UK launches program to explore removal of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere
carbonbrief.org
carbonbrief.org
... because removing carbon from 99% pure flue gas is a lot easier than removing carbon at 400PPM from the atmosphere.
Even if every bit of farmland on the planet was growing sugarcane for BECCS, we still would only pull ~9GT/y out of the atmosphere, on par with our current net emissions.
Of course, solving climate change is not actually a difficult problem. A $50/ton carbon tax would make all of these things profitable, including CCS on existing natural gas plants.
(source: climate R&D group)
It's not a technical or economic problem. It's a political and social problem.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/nov/25/uk-cance...
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/jul/20/treasury...
The models for this, when I spoke with some oceanography folks, were still really fuzzy.
Sure it'd be great if we find alternatives to a majority of things that contribute to carbon emissions, but then there's the difficulty of getting everyone to use these alternatives across the board (along with the messy politics of it) and if you succeed at that, you'll still have to deal with other countries who aren't going to change their habits. It's essentially a global game of whack-a-mole. And it needs to happen soon. Some scientists claim we're already beyond the ability to reverse climate change by eliminating these activities.
Given what we're up against, it seems far more reasonable to explore ways of negating our emissions, terraforming the planet or trying to find a way to live on a far less hospital earth. I'm all for continuing our march towards a globally smaller carbon footprint, but it should be done concurrently while we try to address the sobering possibility that it might not be enough.
If you think it's hard to persuade people to drive electric vehicles, imagine telling them to pay up enough $$$ to buy several Teslas per person, so that the government can run a carbon-capture plant somewhere you've never been to.
Because it's safe to assume that atmospheric carbon capture will remain more expensive than not emitting it in the first place. Maybe somebody will invent a unicorn technology next year, but I wouldn't bet my planet's future on that.
For example, it'd be far, far cheaper to forcibly take over the world and shut down every carbon emitting machine than to find another planet and terraform it.
Surely we're collectively smart enough to find a global solution to this in the near future, given that our resources are appropriately allocated.
Equally important:
- Reducing consumption (which, in my experience, increases happiness)
- Having fewer babies
As Scott Adams has so rightly pointed out, we are victims of our bias, and it is very difficult to think coherently on an emotive subject like this.
Those things are (apart from one for some people) not significant moral problems. Improved education of women also tends to reduce child mortality.
The combination of these things and societal shifts has changed the total fertility rate in many countries to below replacement.
Perhaps that's a sensible first step?
Accepting the circumstances that we are in as a result of decades of targeted misinformation is like saying it will be easier to learn to live with less air when being repeatedly dunked in a toilet by bully's.
As one concrete example of companies working on direct capture from air, ETH Zürich has a spinoff/startup called Climeworks, who have alredy built machines that do this. They started in 2009 and did e.g. a $3 million series B round back in 2014. Currently assembling their first large-scale plant AFAIK. (No affiliation to the project. I'm not really a believer in direct air capture myself, I don't think we'll ever see the cost become low enough for large scale adoption. US DoE has estimated the cost will be around 6x the cost of capture from e.g. natural gas powerplants, so I think it makes much more sense to focus on that.)
Cool company, and a serious looking machine, thanks for sharing!
I also like what they're up to at OakBio: http://www.oakbio.com
tito@impossiblelabs.io
Unlike the grid, carbon capture power doesn't need to be dispatchable. So you don't need to worry about the intermittemcy of solar and wind.
The same strategy is true for water desalination. They can run the plants whenever there is cheap power.
Especially if you compressed your sequestered carbon into nifty charcoal bricks and burned them for fuel, instead of wasting all that effort digging up coal...
[1] https://www.newscientist.com/article/2091214-first-commercia...
And it isn't going to fix things in terms of sheer volume either. We've cut down forests and burnt fossil fuels. Replenishing forests only reversed the effects of the former and doesn't account for the carbon released via the latter.
This is patently false.
Yes each individual tree is only a temporary store (with a half-life somewhere around 100 years), but that's ok because the forest as a whole is continually generating trees, and sequester CO2 in the form of soil. Trees also create conditions that protect that soil from erosion and re-emission (protection from wind, rain, and evaporation).
The total anthropogenic CO2 emissions since the industrial revolution works out to only 30 tonnes of carbon per hectare, which is a few inches of topsoil or a few additional trees per hectare. It's easy to soak up that much carbon just in biomass on the surface.
Even in farmland the addition of selected "farmer's trees" (carub, honey locust, acacia, leucaena) can be used. These are selected species of tree that actually increase yield when planted into a field at 20-30/acre, despite casting some shade on the crops. These trees typically have deep roots that harvest minerals and recycle nutrients that would otherwise leach down to the aquifer, and their root system can coexist with crops right up to the butt of the tree. The nutrients are dropped as mulch, and they also make nutritious pods for animal feed.
Of course, you still need a lot of trees. The internets say that a rough rule of thumb for the amount of carbon in a tree is about a tonne. Therefore, given current carbon emissions of about 10^10 tonnes a year you'd need to plant more trees than that --- every year. (And then wait multiple decades. This isn't a short term solution.)
As you say, another reason to plant them is for local benefit. You don't mention that trees also regulate the local microclimate; they tend to make rain, for example. When Cyprus was deforested, it got a lot drier. I knew someone who was working to try and reforest a lot of it with the explicit goal of trying to fix some of the water supply issues; I don't know if they got anywhere. And, of course, they're just nice to be around.
Recent research show that there are about 10^12 trees in the world.
http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2015/09/02/43691905...
Good point. I'm usually so eager to mention that, too!
Trees regulate not only the microclimate, but the macroclimate as well. Isotopic analysis shows that about 80% of all terrestrial rainfall is caused by transpiration from trees and other plants. Trees essentially act as a giant inland irrigation network, using solar power to transport water via the airstream to power the water cycle. https://www.nature.com/articles/nature11983
So trees cause rain. This explains why deforestation causes desertification. I would also recommend the excellent Greening the Desert documentary for an example of the reverse process. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xcZS7arcgk
As usual, it will get put off for lack of funding again and again until the old system finally breaks. Then there will be much action and much loss.
"The urban landscape accounts for 10.6% of England, 1.9% of Scotland, 3.6% of Northern Ireland and 4.1% of Wales. Put another way, that means almost 93% of the UK is not urban"
And of that 7% that is designated urban, a large proportion is gardens, parks, allotments, sports pitches etc.
Woodland (i.e. Forests) is 12.6% of the UK which is double the size of designated urban areas even if green spaces are excluded.
The majority of the UK is enclosed farmland. So to significantly increase the forestation of the UK, you would need to repurpose farmland.
Unfortunately, they are (at least in Scotland, which is the bit I know about) mostly just tree farms, growing very fast-growing, densely planted pines (Norway Spruce? can't find a reference), frequently in unsuitable areas, and the results were ecologically... poor. Nothing lives in them and they're alien trees anyway. The phrase 'trash forest' was coined.
These days there's a lot more awareness that this is bad, and they're growing more deciduous wood and relying less on monoculture, but it's still a problem.
Not the best picture, but here's a street view shot of one:
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@57.5275519,-5.186435,3a,75y,2...
(Incidentally, if you look in the opposite direction; that island in the middle of the loch? That's native woodland. The slopes beyond are supposed to be covered with it. But it was all felled centuries ago, then the deer population rose, and now they're making it impossible for native forest to be properly established. You want to promote forest growth in Scotland? Cull the bloody deer down to about 10% of their current population. And then reintroduce wolves and lynx.)
Two parts of carbon pollution are difficult. 1. It's a diffuse source pollution problem. You can look a coal fire plant, and yes these are great contributers but so are cows and just general agriculture. Emissions come from everywhere!
2. dealing with gaseous carbon pollution is also tricky because its up high and CO2 is reasonably stable. If we are going to try and filter air from the atmosphere we are probably going to have to either look at biological sequestration solutions ie. algae etc or energy expensive options to break down the carbon.
And conservation of mass being what it is we are going to end up with a lot of waste to store.
And that article talks about 8 million pounds....oh well.
Given that, putting even more load on public transport by restricting vehicle traffic would be politically very difficult. Crossrail will help relieve the pressure along its route (10% capacity bump on rail!) but given the growth in the cities population and the possibility that the population figures are wrong anyway (the UK has not done a census for a long time), planners are anticipating that nearly all the added capacity will be used within just a few years. Hence them starting to plan Crossrail 2 before Crossrail 1 is actually finished.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/02/17/drivers-older-die...
Making the world a wetter place