significant Mars warming?
- laweijfmvo 3y agoIf it's carbon neutral, it won't warm Mars at all...
- jack_riminton 3y agoWell if methane is more of a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, which it is, then it will
- standeven 3y ago“… our electrolyzer capex costs <$100/kW” Forget the DAC and natural gas, how are they generating green H2 for so cheap?
- ein0p 3y agoThere's got to be a catch to all this. If there was no catch, this would be the hottest startup in the world by far.
- sebstefan 3y agoI'm going to post my favorite graph, it's called the "MAC graph". It shows, in itemized investments, how much it will cost to reach net-zero emissions for the U.S. Instead of time, the X axis is how much you are willing to invest, in $/Ton of CO2 The types of investments are sorted by their respective cost ; the later they appear on the X axis, the lower their name is on the Y axis You can observe by yourself here that direct carbon capture is all the way to the bottom of the list https://www.edf.org/sites/default/files/2021-07/MACgraph_simple.png https://www.edf.org/sites/default/files/2021-07/MACgraph_sim... Each dollar invested in Terraform would net you 100x the results if you invested it in wind, solar, nuclear, electric vehicles or heat pumps Here's Hank Green talking about this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dRgCsZ1q7g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dRgCsZ1q7g
- eutropia 3y agoTwo things: 1) Terraform is making Zero carbon fuels, not sequestering into the ground (the purple on the graph, not the orange) 2) I don't think it's accurate to say "each dollar invested" gets the same 100x results. The graph seems to show that wind, solar, nuclear, and electric all taper off in how much CO2 they offset. It looks once you are spending $100/T, you literally can't make any more of an impact with solar or wind. Once you get to spending $250/T (what it currently costs for Terraform to do it, for real), Zero carbon fuels looks like it has the same 1 GTon impact as onshore solar and wind combined. Finally, "electricity and heat production" (i.e, what solar and wind can help with) accounts for just 25% of GHG emissions. Transportation and industry (excluding electricity used by industry) together account for more than 35% of emissions. Many industrial processes can't simply "use electricity". The only way to get emissions down is to provide a like-for-like substitute - no one can afford to completely redesign their factory or chemical plant, but they could probably afford to pay more for NG as prices for syngas fall to closer to FF NG. There is no silver bullet. We need every single innovation available.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- concordDance 3y agoI really appreciate them putting actial numbers in here! So many places are deliberately vague on numbers. A $100,000 base cost for the entire system is unbelievably cheap! To put that in context, you could offset the entire worlds CO2 emissions for just $35 trillion worth of these! That might sound like a lot, but it's technically achievable, being half the USA federal budget for 10 years. The energy requirements also aren't impossible, about 350TW of power, easily less than a 100km x 100km square of solar panels. (Admittedly, this is several times more expensive than the Terraform installations, but we need power anyway and will be getting more efficient at solar panel manufacture) Interestingly, this also puts an upper bound on a reasonable CO2 tax of $1000/ton or around £1.8 per litre of petrol, so lovers of fossil fuels and flying can still drive on the track or go for a flight on weekends.
- Borg3 3y agoHmm, this is interesting, but I have few doubts about it. First, Metane is worst gas to come by. Its super greenhouse gas. Second, everyone screems about carbon neutral, but do those people understand carbon cycle on this planet? Its essential for plants. Less CO2 in atmosphere, plants growth is slower. If you start to compete with plants for it, it might have unforseen consequences. I hope someone will put some research on it. This is usual human aproach. Lets fix one thing, worry about consequences later.
- popol12 3y agoWe've spend the last 2 centuries burning fossil fuels from the ground, significantly increasing the atmospheric CO2 levels. Capturing some of it back won't make a difference for plants. Also, when you burn methane, you release CO2 again. So it's not like there's a finite amount of CO2 to pump from the atmosphere, it will renew itself.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- d_burfoot 3y agoI recommended to my friends to buy cheap land in places like Nevada and Arizona, because it will possibly skyrocket in value due to Terraform: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJKh-2Q5DRA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJKh-2Q5DRA
- etiennebausson 3y ago> Our core innovation is the utilization of proven and well-understood industrial processes implemented within innovatively simple and cost-effective proprietary technology systems... So they invented nothing, and put a nice package around existing tech? I can see the use-case when combined with intermittent energy generator (e.g. : solar), but I am not really convinced by the rate of return, when compared to similar tech that do not emit greenhouse gases in case of failure (liquid salt, heated sand, ...)