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Comment by horsawlarway | Hacker News Reader

If you watch the video in the article, they briefly mention it - Basically, they're using captured CO2 that would have been released anyways, from industries like brewing.

And they mention it's better than the sand approach since they're not leaving a contaminate around afterwards, since the CO2 will just sublimate back into gas, both which improves the cleaning and makes it more consistent when done repeatedly.

The movie is still borderline sales-pitch, so I'd take it with a grain of salt, but it adds some detail.

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> that would have been released anyways

By any chance, does money change hands? "Carbon credits"?

Guess what! I'll start a brewery and brew billions of tons of CO2 unless you pay me!

The carbon credit industry is a scam, and it does not actually affect the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.

To be fair, in order to produce co2 as a brewer, you must first have a sugar source for the yeast to eat. This is typically grain, which captures the co2 from the air using solar energy. Farming clearly also has an impact on the environment requiring energy and water to produce and transport, but the co2 locked up in that grain would be released to the environment most of the other ways that grain could get metabolized. Seems like not that bad of an outcome really.

It might be a scam as currently implemented but doesn't need to be.

Cap and trade worked very well for CFCs. In your example, why doesn't the brewery need to pay a tax for the CO2 released both in manufacture and as part of product-use?

You missed what the original poser was saying. Their point was that if you're capturing the CO2, it's better to keep it captured, rather than just releasing it again.

s/poser/poster/, presumably!

Yes. I often miss letters when typing for some reason.

Well the entire supply chain for commercial CO2 is "reclaimed" so anything they have to say on the matter is entirely for the purpose of spin.

They needed something solid that can sublimate and be relatively safe. Media blasting with CO2 is really a super common thing everywhere in industry. I could drive over to Grainger and buy a CO2 blasting machine today.

It's an unfortunate effect of some climate change worries. We have a problem with letting “Perfect” be the enemy of “Good”.

Far too many people worry about the 100lbs of CO2 emitted because of rail cleaning while ignoring the fact that a diesel train is spewing (literally) tons of CO2 in the atmosphere. And the trains are one of the best options for low carbon shipping!

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