Companies are sucking carbon out of the atmosphere, and investors are piling in | Hacker News Reader

Companies are sucking carbon out of the atmosphere, and investors are piling in

cnbc.com

I'm not seeing it. What makes it profitable? If it were intrinsically profitable, wouldn't heavy carbon emitters be capturing their own carbon before diluting it in the atmosphere? What do you do with the carbon?

>The captured carbon can either be buried deep underground or sold for other uses

Okay. Burying sounds expensive and not at all profitable. What uses?

>Climeworks sells some of its captured carbon to Coca-Cola

Alright, that's going right back into the atmosphere. Not really a win. What else?

>oil producers like Exxon and Chevron are investing heavily in carbon capture because the carbon can be used to release trapped oil underground.

Ah.

> I'm not seeing it. What makes it profitable?

In the EU (and some other jurisdictions, but the EU is the largest), companies must purchase certificates that allow them to pollute (EU ETS). Such companies could participate in this scheme and maybe generate those certificates - other companies would then have to buy from them, making the whole venture profitable.

> I'm not seeing it. What makes it profitable?

Avoiding future costs would be my guess. Carbon pricing and/or regulatory imposition will arrive and make failure to implement capture or abatement a costly prospect.

At some point this will be like taking out the trash. Lots of money in making sure it's done right.

Companies who can do this correctly and cheaply will be able to charge for this service.

They can already charge for the service in jurisdictions with cap and trade. The two assumptions would be 1. Over time, the number of jurisdictions mandating cap and trade expands and 2. the cost to sequester decreases to meet reasonable cost per ton of emissions those who must emit pay.

I've seen the "true cost" of CO2 emissions at around $50-$120/per ton, and Climeworks charges $600/ton to sequester a ton of CO2 underground (with a target price below $100/ton) in stable mineralization form. At some point, intersection between the two will occur. Anything that can shift away from CO2 emissions will, anything that can't will pay to have the emitted CO2 removed from the atmosphere.

Critically, it should be required to prove that the CO2 captured and stored is, and not resold for other process use (soda carbonation, oil production improvement, etc). Captured CO2 must be sequestered.

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