Oil Companies Placing Big Bets on Pyrolysis Oil

This is great news. At this point they are just looking for producing polyethylene without CO2 emissions, and the H2 byproduct is just a bit of cherry on the cake. But pyrolysis can be taken to its logical end where you fully remove all the hydrogen from the hydrocarbon molecule, and only carbon is left, which can then be put in long-term storage (like old mines, or simply landfills). The hydrogen is then burned to get electricity without any greenhouse gas emissions.

This is not economical right now, although research is active [1]. But any R&D investments in partial pyrolysis will certainly bring us a bit closer to economical full pyrolysis.

[1] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cite.202000029

Mining landfills for plastic might be easier than sorting recyclables, no? more concentrated ore stream.

"capturing and storing the carbon dioxide offsite" - ah yes, the oil companies saying 'trust us' because how do we ensure this doesn't escape? Or not simply released quietly along the way? Oh, the "regulators" will keep them honest? This is the oil industry. They have a playbook for this that is literally 100 years old or more.

"capture the hydrogen for a clean fuel" - I forget... Is this grey H2? Green H2? Oh, how about Teal? Everyone likes Teal.

"Whenever oil prices get really high" - I have a wonderful solution for this. Impose a huge pollution tax on any oil/crude removed from the ground. 30$/barrel, increasing by 10$ per year until we get to 100$/barrel. Oh that would be too shocking and expensive you think? Every climate scientist in a dozen fields is saying "we need to change course very soon very quickly", and that is probably still conservative and compromised from what we should be doing.

The Alberta tar sands are an abomination, the apex of capitalistic dollar over rationality, a putrid monument to the failures of economics to properly convey reality, science, forethought, and basic decency to the marketplace numbers of supply and demand. Fracking is basically the same, it just hides the problem a lot better.

Modern economics, be it the theory, the people practicing it, the political structures that influence policy, is a massive failure because of itss utter inability to not just consider 5 or 10 or 20 years into the future.

At the core of the problem is the hubris that economics thinks it can compute reality. Mathematics and the theory of computation prove that impossible. At least the climate models and science admit their uncertainties and difficulties with large scale nonlinear chaotic systems.

I suppose they are trying. But is it simply PR? Usually is.