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Comment by HankB99 | Hacker News Reader

The article does not mention the mechanism for CO2 capture. Google can probably find it. I suspect interest in this results from its dependence on fossil fuels. ISTR sequestration is by injecting deep into the ground where it will form stable carbonates.

And from the article:

> ... the two projects are expected to be able to sequester 2 million tonnes of carbon dioxide each year

> ... the DOE estimates that reaching the Biden administration's goal of a net-zero US by 2050 will require at least 400 million tonnes to be sequestered annually, and perhaps as many as 1.8 billion.

so we would need 200x these projects (or much more.) I wonder what the carbon footprint of that will be. I'd like to see a cost/benefit analysis of carbon sequestered vs. carbon produced to do so. And the $$$ estimate to do so. I wonder if this is really a cost effect way to reduce green house gases.

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We have no choice. It must be done, costs be damned.

We absolutely do have a choice when it comes to how we remove CO2 from the atmosphere.

And direct air capture (DAC) is most strongly pushed by existing fossil fuel companies as a form of predatory delay.

After all, no need for them to stop pumping oil if they can offer up DAC as a fig leaf.

Other than DAC, how do we remove CO2?

We can deal with that problem when it's the pressing one. These two projects are set to remove 2 MTonnes of CO2 per year (max is they work correctly). The USA alone currently produces ~2,000 MTonnes of CO2/year simply for energy generation [0].

If these two projects are powered by fossil fuel electricity I'll refer you to figure [1]. Best case, they run on CO2-free electricity (Nuclear, solar, wind, hydro).

If they are using green electricty, they're better of transitioning their grid off of coal and gas.

DAC uses something like 5.5 GJ/t-CO2 [2]. Which, for the 2 MTonnes for these projects it comes out to 2.97 TWh of electricty. On the US grid (7.09*10^-4 t/kWh) those 2 MTonnes of CO2 come out to ~2.8 TWh.

So the projects are within a margin of error in terms of reducing more CO2 by existing rather than putting that exact same money into simply creating more green electricity.

So I'll reiterate, the discussion about what to do about the CO2 in the atmosphere is a stalling tactic. Instead of wasting time and money to remove 2 MTonnes by DAC, you can avoid all that complication and simply remove it at the source.

The time to discuss how to deal with the hard problem of removing CO2 out of the atmosphere is after we deal with the easy problem of not burning shit in the first place.

[0]: https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/inventory-us-greenhouse-gas...

[1]: https://media.licdn.com/dms/image/D5612AQHynjdkUha9PA/articl...

[2]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S258900422...

[3]: https://www.epa.gov/energy/greenhouse-gases-equivalencies-ca...

> We can deal with that problem when it's the pressing one.

If is pressing. Any survivable scenario requires the deployment of massive amounts of DAC. That is what net-neutral is. Planting trees wont help, and even if we stopped all emissions today, we still need to remove tens of billions of tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere.

But it does not require us to do it now.

And we won’t stop emission today or even by 2070 at this rate. Again these units will barely suck out more CO2 than the electricity that powers them (in the best case) would displace.

And if you really wish to build them now, they should be build at the expense of the fossil fuel companies, who have known for decades that they were pollution and actively hide the fact and worked to discredit those who wanted them to stop.

I don't understand your argument, or what your proposal/alternative is. When you say we don't need to remove CO2 now, then when?

How do we get from >400ppm to say 350ppm? Even if we shut off all emissions immediately?

My argument is fairly simple. The easiest way to get CO2 out of the atmosphere is to not put it there in the first place. We should be all of this money (and much more) to transition off of fossil fuels as quickly as possible. The sooner we electrify everything and get rid of fossil fuels the sooner we can start putting a dent int to 30+ GTonnes/year of CO2 we produce.

This ship is quickly taking on water; we can focus on dumping the excess water out after we patched the hull.

FYI, One of the projects being funded here is going to be co-run by Carbon Engineering, whose DAC design uses both renewables as well as natural gas to produce the electricity it needs for the process.

> My argument is fairly simple. The easiest way to get CO2 out of the atmosphere is to not put it there in the first place.>We should be all of this money (and much more) to transition off of fossil fuels as quickly as possible. The sooner we electrify everything and get rid of fossil fuels the sooner we can start putting a dent int to 30+ GTonnes/year of CO2 we produce.

Again. Even if we stop ALL EMISSIONS NOW, and blow up every fossil fuel facility on the globe, we need use DAC to remove accumulated CO2.

And again. DAC is being pushed by fossil fuel companies right now as a way of delaying us from stopping the burning of fossil fuels.

I’m not saying we don’t remove CO2 from the atmosphere. I’m saying we focus our efforts on not adding more before removing what’s there.

Here's a hot take: we do both. Stop adding it. Also, remove it.

What if they pay for it?

Who is the "they" because as far as I can tell it always seems to be the taxpayer. The fossil fuel company (which is already inherently subsidized by the lack of strong carbon pricing) gets to dump its waste into the atmosphere for free. Now that it's time for that waste to be cleaned up, we the taxpayers have to foot the bill.

And why? something... something.. they would go out of business if they had to pay to clean up their own waste.

In my view, I don't see how DAC isn't part of the larger solution. I'm not some industry shill, but without some removal of what we've already put in the air what realistic course do we have to sustainable atmospheric CO2? Even reductions in CO2 by nations still creates net positive, forests will eventually be unable to absorb more CO2, etc.

Before trying to solve the hard problem of removing CO2 out of the air, how about we spend our money on the low hanging fruit: stop burning fossil fuels.

Massively disrupting the global economy before alternatives are ready isn't a low hanging fruit.

Building new power generation to replace fossil fuels is not disruptioning the global economy.

> how about we spend our money on the low hanging fruit: stop burning fossil fuels.

That fruit is hanging quite high if you actually want to pick it. Carbon sequestering is becoming more and more of a requirement to keep global temperatures in check, and I think it is better to invest some money right now so that the research and engineering can provide interest over a longer period of time. We just don't have the time to wait until 2050 to get started on that technology - we need it ASAP, together with 0 emissions.

Except this is championed by fossil fuel companies as a way to not have to reduce emissions on the first place.

Goes something like this: look at us investing for the future so that you don’t have to worry or stop burning in the present.

If (big if) sequestering is enough to bring net carbon down while not reducing emissions, then it's still a win to do so and not reduce emissions. Slowing or reversing climate change is the terminal goal, not reducing emissions.

I don't follow.

Option 1: Build green energy + DAC + keep burning fossil fuels. Option 2: Build green energy + turn off fossil fuel generation stations.

DAC removes about as much CO2 with that green energy as would be removed by simply using that green energy to lower the CO2 intensity of the USA electrical grid.

The difference is that with Option 1 you are still burning fossil fuels (and there is more than just CO2 being produced) and you need even more green energy to replace the fossil fuel generation. Option 2 skips ahead and turns off those plants sooner rather than later.

You are ignoring option 3: Build green energy + DAC + turn off fossil fuel -based generator stations.

We've already emitted more CO2 than is healthy for the world's climate, DAC or other methods to remove CO2 from the atmosphere are all but required at this point.

Yes, except a) public funds are zero sum. Every dollar we spent on building DACs is a dollar we don’t spend on building green energy. See [0], the coal line is going down, but it’s mostly being replace by natural gas. An improvement to be sure, but not enough. The renewable line could be much higher with more public funding. 1.2bn builds a lot of solar/wind/hydro…

And b) again it’s easier to “remove” CO2 from the atmosphere by not putting it there in the first place.

By the way, spending public money on DAC (rather than fining the fossil fuel companies and requiring them to build them) is allowing the fossil fuel companies to push the costs of cleaning up their mess onto the public the while privatizing the profit.

[0]: https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=48896

> Every dollar we spent on building DACs is a dollar we don’t spend on building green energy.

Correct, but at some point you need to start with developing CCS, and I don't think we have the time to postpone research and pathfinder facilities even further. Solar and wind power have gotten to a point where the current solutions are already mostly commercially viable, so public money doesn't have to be spent on that. If a small portion of it is instead spent on CCS solutions it could significantly reduce the time to net-zero and then time to 1990s-levels of atmospheric CO2. Solar doesn't remove emissions from difficult to replace chemical processes, but (expensive) DAC can compensate this while other solutions are being explored.

We do need negative emissions, and the buildup of wind/solar is not that. DAC can be one solution, olivine weathering another, but ignoring the buildup of CO2 while rushing emission stops may still result in too much CO2 over too much time.

> And b) again it’s easier to “remove” CO2 from the atmosphere by not putting it there in the first place.

That doesn't solve the issue where we've already put in too much CO2 in the atmosphere.

Solar/wind are indeed competitive now, and would be even more competitive once countries get their act together and stop allowing fossil fuels to treat the atmosphere as a free sewer.

But take a look at this graph: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/60/US_Energ...

It's still 80% fossil fuel. Until those numbers reverse we are getting ahead of ourselves.

If a pipe bursts in your house you start by turning off the water, not by investing in a dehumidifier.

As for carbon capture right now, it’s fossil fuel shills: https://cleantechnica.com/2023/08/16/carbon-engineering-was-...

How about we stop creating false dichotomies of action, and take multiple paths to solve this existential crisis? I understand you are saying this is a smokescreen by the fossil fuel industry to avoid reducing emissions. You're probably right! But that doesn't mean this isn't a valuable and perhaps necessary complement to reducing emissions as well, and frankly if the fossil fuel industry can sequester enough carbon to offset their emissions then so be it (note: this won't happen).

More likely, I see this as a way to mitigate some of the past damage as we continue reducing our emissions with renewables. Ultimately we need to go net negative, and at the moment these marginal investments in the technology are worth exploring in my opinion.

This attitude is the attitude that kills movements like this. You sounds like a crazy guy on the street yelling about Jesus.

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