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Carbon capture is our money being used to pay oil industry. It is for enhanced oil recovery. It is straight up theft with environmental marketing! Twenty-seven

Carbon capture is our money being used to pay oil industry. It is for enhanced oil recovery. It is straight up theft with environmental marketing! Twenty-seven DAC plants have been commissioned to date worldwide, capturing almost 0.01 Mt CO2/year. Thats the equivalent of 2000 EVs. --- We pay in 8+ different ways for fossil fuels: (1) Subsidies of trillions of dollars per year (2) Ethanol and biodiesel subsidies (3) Pay at the pump (or electricity) (4) Pay for carbon capture to help oil companies extract more oil (5) Pay for the consequences of climate change (a) increase of home insurance (b) bailouts of insurance and utility providers (c) dealing with the direct costs of climate change (6) Health costs! Pollution is directly linked to every disease (except STIs?). Air Pollution Kills 10 Million People a Year. Think of all the cancers, cardiovascular, metabolic, every biological systems. (7) We pay a cost of other pollutants. Lead (thank you oil industry!), mercury (thank you coal industry!). Fish was a source of food, the best kind of renewable food, where you do absolutely nothing other than catch it! This source is now gone, there is so much mercury in fish, that all recommendations of fish are to limit the number of servings! (8) Every person on the planet is paying a fossil fuel tax (the 5 above), to the super super rich. It is a transfer of wealth from everyone to about ~100 people. This money is used to buy all assets (real estate), stocks and everything else, enabling the super wealthy to extract every more wealth from every sector of the economy. --- Lets talk about the smallest tax (subsidy!) we pay one of the 6 listed about, ethanol subsidies. 40 million acres are used to grow corn for ethanol subsidies (out of 93m total). If we use these 40m acres for solar, Annual Energy Production (in watt-hours): 52,272 terawatt-hours (TWh) To put that in context: The total electricity consumption of the U.S. is about 4,000 TWh/year. The energy generated from 40 million acres of solar panels could theoretically meet U.S. electricity demand more than 13 times over. But, we'll need a lot less energy when we use solar/wind. We only need a third of the energy we use today, > 65% of the energy is wasted. So, solar panels on the same land used for ethanol production (and subsidized -- which is a lose-lose-lose idea) can produce 39x times US electricity demand (assuming ChatGPT calculation is correct).

slothtrop 2y ago
You can talk about the inefficiency of CC, but this is nonsensical. It's a woefully inefficient means to retrieve carbon in terms of cost. It only makes sense as a means, under development, to reduce prevent buildup in the atmosphere. If it does not do that very well, then as you can imagine, the yields are not great either! If it does do that well, then it's a moot point whether these companies profit; what matters is improving climate. Can't have it both ways.
thelastgallon 2y ago
Adding some references Shell Is Looking Forward. The fossil-fuel companies expect to profit from climate change. I went to a private planning meeting and took notes: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/shell-climate-change.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/shell-climate-change... Out of the 27 commercially operational CCS projects worldwide, 21 inject carbon dioxide into oil reservoirs to force out petroleum: https://www.landclimate.org/what-is-happening-with-carbon-capture-and-storage/ https://www.landclimate.org/what-is-happening-with-carbon-ca... Global Fossil Fuel Subsidies Reached $7 Trillion in 2022, an All-Time High: https://e360.yale.edu/digest/fossil-fuel-subsidies-2022 https://e360.yale.edu/digest/fossil-fuel-subsidies-2022 67% to 75% of energy is wasted. See Rejected energy:https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/sites/flowcharts/files/2023-10/US%20Energy%202022.png https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/sites/flowcharts/files/2023-10/U... Exxon bets carbon will be the new oil: https://www.semafor.com/article/07/21/2023/exxon-carbon-denbury https://www.semafor.com/article/07/21/2023/exxon-carbon-denb... 27 DAC plants have been commissioned to date worldwide, capturing almost 0.01 Mt CO2/year: https://www.iea.org/energy-system/carbon-capture-utilisation-and-storage/direct-air-capture https://www.iea.org/energy-system/carbon-capture-utilisation... A ton of {coal,petroleum,natural gas} emits {2.6,2.75,3.2} tons of CO2. 8.5 billion tons of coal burnt every year. 4000 billion cubic meters of Natural gas/year (~3000 billion tons - gemini), Global oil production is 4.5 billion metric tons/year. We'll need tens of millions of DAC plants! Electrification is efficiency: The world will need less energy after the transition: https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/electrification-energy-efficiency https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/electrification-en...
Thorrez 2y ago
>But, we'll need a lot less energy when we use solar/wind. We only need a third of the energy we use today, > 65% of the energy is wasted. What are we wasting it on? Why will we suddenly stop wasting it when we switch to solar/wind? I would think switching completely to solar/wind would massively increase the amount of wasted energy, because solar and wind energy production is quite variable, so to meet people's needs at low production times, we need to overprovision our production.
- ZeroGravitas 2y ago
  It's wasted as heat when converting to electricity, or as heat when running an engine, or wasted in low temp heating when a heat pump could be 4x as efficient. Most predictions are that developed nations will double the amount of electricity they produce to electrify transport and heating but this will still reduce total energy due to the reduction in waste heat.
  - Thorrez 2y ago
    Interesting, thanks.
bee_rider 2y ago
(9) A whole lot of geopolitical nonsense is caused by oil related entanglements. I won’t list them all because it would become a partisan bickering match, but surely whatever anybody’s political alignment, they can find a socialist, or theocratic, or authoritarian country that’s propped up by oil funding. Or a war partially motivated by oil. What’s the cost of bad international relations? How much of our defense budget should we bill to oil companies?
thelastgallon 2y ago
I forgot to add one of the biggest costs. The cost of protecting oil flow. Defense budget is to protect oil assets worldwide, any disruption/blockage to oil flow will mean economy will tank, immediately. Oil companies should be shouldering this cost.
vasco 2y ago
> Lets talk about the smallest tax (subsidy!) we pay one of the 6 listed about, ethanol subsidies. 40 million acres are used to grow corn for ethanol subsidies (out of 93m total). Isn't that for food security in case of war?
- throwaway173738 2y ago
  You can’t feed an entire nation nothing but corn.
  - vasco 2y ago
    The practicality is besides the point, I just thought it a bit disingenuous to not mention why the US subsidizes corn so much. To your point it's not the only thing like that. There's huge national reserves of lots of stuff, the amount of cheese for example is huge.
    - throwaway173738 2y ago
      Government cheese is a real thing and it is not very good.
marcosdumay 2y ago
We are deep in the hole whether you want to "pay for the fossil industry" or not. If we don't push ourselves outside of the hole, we will stay there, forever. And anyway, the best way to destroy the fossil fuel industry is to make synthetic fuels so cheap that nobody will want to use the bloody variety. We can easily do that with a carbon tax, but if people keep insisting on stopping carbon capture research, we won't.
AlexandrB 2y ago
> To put that in context: The total electricity consumption of the U.S. is about 4,000 TWh/year. The energy generated from 40 million acres of solar panels could theoretically meet U.S. electricity demand more than 13 times over. How many batteries are required to make that generated electricity available at night?
- ironhaven 2y ago
  Depending on the the wind/nuclear mix in the grid possibly as low as zero. But batteries are a very important innovation for power grids regardless of renewable energy goals. 50% of the job of an energy grid is just keeping the ac power supply stable when generation does exactly match consumption. Lithium batteries help smooth out spikes in demand over milliseconds and hours to save millions of dollars Lithium grid scale storage is awesome no matter what happens with renewables.
- NohatCoder 2y ago
  Napkin maths would suggest something like 20% of a normal EV battery per household, so indeed a big investment, but perfectly reasonable. The harder part is that solar power production is much lower in the winter (depending on latitude), and seasonal battery storage is still a bit out of reach.
- thelastgallon 2y ago
  Zero. There are batteries that come in car shape and with wheels. People pay for them and there will be tens of millions, eventually 250m. They are mostly stationery (23+ hours/day) and are used 20 mins - 1 hour/day. They form a gigantic distributed storage reservoir, can absorb excess power (and get paid for it! energy prices go negative!) and supply power back to the grid when needed (and get paid again!).
lithocarpus 2y ago
Thanks for laying this out. I had no idea about this until last year, when there was an eminent domain vs nimby struggle I heard about concerning putting co2 pipelines through farms for this purpose. I always thought carbon capture by machines was an impractical, but learning that what it actually is in practice is a way for govt subsidies to pay ethanol and oil companies and enable them to extract more oil. I wouldn't be surprised if a significant majority of govt money spent on environmental efforts has been captured by industries and is being used to accelerate environmental harm. I only know that this is the case in the areas I'm familiar with. It's sad.
aqueueaqueue 2y ago
Why are the super wealthy happy to kill their grandkids children. I wonder about the mental gymnastics. Very few super wealthy seem to be doing much useful.
- Tostino 2y ago
  Line goes up, right?

slothtrop 2y ago

You can talk about the inefficiency of CC, but this is nonsensical. It's a woefully inefficient means to retrieve carbon in terms of cost. It only makes sense as a means, under development, to reduce prevent buildup in the atmosphere. If it does not do that very well, then as you can imagine, the yields are not great either! If it does do that well, then it's a moot point whether these companies profit; what matters is improving climate. Can't have it both ways.

thelastgallon 2y ago

Adding some references Shell Is Looking Forward. The fossil-fuel companies expect to profit from climate change. I went to a private planning meeting and took notes: https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/shell-climate-change.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/shell-climate-change... Out of the 27 commercially operational CCS projects worldwide, 21 inject carbon dioxide into oil reservoirs to force out petroleum: https://www.landclimate.org/what-is-happening-with-carbon-capture-and-storage/ https://www.landclimate.org/what-is-happening-with-carbon-ca... Global Fossil Fuel Subsidies Reached $7 Trillion in 2022, an All-Time High: https://e360.yale.edu/digest/fossil-fuel-subsidies-2022 https://e360.yale.edu/digest/fossil-fuel-subsidies-2022 67% to 75% of energy is wasted. See Rejected energy:https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/sites/flowcharts/files/2023-10/US%20Energy%202022.png https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/sites/flowcharts/files/2023-10/U... Exxon bets carbon will be the new oil: https://www.semafor.com/article/07/21/2023/exxon-carbon-denbury https://www.semafor.com/article/07/21/2023/exxon-carbon-denb... 27 DAC plants have been commissioned to date worldwide, capturing almost 0.01 Mt CO2/year: https://www.iea.org/energy-system/carbon-capture-utilisation-and-storage/direct-air-capture https://www.iea.org/energy-system/carbon-capture-utilisation... A ton of {coal,petroleum,natural gas} emits {2.6,2.75,3.2} tons of CO2. 8.5 billion tons of coal burnt every year. 4000 billion cubic meters of Natural gas/year (~3000 billion tons - gemini), Global oil production is 4.5 billion metric tons/year. We'll need tens of millions of DAC plants! Electrification is efficiency: The world will need less energy after the transition: https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/electrification-energy-efficiency https://www.sustainabilitybynumbers.com/p/electrification-en...

Thorrez 2y ago

>But, we'll need a lot less energy when we use solar/wind. We only need a third of the energy we use today, > 65% of the energy is wasted. What are we wasting it on? Why will we suddenly stop wasting it when we switch to solar/wind? I would think switching completely to solar/wind would massively increase the amount of wasted energy, because solar and wind energy production is quite variable, so to meet people's needs at low production times, we need to overprovision our production.

ZeroGravitas 2y ago
It's wasted as heat when converting to electricity, or as heat when running an engine, or wasted in low temp heating when a heat pump could be 4x as efficient. Most predictions are that developed nations will double the amount of electricity they produce to electrify transport and heating but this will still reduce total energy due to the reduction in waste heat.
- Thorrez 2y ago
  Interesting, thanks.

bee_rider 2y ago

(9) A whole lot of geopolitical nonsense is caused by oil related entanglements. I won’t list them all because it would become a partisan bickering match, but surely whatever anybody’s political alignment, they can find a socialist, or theocratic, or authoritarian country that’s propped up by oil funding. Or a war partially motivated by oil. What’s the cost of bad international relations? How much of our defense budget should we bill to oil companies?

thelastgallon 2y ago

I forgot to add one of the biggest costs. The cost of protecting oil flow. Defense budget is to protect oil assets worldwide, any disruption/blockage to oil flow will mean economy will tank, immediately. Oil companies should be shouldering this cost.

vasco 2y ago

> Lets talk about the smallest tax (subsidy!) we pay one of the 6 listed about, ethanol subsidies. 40 million acres are used to grow corn for ethanol subsidies (out of 93m total). Isn't that for food security in case of war?

throwaway173738 2y ago
You can’t feed an entire nation nothing but corn.
- vasco 2y ago
  The practicality is besides the point, I just thought it a bit disingenuous to not mention why the US subsidizes corn so much. To your point it's not the only thing like that. There's huge national reserves of lots of stuff, the amount of cheese for example is huge.
  - throwaway173738 2y ago
    Government cheese is a real thing and it is not very good.

marcosdumay 2y ago

We are deep in the hole whether you want to "pay for the fossil industry" or not. If we don't push ourselves outside of the hole, we will stay there, forever. And anyway, the best way to destroy the fossil fuel industry is to make synthetic fuels so cheap that nobody will want to use the bloody variety. We can easily do that with a carbon tax, but if people keep insisting on stopping carbon capture research, we won't.

AlexandrB 2y ago

> To put that in context: The total electricity consumption of the U.S. is about 4,000 TWh/year. The energy generated from 40 million acres of solar panels could theoretically meet U.S. electricity demand more than 13 times over. How many batteries are required to make that generated electricity available at night?

ironhaven 2y ago
Depending on the the wind/nuclear mix in the grid possibly as low as zero. But batteries are a very important innovation for power grids regardless of renewable energy goals. 50% of the job of an energy grid is just keeping the ac power supply stable when generation does exactly match consumption. Lithium batteries help smooth out spikes in demand over milliseconds and hours to save millions of dollars Lithium grid scale storage is awesome no matter what happens with renewables.
NohatCoder 2y ago
Napkin maths would suggest something like 20% of a normal EV battery per household, so indeed a big investment, but perfectly reasonable. The harder part is that solar power production is much lower in the winter (depending on latitude), and seasonal battery storage is still a bit out of reach.
thelastgallon 2y ago
Zero. There are batteries that come in car shape and with wheels. People pay for them and there will be tens of millions, eventually 250m. They are mostly stationery (23+ hours/day) and are used 20 mins - 1 hour/day. They form a gigantic distributed storage reservoir, can absorb excess power (and get paid for it! energy prices go negative!) and supply power back to the grid when needed (and get paid again!).

lithocarpus 2y ago

Thanks for laying this out. I had no idea about this until last year, when there was an eminent domain vs nimby struggle I heard about concerning putting co2 pipelines through farms for this purpose. I always thought carbon capture by machines was an impractical, but learning that what it actually is in practice is a way for govt subsidies to pay ethanol and oil companies and enable them to extract more oil. I wouldn't be surprised if a significant majority of govt money spent on environmental efforts has been captured by industries and is being used to accelerate environmental harm. I only know that this is the case in the areas I'm familiar with. It's sad.

aqueueaqueue 2y ago

Why are the super wealthy happy to kill their grandkids children. I wonder about the mental gymnastics. Very few super wealthy seem to be doing much useful.

Tostino 2y ago
Line goes up, right?