5 ms·

The first two examples are feasible, the last not so much. You need extra energy to power the CCS, and to store the captured CO2. That's not practical on any

The first two examples are feasible, the last not so much. You need extra energy to power the CCS, and to store the captured CO2. That's not practical on any airliner. One kilo of jet fuel produces about 3.5x its weight in CO2. The solution to aviation is "fly less", also "don't air-ship fresh produce which can be moved by sea or road" (and if it can't, don't ship it). Sorry gents, those Kenyan roses for Valentines are over. Get your loved one some tulips instead.

gruez 2y ago
>You need extra energy to power the CCS, and to store the captured CO2. >That's not practical on any airliner. One kilo of jet fuel produces about 3.5x its weight in CO2. Carbon capture includes direct air capture, which doesn't come with any weight constraints. >The solution to aviation is "fly less", also "don't air-ship fresh produce which can be moved by sea or road" (and if it can't, don't ship it). Any solution that's predicated on "do it less" is going to be DOA politically. The options available voters aren't "electric planes" or "don't fly", they're "do something" or "do nothing". Telling people they're going to have to make upfront sacrifices for vague future benefits is going to be a losing proposition politically. Any solution to climate change is going to have to come from technological advances, not getting people to consume less. US emissions per capita has dropped more than 25% since 1990[1]. That's not because people ate 25% less meat or drove 25% less. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas_emissions_by_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas_emissions_by_th...
- Earw0rm 2y ago
  How much does diffuse DAC cost? Add the price of that on a flight ticket (which we ultimately have to anyway) and we'd be helping address the problem already, before the tech is even deployed. And the next 35 years - to 2060 - have to be a much steeper reduction than 25%, or the 35 years after that will, one way or another, represent a _forceful_ reduction of a lot more than 25%. Finally is that 25% on a production or consumption basis? Offshoring and deindustrialisation are not trends that are likely to continue, again more for political reasons than anything else.
  - gruez 2y ago
    >How much does diffuse DAC cost? >Add the price of that on a flight ticket (which we ultimately have to anyway) and we'd be helping address the problem already, before the tech is even deployed. It's $1000/ton today, which works out to a 70% price increase for a new york to london flight. I disagree that would "address the problem already, before the tech is even deployed", because zero chance anyone would vote for it in the first place. That's where technological advancement comes in. Startups claim they can hit $250-$350/ton by 2030[1], which is a much more manageable 21% increase. >Finally is that 25% on a production or consumption basis? Offshoring and deindustrialisation are not trends that are likely to continue, again more for political reasons than anything else. It's around 17% on a trade basis[2], but the point stands. Americans haven't eaten 17% less meat, drove 17% less, or bought 17% less stuff. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climeworks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climeworks [2] https://ourworldindata.org/consumption-based-co2 https://ourworldindata.org/consumption-based-co2
- Ntrails 2y ago
  It remains infuriating to be repeatedly lied to by politicians who say they can "hit net zero" etc without any lifestyle changes. It is utter nonsense and simply ensures every conversation on the topic is grounded largely in fantasy. There are hard choices to be made and we insist on letting people pretend otherwise. It's infuriating
  - gbear605 2y ago
    Unfortunately Americans as a whole would rather have climate change than lifestyle change. That’s a good portion of why Trump is president now. And most countries are in the same position, or want lifestyle change in the sense of using more energy. If technology can’t do it, more climate change is inevitable.
    - Earw0rm 2y ago
      Then they presumably understand climate change in terms of occasional weather disasters and hot summers and not, say, twenty years of chronic and persistent inflation followed by actual food shortages.
  - closewith 2y ago
    The hard choice has been made. The world has decided to accept climate change in order to continue using fossil fuels. It's just not the choice you (or I) want.
  - Dylan16807 2y ago
    While I think some lifestyle changes are a good idea: There's so much we can convert to renewable and electric power without any meaningful lifestyle changes or even a particularly large amount of money relative to the size of the industries involved. And for the rest, it would cost money to keep the same lifestyle, but GDP per capita keeps rising and if you hold lifestyle constant then that gives you lots of money to spend on big goals. What's utter nonsense and fantasy about that?
- forgetfreeman 2y ago
  > Any solution that's predicated on "do it less" is going to be DOA politically. I agree with your analysis. The problem here is if we're both right society is fucked, end of story. There are no convenient solutions to replacing our species primary mode of energy generation and mobility, that drives an industry that is quite literally the hub around which the entirety of the rest of the global economy revolves. Available credible solutions all require a kind of political will not seen in several generations.
  - ViewTrick1002 2y ago
    The solution we have are renewables. Today renewables produce vastly cheaper energy than fossil fuels and are disrupting every industry that can use electrical input or batteries. The problem is the use cases where we utilize either the density of fossil fuels or as feedstock in industrial processes. Which brings the ”Hydrogen ladder”: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/hydrogen-ladder-version-50-michael-liebreich https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/hydrogen-ladder-version-50-mi... What we need to do is to continue scale renewables so they become cheap enough to by merit be the energy input for the hard to decarbonize fossil energy/feedstock use cases. See fossil fuels like todays version of the piston steam engine used in for example locomotives. It works but is inefficient and expensive to maintain compared to ICEs or gas turbines.
    - forgetfreeman 2y ago
      Nope. We want renewables to be a solution but they're all predicated on various flavors of non-renewable unobtanium and do literally nothing to address (among other things) global agriculture's absolute dependence upon petrochemical inputs or global logistics as a concept. The actual solution would be aggressive managed degrowth in conjunction with renewables and ag-based sequestration projects. The irony here is degrowth is absolutely guaranteed at this point, the only question is does it happen in a managed and planned fashion or does society collapse. All current evidence suggests the latter.
      - ViewTrick1002 2y ago
Thorrez 2y ago
I don't think the idea is to have the capturing machinery on the plane itself. The idea is to have capture machinery on the ground, offsetting the carbon released by the plane.
- Earw0rm 2y ago
  That's right, but then you have to capture it from atmospheric concentrations (430ppm) rather than directly from a waste gas stream at a much higher concentration. It can be done but the economics don't look good right now. Possible very cheap solar energy in desert regions can change that a bit. Australia have been trying but they didn't get very far with it yet, granted there is still room for solar to get cheaper again.
wongarsu 2y ago
Luckily CO2 is fairly fungible. Instead of the airplane capturing its own CO2 we can just capture 3.5t CO2 on the ground for every ton of jet fuel fueled into an airplane.
- ZeroGravitas 2y ago
  If the entire world's electric supply isn't decarbonised at that point then that money would be better spent on deploying renewables somewhere without a 100% clean grid as the article says or electrifying heat or industry. That has issues with proving the deployment actually displaces carbon but carbon capture has similar issues proving that the carbon is actually permanently removed.
  - jfengel 2y ago
    That's the thing. All of these mitigations are meaningless if we still have vast industries predicated on burning fossil carbon. And once we've eliminated the burning of fossil carbon, the mitigations are unnecessary. Nature will gradually find an equilibrium, and anything we do to speed it up (even removing carbon) is as likely to cause harm as good. Maybe there is a future where we have so much extra renewables that we can think about trying to undo what we've done. But any effort spent on it now feels like an attempt to decrease the need to eliminate fossil fuels as fast as possible.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > we can just capture 3.5t CO2 on the ground for every ton of jet fuel fueled into an airplane Entropy makes one of these much easier. For planes, synthetic jet fuel is the answer. The sign we’re taking jet emissions seriously will be when someone drops the flygskam and hydrogen shtick and passes a synthetic-fuel mandate on private jets. (Less than 3x the cost in America [1].) [1] https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/us-sustainable-aviation-fuel-production-target-faces-cost-margin-challenges-2023-11-01/ https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/us-sustainable-aviati...

gruez 2y ago

>You need extra energy to power the CCS, and to store the captured CO2. >That's not practical on any airliner. One kilo of jet fuel produces about 3.5x its weight in CO2. Carbon capture includes direct air capture, which doesn't come with any weight constraints. >The solution to aviation is "fly less", also "don't air-ship fresh produce which can be moved by sea or road" (and if it can't, don't ship it). Any solution that's predicated on "do it less" is going to be DOA politically. The options available voters aren't "electric planes" or "don't fly", they're "do something" or "do nothing". Telling people they're going to have to make upfront sacrifices for vague future benefits is going to be a losing proposition politically. Any solution to climate change is going to have to come from technological advances, not getting people to consume less. US emissions per capita has dropped more than 25% since 1990[1]. That's not because people ate 25% less meat or drove 25% less. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas_emissions_by_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas_emissions_by_th...

Earw0rm 2y ago
How much does diffuse DAC cost? Add the price of that on a flight ticket (which we ultimately have to anyway) and we'd be helping address the problem already, before the tech is even deployed. And the next 35 years - to 2060 - have to be a much steeper reduction than 25%, or the 35 years after that will, one way or another, represent a _forceful_ reduction of a lot more than 25%. Finally is that 25% on a production or consumption basis? Offshoring and deindustrialisation are not trends that are likely to continue, again more for political reasons than anything else.
- gruez 2y ago
  >How much does diffuse DAC cost? >Add the price of that on a flight ticket (which we ultimately have to anyway) and we'd be helping address the problem already, before the tech is even deployed. It's $1000/ton today, which works out to a 70% price increase for a new york to london flight. I disagree that would "address the problem already, before the tech is even deployed", because zero chance anyone would vote for it in the first place. That's where technological advancement comes in. Startups claim they can hit $250-$350/ton by 2030[1], which is a much more manageable 21% increase. >Finally is that 25% on a production or consumption basis? Offshoring and deindustrialisation are not trends that are likely to continue, again more for political reasons than anything else. It's around 17% on a trade basis[2], but the point stands. Americans haven't eaten 17% less meat, drove 17% less, or bought 17% less stuff. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climeworks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climeworks [2] https://ourworldindata.org/consumption-based-co2 https://ourworldindata.org/consumption-based-co2
Ntrails 2y ago
It remains infuriating to be repeatedly lied to by politicians who say they can "hit net zero" etc without any lifestyle changes. It is utter nonsense and simply ensures every conversation on the topic is grounded largely in fantasy. There are hard choices to be made and we insist on letting people pretend otherwise. It's infuriating
- gbear605 2y ago
  Unfortunately Americans as a whole would rather have climate change than lifestyle change. That’s a good portion of why Trump is president now. And most countries are in the same position, or want lifestyle change in the sense of using more energy. If technology can’t do it, more climate change is inevitable.
  - Earw0rm 2y ago
    Then they presumably understand climate change in terms of occasional weather disasters and hot summers and not, say, twenty years of chronic and persistent inflation followed by actual food shortages.
- closewith 2y ago
  The hard choice has been made. The world has decided to accept climate change in order to continue using fossil fuels. It's just not the choice you (or I) want.
- Dylan16807 2y ago
  While I think some lifestyle changes are a good idea: There's so much we can convert to renewable and electric power without any meaningful lifestyle changes or even a particularly large amount of money relative to the size of the industries involved. And for the rest, it would cost money to keep the same lifestyle, but GDP per capita keeps rising and if you hold lifestyle constant then that gives you lots of money to spend on big goals. What's utter nonsense and fantasy about that?
forgetfreeman 2y ago
> Any solution that's predicated on "do it less" is going to be DOA politically. I agree with your analysis. The problem here is if we're both right society is fucked, end of story. There are no convenient solutions to replacing our species primary mode of energy generation and mobility, that drives an industry that is quite literally the hub around which the entirety of the rest of the global economy revolves. Available credible solutions all require a kind of political will not seen in several generations.
- ViewTrick1002 2y ago
  The solution we have are renewables. Today renewables produce vastly cheaper energy than fossil fuels and are disrupting every industry that can use electrical input or batteries. The problem is the use cases where we utilize either the density of fossil fuels or as feedstock in industrial processes. Which brings the ”Hydrogen ladder”: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/hydrogen-ladder-version-50-michael-liebreich https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/hydrogen-ladder-version-50-mi... What we need to do is to continue scale renewables so they become cheap enough to by merit be the energy input for the hard to decarbonize fossil energy/feedstock use cases. See fossil fuels like todays version of the piston steam engine used in for example locomotives. It works but is inefficient and expensive to maintain compared to ICEs or gas turbines.
  - forgetfreeman 2y ago
    Nope. We want renewables to be a solution but they're all predicated on various flavors of non-renewable unobtanium and do literally nothing to address (among other things) global agriculture's absolute dependence upon petrochemical inputs or global logistics as a concept. The actual solution would be aggressive managed degrowth in conjunction with renewables and ag-based sequestration projects. The irony here is degrowth is absolutely guaranteed at this point, the only question is does it happen in a managed and planned fashion or does society collapse. All current evidence suggests the latter.
    - ViewTrick1002 2y ago

Thorrez 2y ago

I don't think the idea is to have the capturing machinery on the plane itself. The idea is to have capture machinery on the ground, offsetting the carbon released by the plane.

Earw0rm 2y ago
That's right, but then you have to capture it from atmospheric concentrations (430ppm) rather than directly from a waste gas stream at a much higher concentration. It can be done but the economics don't look good right now. Possible very cheap solar energy in desert regions can change that a bit. Australia have been trying but they didn't get very far with it yet, granted there is still room for solar to get cheaper again.

wongarsu 2y ago

Luckily CO2 is fairly fungible. Instead of the airplane capturing its own CO2 we can just capture 3.5t CO2 on the ground for every ton of jet fuel fueled into an airplane.

ZeroGravitas 2y ago
If the entire world's electric supply isn't decarbonised at that point then that money would be better spent on deploying renewables somewhere without a 100% clean grid as the article says or electrifying heat or industry. That has issues with proving the deployment actually displaces carbon but carbon capture has similar issues proving that the carbon is actually permanently removed.
- jfengel 2y ago
  That's the thing. All of these mitigations are meaningless if we still have vast industries predicated on burning fossil carbon. And once we've eliminated the burning of fossil carbon, the mitigations are unnecessary. Nature will gradually find an equilibrium, and anything we do to speed it up (even removing carbon) is as likely to cause harm as good. Maybe there is a future where we have so much extra renewables that we can think about trying to undo what we've done. But any effort spent on it now feels like an attempt to decrease the need to eliminate fossil fuels as fast as possible.
JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> we can just capture 3.5t CO2 on the ground for every ton of jet fuel fueled into an airplane Entropy makes one of these much easier. For planes, synthetic jet fuel is the answer. The sign we’re taking jet emissions seriously will be when someone drops the flygskam and hydrogen shtick and passes a synthetic-fuel mandate on private jets. (Less than 3x the cost in America [1].) [1] https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/us-sustainable-aviation-fuel-production-target-faces-cost-margin-challenges-2023-11-01/ https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/us-sustainable-aviati...