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When it comes to plastics I like to think that it’s basically a product of oil and other oil related products are burnt all the time for energy. The end goal s
by hmottestad 2y ago
When it comes to plastics I like to think that it’s basically a product of oil and other oil related products are burnt all the time for energy.
The end goal should include a carbon capture step. They’ve looked into that here in Oslo, Norway, but it ended up much costlier than anticipated and at the moment it looks like it’s going to be very very drawn out.
Carbon capture at the source is usually not that terrible of an idea. Trying to capture carbon from the air around us is very challenging, but if the air is 80% CO2 to begin with it’s going to be much cheaper to capture half of it then trying to capture the same amount from regular air.
I heard that a good way to capture carbon on a bigger scale would be through burning trees and capturing the carbon. Store the carbon in a concentrated form, use the heat to produce electricity and when you chop down trees to burn you also make space for growing new trees. Sounds kinda slow though, and not exactly cheap either.
- TremendousJudge 2y agoWhat is "carbon capture" exactly? How does the mechanism work? Does it take an energy input?
- hmottestad 2y agoI don’t know. You’ll probably have to do your own research.
- ianburrell 2y agoIf you want power, it is better to make renewables. The problem with carbon capture is that more energy and more fuel to run the capture. It costs too much. If you want to sequester the carbon, just cut down the trees and bury them. The problem is that there isn't enough trees on Earth to power civilization or sequester enough carbon.
- hmottestad 2y agoIt’s much better with renewables yes! In the freeze of the Oslo winter it’s a bit hard to capture enough sunlight to heat all the housing we have here. There’s not much wind either. We have a lot of hydroelectric power, but that’s very dependent on how much it rained in the autumn. We are also starting to build out wind power, but it’s slow going. We do import a lot of electricity from further south in Europe where there is more wind and solar. I would love to have solar on my roof. The legislation is super complicated though since I live in an apartment and we would basically have to create our own communal energy company. We would also have to pay taxes on the electricity we produce and use ourselves. It’s somewhat simpler for people that own a house, but I’m not quite rich enough to own a house in Oslo.
- hmottestad 2y agoThere is also an increasing demand for our renewable electricity in the industry and especially with the data centres that are being built because of our cheap electricity.
- eru 2y agoYou could just not burn the stuff, and capture the carbon directly in unoxidised form.
- hmottestad 2y agoOr we could just stop pumping up oil and gas from the ocean floor and then not make any plastics in the first place.