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I guess the price of the CO2 butter is vastly higher than that of real butter. So this is probably not going to fly. But speaking more generally, the one thing

I guess the price of the CO2 butter is vastly higher than that of real butter. So this is probably not going to fly. But speaking more generally, the one thing I miss from CO2 capturing industry is that they have no kill-app so to say. They are mostly a cost center. Seeing stuff that you can actually do with captured CO2 is surely helpful. I saw the same problem with recycled plastic. We had large plastic recycling plant here. It basically got its raw material free, yet it went bankrupt because companies prefer to buy new plastic which is both cheaper and more convenient. That way things never are going to change.

dnpls 2y ago
"The big challenge is to drive down the price so that products like Savor’s become affordable to the masses – either the same cost as animal fats or less," Gates wrote. "Savor has a good chance of success here, because the key steps of their fat-production process already work in other industries." So it seems they're onto the price problem already. If they can bring the price down fast enough, maybe there's a chance for this product.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- londons_explore 2y ago
  They might have a chance too. There are plenty of ways of making edible fats from crude oil, but it is generally not allowed by governments (hard to make it pure enough to be safe, protectionism by the food industry). However, CO2 derived fats are much harder to argue against. That makes this one of the places where something that makes little thermodynamic sense might actually make financial sense nonetheless.
adrianN 2y ago
The most profitable thing you can do with captured carbon is probably either burning it or turning it into plastic. The problem is that it is orders of magnitude cheaper to pump carbon from the ground instead of capturing it from the air. The second problem is that burning the captured carbon is forbidden if you want to use carbon capture to reverse global warming.
poulpy123 2y ago
I would say the issue is more it's not a real butter, because it could be sold cheap as a byproduct of the process
az09mugen 2y ago
I don't know how it's working, but I imagine a "killer app" could be in space stations by capturing CO2 emitted by astronauts and produce stuff.
- adwn 2y ago
  > in space stations by capturing CO2 emitted by astronauts and produce stuff You mean all ten of them? https://www.howmanypeopleareinspacerightnow.com/ https://www.howmanypeopleareinspacerightnow.com/
  - az09mugen 2y ago
    Thanks for that link ^^ I looked a little bit into the numbers [0] and mostly [1], and it's something around 1 kg of CO2/day/person. According to the guardian [2], with water, electricity, ammonia, nutrients and 2 kgs of CO2, you can make 1 kg of some kind of food replacing the meat. I don't say it's easy to do but maybe it's worth exploring to lower the quantity of food astronauts need to bring with them to space. [0] : https://www.researchgate.net/post/How-much-will-be-the-human-breathing-CO2-emission-factor https://www.researchgate.net/post/How-much-will-be-the-human... [1] : https://8billiontrees.com/carbon-offsets-credits/how-much-co2-do-humans-produce/ https://8billiontrees.com/carbon-offsets-credits/how-much-co... [2] : https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/dec/05/carbon-dioxide-co2-capture-utilisation-products-vodka-jet-fuel-protein https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/dec/05/carbon-d...
setopt 2y ago
This strategy is called CCUS (Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage), as opposed to CCS (without the U). As someone who as previously worked in the field, I think it’s a bad idea. Carbon capture is expensive. Even if you capture at concentrated point sources like power plants or factories, and capture only between 80-95% of the emitted CO2, it’s still quite expensive (e.g. natural gas power can be roughly 25% more expensive when you add carbon capture), and it’s already hard enough to build the capture capacity that we would need to make an impact on global warming. The goal of paying for all that should be to remove those emissions from the world, whereas most utilization processes end up with some or all of that CO2 in the atmosphere in the end. In which case you have wasted energy and money while not saving the environment.
- segfaltnh 2y ago
  Yes but if you generate food from plant emissions that reduces demand for livestock, the net production of CO2 drops, in theory. Your concerns make a ton of sense for some CCUS cases though.
  - setopt 2y ago
    Sure – but I’m willing to bet that we can make butter far more efficiently by cutting out CO2 as a middle man, and e.g. utilizing plant waste more directly in a chemical plant. To be clear: I’m not saying that all research on CO2 utilization is wasted. I’m all for e.g. research into CO2 as a heat pump refrigerant, or feeding CO2 from composting into green houses. But the moment you want to use either industrial CO2 or direct air capture for something else then offsetting global warming, then I think it’s a bad idea.
    - segfaltnh 2y ago
      Interesting, thanks for clarifying. I'm inclined to agree, though I think the world has a place for both types of technology.
ricardobayes 2y ago
It can still work in developing countries where the cost of switching is lower due to the "newer" things not being present yet. Think of fiber lines being laid out first in some areas, so they have a better connectivity than some first-world places. Same with payment systems. China and India are arguably a lot better with payments because they simply skipped the credit card phase. You can literally pay a street vendor in India through a QR code.
- sofixa 2y ago
  > China and India are arguably a lot better with payments because they simply skipped the credit card phase. You can literally pay a street vendor in India through a QR code. I'm not sure I'd say they're "a lot better". Better than the ridiculous US signing a paper bill, yes, but the US is not the standard, they're decades behind it. They use paper cheques ffs! In most of the EU contactless payments that work by card or phone over NFC with well supported/integrated app that work all the same regardless of your bank or exact method of payment sounds much better to me than needing a separate app for the payment provider in question, having to open it to scan a QR code. My current payment flow is I take out my phone, unlock it, tap; or if I don't have my phone / battery is dead, I take out my card, tap it. Having to have a phone, unlock, open a specific app, scan a QR code (muck with light, angle, focus, etc.) and then fill payment details sounds much worse UX.
  - ricardobayes 2y ago
    I wasn't necessarily talking about the US, although I see how you can come to that conclusion. I'm more talking about some other, very developed countries like Germany, in which most vendors don't even accept "normal" debit/credit cards. It's mostly cash only, or a "girocard" which is a German domestic card type. In other countries, I agree that NFC payments made it simpler, although moving money between B2C users is still a bit lacking.
  - olalonde 2y ago
    Still can't do peer to peer pay transfers, still need a bank account, still need to apply for a physical card, still need to pay high transaction fees, still need to fill out credit card information when shopping online, no way to list who is authorized to charge your card and revoke their access, still need a costly terminal to accept payments, etc. Having used both systems, I'd say WeChat and Alipay's payment systems are vastly superior to credit cards in terms of UX.
sofixa 2y ago
> But speaking more generally, the one thing I miss from CO2 capturing industry is that they have no kill-app so to say. They are mostly a cost center If you discount all externalities that is. Same as cleaning being a "cost centre", until you think what happens if nobody is there to clean, trash piles up, etc.
- whiplash451 2y ago
  True, but with cleaning you see the price of not doing it very quickly. With carbon capture, not so much.
  - sofixa 2y ago
    I mean it's not quick, but everyone not brain dead can see weather getting more extreme and more unpredictable. And when you have basically scientific consensus that it's only going to get worse... it's pretty obvious what the ramifications will be. It's hard to estimate the costs, but massive would be an understatement.
rsynnott 2y ago
Renewable energy, and particularly _wind_ energy, pose a weird new economic question; what if energy is sometimes free (or indeed has a small negative cost; it's generally cheaper to overproduce than to halt the turbines, if you can sink the overproduction somewhere), but you can't control when that happens, or even predict with high accuracy when that happens? We can expect to see a lot more things trying to answer that question.
einpoklum 2y ago
> yet it went bankrupt because companies prefer to buy new plastic which is both cheaper and more convenient. That way things never are going to change. Well, about that example: 1. Obligatory first point: This is an example of a systematic problem of capitalism, which by default promotes (corporate) profit seeking over other considerations and interests, making it difficult to achieve them. 2. The state could have, theoretically, taxed the purchase of new plastic products, and/or given tax benefits for switching from new-plastic to recycled-plastic, reversing the "cheaper" incentive. 3. There are uses of recycled plastic where new plastic is just, well, just note used (probably because it provides no benefit). Example: Bricks for the construction industry: https://plaex.ca/about-plaex-building-systems-mortarless-interlocking-construction-blocks-1 https://plaex.ca/about-plaex-building-systems-mortarless-int... caveat: Have not researched that extensively 4. Quality of recycled plastic can be improved significantly by a combination of sorting and contaminant removal; and it seems that even with these actions, it might be cheaper - on the market as it exists now - than virgin plastic production. There's a paper by McKinsey on this matter: https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/chemicals/our-insights/beyond-the-bottle-solutions-for-recycling-challenging-plastics https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/chemicals/our-insights/b...
aaron695 2y ago
[dead]
another2another 2y ago
>yet it went bankrupt because companies prefer to buy new plastic which is both cheaper and more convenient. I would say that should make plastic recyclers a fair target for government subsidies since they're not making a financial profit, but are a net social benefit.
maxerickson 2y ago
Synthetic fuels are a killer app. Especially for transport and home heating (where we have storage and delivery infrastructure nicely worked out). Like you say, price is an issue, but we could opt into it as a society by restricting use of extracted hydrocarbons.

dnpls 2y ago

"The big challenge is to drive down the price so that products like Savor’s become affordable to the masses – either the same cost as animal fats or less," Gates wrote. "Savor has a good chance of success here, because the key steps of their fat-production process already work in other industries." So it seems they're onto the price problem already. If they can bring the price down fast enough, maybe there's a chance for this product.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
londons_explore 2y ago
They might have a chance too. There are plenty of ways of making edible fats from crude oil, but it is generally not allowed by governments (hard to make it pure enough to be safe, protectionism by the food industry). However, CO2 derived fats are much harder to argue against. That makes this one of the places where something that makes little thermodynamic sense might actually make financial sense nonetheless.

adrianN 2y ago

The most profitable thing you can do with captured carbon is probably either burning it or turning it into plastic. The problem is that it is orders of magnitude cheaper to pump carbon from the ground instead of capturing it from the air. The second problem is that burning the captured carbon is forbidden if you want to use carbon capture to reverse global warming.

poulpy123 2y ago

I would say the issue is more it's not a real butter, because it could be sold cheap as a byproduct of the process

az09mugen 2y ago

I don't know how it's working, but I imagine a "killer app" could be in space stations by capturing CO2 emitted by astronauts and produce stuff.

adwn 2y ago
> in space stations by capturing CO2 emitted by astronauts and produce stuff You mean all ten of them? https://www.howmanypeopleareinspacerightnow.com/ https://www.howmanypeopleareinspacerightnow.com/
- az09mugen 2y ago
  Thanks for that link ^^ I looked a little bit into the numbers [0] and mostly [1], and it's something around 1 kg of CO2/day/person. According to the guardian [2], with water, electricity, ammonia, nutrients and 2 kgs of CO2, you can make 1 kg of some kind of food replacing the meat. I don't say it's easy to do but maybe it's worth exploring to lower the quantity of food astronauts need to bring with them to space. [0] : https://www.researchgate.net/post/How-much-will-be-the-human-breathing-CO2-emission-factor https://www.researchgate.net/post/How-much-will-be-the-human... [1] : https://8billiontrees.com/carbon-offsets-credits/how-much-co2-do-humans-produce/ https://8billiontrees.com/carbon-offsets-credits/how-much-co... [2] : https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/dec/05/carbon-dioxide-co2-capture-utilisation-products-vodka-jet-fuel-protein https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/dec/05/carbon-d...

setopt 2y ago

This strategy is called CCUS (Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage), as opposed to CCS (without the U). As someone who as previously worked in the field, I think it’s a bad idea. Carbon capture is expensive. Even if you capture at concentrated point sources like power plants or factories, and capture only between 80-95% of the emitted CO2, it’s still quite expensive (e.g. natural gas power can be roughly 25% more expensive when you add carbon capture), and it’s already hard enough to build the capture capacity that we would need to make an impact on global warming. The goal of paying for all that should be to remove those emissions from the world, whereas most utilization processes end up with some or all of that CO2 in the atmosphere in the end. In which case you have wasted energy and money while not saving the environment.

segfaltnh 2y ago
Yes but if you generate food from plant emissions that reduces demand for livestock, the net production of CO2 drops, in theory. Your concerns make a ton of sense for some CCUS cases though.
- setopt 2y ago
  Sure – but I’m willing to bet that we can make butter far more efficiently by cutting out CO2 as a middle man, and e.g. utilizing plant waste more directly in a chemical plant. To be clear: I’m not saying that all research on CO2 utilization is wasted. I’m all for e.g. research into CO2 as a heat pump refrigerant, or feeding CO2 from composting into green houses. But the moment you want to use either industrial CO2 or direct air capture for something else then offsetting global warming, then I think it’s a bad idea.
  - segfaltnh 2y ago
    Interesting, thanks for clarifying. I'm inclined to agree, though I think the world has a place for both types of technology.

ricardobayes 2y ago

It can still work in developing countries where the cost of switching is lower due to the "newer" things not being present yet. Think of fiber lines being laid out first in some areas, so they have a better connectivity than some first-world places. Same with payment systems. China and India are arguably a lot better with payments because they simply skipped the credit card phase. You can literally pay a street vendor in India through a QR code.

sofixa 2y ago
> China and India are arguably a lot better with payments because they simply skipped the credit card phase. You can literally pay a street vendor in India through a QR code. I'm not sure I'd say they're "a lot better". Better than the ridiculous US signing a paper bill, yes, but the US is not the standard, they're decades behind it. They use paper cheques ffs! In most of the EU contactless payments that work by card or phone over NFC with well supported/integrated app that work all the same regardless of your bank or exact method of payment sounds much better to me than needing a separate app for the payment provider in question, having to open it to scan a QR code. My current payment flow is I take out my phone, unlock it, tap; or if I don't have my phone / battery is dead, I take out my card, tap it. Having to have a phone, unlock, open a specific app, scan a QR code (muck with light, angle, focus, etc.) and then fill payment details sounds much worse UX.
- ricardobayes 2y ago
  I wasn't necessarily talking about the US, although I see how you can come to that conclusion. I'm more talking about some other, very developed countries like Germany, in which most vendors don't even accept "normal" debit/credit cards. It's mostly cash only, or a "girocard" which is a German domestic card type. In other countries, I agree that NFC payments made it simpler, although moving money between B2C users is still a bit lacking.
- olalonde 2y ago
  Still can't do peer to peer pay transfers, still need a bank account, still need to apply for a physical card, still need to pay high transaction fees, still need to fill out credit card information when shopping online, no way to list who is authorized to charge your card and revoke their access, still need a costly terminal to accept payments, etc. Having used both systems, I'd say WeChat and Alipay's payment systems are vastly superior to credit cards in terms of UX.

sofixa 2y ago

> But speaking more generally, the one thing I miss from CO2 capturing industry is that they have no kill-app so to say. They are mostly a cost center If you discount all externalities that is. Same as cleaning being a "cost centre", until you think what happens if nobody is there to clean, trash piles up, etc.

whiplash451 2y ago
True, but with cleaning you see the price of not doing it very quickly. With carbon capture, not so much.
- sofixa 2y ago
  I mean it's not quick, but everyone not brain dead can see weather getting more extreme and more unpredictable. And when you have basically scientific consensus that it's only going to get worse... it's pretty obvious what the ramifications will be. It's hard to estimate the costs, but massive would be an understatement.

rsynnott 2y ago

Renewable energy, and particularly _wind_ energy, pose a weird new economic question; what if energy is sometimes free (or indeed has a small negative cost; it's generally cheaper to overproduce than to halt the turbines, if you can sink the overproduction somewhere), but you can't control when that happens, or even predict with high accuracy when that happens? We can expect to see a lot more things trying to answer that question.

einpoklum 2y ago

> yet it went bankrupt because companies prefer to buy new plastic which is both cheaper and more convenient. That way things never are going to change. Well, about that example: 1. Obligatory first point: This is an example of a systematic problem of capitalism, which by default promotes (corporate) profit seeking over other considerations and interests, making it difficult to achieve them. 2. The state could have, theoretically, taxed the purchase of new plastic products, and/or given tax benefits for switching from new-plastic to recycled-plastic, reversing the "cheaper" incentive. 3. There are uses of recycled plastic where new plastic is just, well, just note used (probably because it provides no benefit). Example: Bricks for the construction industry: https://plaex.ca/about-plaex-building-systems-mortarless-interlocking-construction-blocks-1 https://plaex.ca/about-plaex-building-systems-mortarless-int... caveat: Have not researched that extensively 4. Quality of recycled plastic can be improved significantly by a combination of sorting and contaminant removal; and it seems that even with these actions, it might be cheaper - on the market as it exists now - than virgin plastic production. There's a paper by McKinsey on this matter: https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/chemicals/our-insights/beyond-the-bottle-solutions-for-recycling-challenging-plastics https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/chemicals/our-insights/b...

aaron695 2y ago

[dead]

another2another 2y ago

>yet it went bankrupt because companies prefer to buy new plastic which is both cheaper and more convenient. I would say that should make plastic recyclers a fair target for government subsidies since they're not making a financial profit, but are a net social benefit.

maxerickson 2y ago

Synthetic fuels are a killer app. Especially for transport and home heating (where we have storage and delivery infrastructure nicely worked out). Like you say, price is an issue, but we could opt into it as a society by restricting use of extracted hydrocarbons.