DoE spent $1.1B to build carbon capture demos
enr.com
enr.com
Although there is likely a better allocation of $1.1B in isolation, that is not the world in which this investment was made - $1.1B amounts to <5% of the annual DOE budget. It also does not include comparisons to other investments e.g. over $1B goes towards electric vehicle tax rebates every year [1]. Build Back Better proposed $555B of federal spending for renewable energy.
Are we going to discuss budgets in absolute dollar amounts, or discuss them as portfolios?
I will simultaneously applaud efforts to develop electric vehicles while applauding efforts to increase the MPG rating of an ICE vehicle. The same way, I'll applaud any serious effort to reduce our emissions at coal power plants that do indeed help load balance our somewhat fragile power grid - a fragility we need to address while also ensuring our existing infrastructure serves us well.
I am not surprised that this $1.1B basically bought nothing. It's just more Pollyanna BS that keeps the current freight train barreling along at full speed.
Of course, not saying that this technology in particular can achieve net zero emissions by any means, but if it could in a more cost effective manner, it would be more societally beneficial than the alternative of overhauling the entire energy production infrastructure.
Citation needed on that cost effectiveness estimate, but regardless, all infrastructure is incrementally rebuilt and replaced over the years. So instead of eventually building replacement coal [1] plants with fancy (and leaky) CC, we could as well build different plants that don't emit any CO2.
[1] or natural gas, which is what's been happening over the past 10-15 years in the US, primarily because natural gas became cheaper. Those natural gas plants produced less CO2 than coal, which has primarily driven any reduction in the US's CO2 output. But natural gas still produces huge amounts of CO2 and will never be carbon neutral.
Thought the spirit of my comment was pretty clear, but the point was that if technology could enable continued use of fossil fuels in a net zero manner, and in a more cost efficient way than replacing energy infrastructure, that it should be welcomed.
But instead you get a lot of commenters hating on the idea because it would allow fossil fuels to live on, even if consumption of those was net zero. Which implies they don't care about solving climate change, but care specifically about destroying the fossil fuel industry.
Yes things get replaced over time and the replacement technology will end up being whatever's most economical (in a free market) or whatever's most economical given legal constraints (in a controlled market).
There's no inherent virtue of generating power from solar versus coal if you could do both in a net zero manner. Though of course, fossil fuels are limited in supply.
Getting net zero or renewables to be more cost effective than fossil fuels is the fastest way to solve the problem. That transition would happen naturally over time as fossil fuels became more scarce, thus more expensive.
[1] https://news.stanford.edu/2019/10/25/study-casts-doubt-carbo...
Yes, the claim that one hypothetical option would be more efficient than another demands support, in the form of evidence, or reasoning from supported theory.
Typical citing the support and stating any necessary connecting reasoning to reach the conclusion from it is the way to provide that.
Just because you are comparing hypotheticals doesn't free the conclusion you claim from that comparison from the need for justification.
Yes, do you understand that making predictive conclusions about hypothetical alternatives is itself a claim that such conclusions can be justified (which is true, that's pretty much the whole point of science) and invites a call for the justification of the particular predictive conclusion you have offered?
The merits of carbon capture technology, obviously (very much so) have nothing to do with my comment
Feels a bit like treating a symptom instead of the root cause.
In the assumption that we could achieve net zero in a cost effective way with fossil fuels, this would be the most natural transition
At first, you said that if any CC could achieve net-zero emissions, then it would be significantly more cost-effective than rebuilding infrastructure. Baseless assertion without any specific numbers to cite.
Now, you're saying that if any CC could be net-zero and more cost-effective, then it should be welcomed. Well, yes, obviously.
I posed an entirely hypothetical proposition that, if this technology could achieve net zero emissions in a more efficient manner (obviously implied), that there would still be many people who hate on it because it would enable fossil fuels to live on, despite the fact that, in that scenario, we would have solved climate change and allows fossil fuels to continue to prosper.
The fact that the technology would be more cost effective was obviously implied. Is it logical that I would imply that a less cost effective technology would be cheaper? No, so why interpret it that way? Does the syntax of what somebody writes always 100% accurately convey their thoughts? No, but its pretty easy for humans to interpret the meaning.
Anyway, I edited the comment for clarity. All the replies debating carbon capture technology have pretty obviously nothing to do with my original comment, and I question how somebody could interpret it in that way. The entire preposition and thrust of the comment was about the hypothetical, nothing to do with specific merits of a technology (very clearly, and obviously)
You're suggesting that hypothetically if these technologies were viable, then hypothetically people would still oppose them, because you want to suggest they're acting in bad faith and secretly have an ulterior anti-fossil-fuel agenda separate from emissions.
Surely you can see how people are going to counter one or both of those elements though, right? (The technology so far appears to be mostly a distraction from more prudent efforts and 99.999% of people would in fact love and support the technology if it worked).
1) these capture demos usually don’t capture ALL the CO2 emitted.
2) gas still has leaks and oil still has spills
3) there’s potentially a finite amount of easy to access carbon capture storage repositories. Using it for more fossil fuel burning is maybe a bad idea.
4) there are still geopolitical problems associated with oil and gas
5) there is still a FINITE AMOUNT of oil and gas.
6) If we keep oil and gas infrastructure in place, what’s to stop a Trumpian populist in the future from just stopping the carbon capture program to save money and reduce costs? Then we’d be back to square one. This has happened in the past when the Bush admin suspended environmental rules because of “oil shortage.” But if we get rid of oil and gas infrastructure, that’ll basically be impossible except with massive reinvestment.
7) There’s reason to believe these programs are just headfakes by oil and gas, cover to keep emitting as much as possible while alsways promising to start carbon capture “next year” or whatever.
I don't think it's an intentional conclusion many reach, just that they've subconsciously mixed up the purpose of what they're advocating to solve.
Also does anybody responding understand what a hypothetical proposition is? Why are you all responding about the technical merits of carbon capture, which has nothing to do with my comment.
It also acidifies the oceans, it kills by air poisoning and just is generally bad and also nonrenewable.
We do need a paradigm shift in the way we utilise the earth’s resources.
That is why CCS gets a bad rap, it’s like the alcoholic parent saying they can continue drinking because there’s this new hangover drug and also a great skin remedy for your bruises.
I actually really support all the climate mitigation strategies and CCS is definitely an important one, but together with a strict ban on new coal and oil projects. Natural gas seems an OK tradeoff for now if each new plant is tied directly to the shuttering of a coal or oil one.
Isn’t ocean acidification caused by increased amounts of dissolved CO2 in the oceans though?
If your capturing CO2 (and larger particles as a side effect), it would seem to address both concerns.
CCS is obviously a stop gap but it seems like it could potentially be a very effective and politically realistic stop gap, if it can be made work at scale.
It is far cheaper to simply pay a fossil fuel plant to stop operating than to provide meaningful levels of emissions reduction via CCS.
There is a cheaper option which is to facilitate the establishment of commercial renewables programs which will compete the fossil fuel burners out of the market.
Carbon capture has real potential, but has as long as coal or gas is used for baseline we should probably look into using that there into it's understood if we can push these technologies further or use the CO2 in some productive way imo
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To be quite clear, I think carbon capture is a scam. That being said, talking about energy investment demonstration projects, this doesn't seem totally out of whack for what projects generally cost; we should attack projects based on the merits, but the particular thing in the headline is not actually crazy. The point of demonstrations is to figure out if things work, and so they should be expected to have failures; what would be stupid is if we kept going.
The headline is wildly misleading.
One issue with carbon capture in the wild is that carbon is actually a not a major portion of the atmosphere (ie, think 0.0004)
So doing capture near CO2 sources makes some sense.
Secondarily, the private market is throwing money at this as well, current costs per ton captured are on the range of $1,000! That is mind boggling pricy, we don't know if these demos were this bad - they might even have been better.
So, if you have a potential society ending issue, spending $1B to try out some things might not be terrible.
That said, if you look at things like SLS, you can understand how these things are prone to being total boondoggles as well.
Being able to capture their CO2 output will likely be necessary, even in the presence of a 100% renewable electric grid - which makes this a technology worth pursuing.
They mixed the coal with asphalt in a big ole mixer. Bulldozers push coal into a hopper, conveyors take the coal up a few stories and it falls down a Shute and gets mixed with asphalt prior to being burned in the coal fired steam plant. We had four large towers of asphalt holding tanks, they had to be climbed regularly to check to make sure we didn’t overflow them while pumping off tankers.
I don’t know how this is supposed to reduce CO2 emissions or how to capture it on the back end, but that’s the beginning stage of making coal more environmentally friendly.
You mix the coal with something else and have to create an entirely new mountain pile of mixed coal and you burn that. The logistics of mixing coal with asphalt - not so easy.
I read the GAO 33 page report to make sure my local power company is listed, yep. Southern Company shut down the operation. They’ve had DOE signs at the entrance for 20 years at least.
At some level you could argue it wasn't unreasonable to give it 'the old college try'.
Who were the prime contractors and their sub-contractors?