Carbon capture tech a 'complete falsehood', says Fortescue Metals chairman | Hacker News Reader

Carbon capture tech a 'complete falsehood', says Fortescue Metals chairman

reuters.com

56 pointsthelastgallon73 comments

It should be noted that Fortescue Metals is not some disinterested third party here. They have a massive stake in green hydrogen production (see their FFI division).

Hydrocarbons (not necessarily from fossil fuels, see https://prometheusfuels.com/) + DAC are one proposed alternative to green hydrogen for powering industries (such as mining) where batteries are not a good option. I know experts who believe this is more viable.

I still agree with him that DAC can't be used as an excuse to keep emitting.

Synthetic hydrocarbon fuels depend on both green hydrogen and DAC. So green hydrogen would be needed anyway. The only question is whether you build infrastructure with the goal of using hydrogen directly or not.

Synthetic hydrocarbons would likely not use much of FMG's hydrogen technologies: membranes, hydrogen liquidification, hydrogen vehicles, etc.

It should also be noted that many of the most vociferous advocates of CCS are of or aligned with the fossil fuels industry, whether direct producers or major consumers, particularly electric utilities (especially those reliant on coal), and hard-to-substitute activities such as air and marine shipping.

For the latter, petroleum-analogue synfuels seem to me a far more viable option, along with a shifted economics (higher cost curve) of the sector --- air travel and long-distance shipping are likely to be rather more expensive by and by.

This video[1] gives a good perspective on where carbon capture solution fits from an economic standpoint. The summary is that it’s highly infeasible now but if we got to a point where putting a price of $250/ton CO2 was possible then it could make sense.

Right now there’s a lot of other things we can do to make the biggest impact for a lot less cost but we need to be in the research phase for these kinds of things so that once they’re necessary/useful we’ll have the tech to do it.

1: https://youtu.be/1dRgCsZ1q7g

It's challenging to discuss carbon capture because people can mean two different things.

The article is discussing decarbonizing emissions at the source, such as capturing the emissions of a factory smoke stack before it goes anywhere.

The video you've linked (at just a quick peek) discusses direct air capture — pulling CO2 out of the open air.

I have done some reading on carbon capture and so far I find it hard to believe any of these technologies can be scaled up to even remotely the level needed to make a difference. And if we scale up to that level we sit on enormous amounts of carbon that need to be sequestered somehow without causing other massive problems.

IMO it's the storage part that isn't scalable, I think we're going to figure out how to scale the capture part because IMO it's the most viable way to get carbon-neutral aviation and rockets. Capture carbon, combine with green hydrogen to synthesize methane for rockets and kerosene for jets.

IMHO it doesn't pass the thermodynamic sniff test. It would be better to spend energy displacing fossil fuel generation than to spend energy capturing carbon.

The only way I can see this changing is if we developed something like cheap efficient fusion reactors that allowed us to just burn energy with contempt. In that world carbon capture might make sense as a way to blunt climate change.

I agree with this. It could only make sense where there is abundant almost free energy. But now people just mine crypto in those places.

Carbon capture needs to pay better than mining crypto or it won’t happen.

Too bad nobody in the "innovative" crypto sector has come up with a Proof-of-Carbon-Capture coin.

Oh don't worry, they did, several times. It went predictably. Here's one very stupid white paper. [1]

[1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2107.00185.pdf

As usual, a crypo white paper is indistinguishable from parody

It's been tried at least in theory but blockchains are only REALLY good at keeping track of purely digital things that happen within their chain. Outside of that they're at the mercy of people putting bad data into them. Conceptually how would that reward system even work? It would have to rely on real world auditors to validate that the carbon sinking was actually being performed (and working).

A somewhat related notion, a carbon coin, is a key plot point in Kim Stanley Robinson's Ministry for the Future.

> if we developed something like cheap efficient fusion reactors that allowed us to just burn energy with contempt

All problems humanity faces are energy problems. With sufficiently cheap and abundant energy, we can work through anything.

There's maybe a niche for it where our energy storage ability can't use all the renewables produced at a given time so we use the excess to run carbon capture facilities. Right now the times where there's >100% power demand for renewables is fairly rare though.

In that world, I suspect people will find other uses for very cheap energy.

I mean if my (cold) town had free energy even a few days per year, I'd just fit a heater on every street light and turn them on whenever energy was free so we could have 'warm streets' days.

Are we talking about carbon capture (like from the smokestack of a coal plant)? Or carbon sequestration, where we pull it out of the air?

The latter probably makes sense even at high energy cost... it makes a climate crisis reversible rather than just slowable. The former seems rather more suspect even with cheap fusion. What do you even do with the carbon, once captured? You can't turn it into a solid... that would be the coal you just burned. And while it might be capturable as a gas, how would one go about storing it safely?

Capture and sequestration go hand in hand - you first have to capture the carbon to sequester it. It will obviously always be more efficient to capture carbon at the source of the emissions (e.g. a smokestack) where it is highly concentrated than to pull it out of the air..

There are other methods of sequestration that may be better than carbon capture. Rock weathering is the main one, where dump crushed olivine rock into the oceans where it picks up the dissolved CO2. This has advantage that uses known technology and scales well. It also locks CO2 into rock instead of worrying about where to put the captured CO2.

It's usually talked about in broader contexts. There are some fuel modes (air travel being the really obvious one) that aren't ever going to be non-combustion. You have to put carbon into the upper atmosphere to move people in jetliners, period.

So solutions would involve either synthesizing carbon-neutral fuel, or burning petroleum and offsetting it by putting the same amount of carbon back into the ground somewhere else. There's a reasonably strong argument that the latter is more energy-efficient. But it's all infant tech and no one really knows.

Seems like a bit of a reductionistic bait/soundbite.

Obviously the tech isn't there yet, but when we find a (fast) way turn CO2 back into gasoline that will both allow all existing technologies to go green and also give us a good recapture path (pump it back down into the wells).

> [W]hen we find a (fast) way turn CO2 back into gasoline

The more salient point than fast is cheap, preferably something with a net profit, which seems... unlikely.

Even in the best case, doing this requires at least as much energy as was released by burning the gasoline. But more likely 2-3x as much energy. It's far more energy efficient to prevent the emissions in the first place. Burning the captured gasoline again would be extremely foolish.

We might well reach a point with solar + wind where we have massive gluts of power we can't do anything with and can't store. Even energy inefficient processes like the one you describe might become viable especially if it effectively creates a storable energy source.

Terraform industries

I'm also sceptic of CO2 to gasoline for this reason. The only reason why petrol engine work at all is because gasoline contains a tremendous amount of energy, otherwise their efficiency sucks and the vast majority of this energy is wasted.

If we want to do the reverse operation, we don't have the luxury of just spending the wasted part though, we have to spend all of this energy.

CO2 to fuel only works for special cases where batteries are infeasible due to weight of the batteries like a plane or weight of a vehicle like large industrial equipment, trains, and ships.

Yes that's basically it, it's a last resort option because the production uses way too much energy.

> when

Whether it actually will is still a question of hope. Pretty damned far-fetched hope in terms of net-negative CO2 production from my admittedly limited understanding, especially if we cannot find a way to agree collectively to reduce carbon emissions.

This is not a matter of technology, this is the first law of thermodynamics. CO2 to gasoline will be a very energy intensive process and more expensive than preventing the CO2 in the first place.

But that goes back to technology and systems again. It is possible that this could be done efficiently during the day using solar, thus minimizing the impact of the energy requirement.

It is also important to be careful about framing the intent. Carbon capture does not make continued emissions okay, but might conceivably help to minimize emissions that occur during transition.

> It is possible that this could be done efficiently during the day using solar, thus minimizing the impact of the energy requirement.

No! It is not possible. It will always be more efficient to use the solar power directly to reduce CO2 emitters (like coal plants), because that skips the losses the CO2-emitting and CO2-capturing mechanisms will have.

Sure, but we've reached the limit of arguing in absolutes once we're there.

Due to the enormity of the physical work involved, we don't expect to have solar/wind/nuclear/hydrogen/whatever at 100% of the energy grid for many years to come.

In the meantime, cracking open limestone to make it absorb carbon is a good idea.*

We cannot redeploy literally everyone into making solar panels and building nuclear plants, therefore there is a relative gain to be made by switching at least some people from $UNRELATED_JOB_X to carbon capture.

* Worth mentioning: carbon capture doesn't require enormous amounts of electricity or really any significant amount of energy at all AFAIK - crack rocks, when rocks full, put somewhere.

How much cracked limestone do you need to offset a coal plant?

Given in terms of mass of substance to mass of carbon

Limestone needs 2.3

Basalt 6

nothing on seaweed, unfortch

(source: https://www.economist.com/special-report/2023/11/20/carbon-d..., stick archive.is in front if you need to, I feel bad doing that directly as a customer)

> Due to the enormity of the physical work involved, we don't expect to have solar/wind/nuclear/hydrogen/whatever at 100% of the energy grid for many years to come.

My local utility sent me a message last year: they generated more power from wind than all customers total used. All it took was building windfarms all across Iowa, and they are still building more (I assume to sell to Chicago or Minneapolis, but I don't know how the grid is connected)

Sure there are times when the wind isn't blowing. However there is a lot of time when it is blowing, and most of the world isn't even 100% wind during those time. Get busy building instead of being defeatists or pointing out the times wind doesn't blow - those times are why you keep the old power plants operational. (though battery storage should be investigated)

Just getting todays low hanging fruit: Wind powered grid, and replacing cars with EVs would make a massive difference. Then we can start talking about other uses of energy, but between electric and cars we have covered most energy uses and those are ready to be fixed today, with today's technology.

> No! It is not possible.

That's really aggressive.

> It will always be more efficient to use the solar power directly to reduce CO2 emitters (like coal plants)

Until you run out of coal plants. Then it stops being "always".

There are uses where it's very hard to switch to batteries, to the extent that it's easier to make biofuel or synthetic fuel.

> Until you run out of coal plants. Then it stops being "always".

Then you continue with, as i called them, other "CO2 emitters". Like cars or concrete production.

It may turn out that it's cheaper and easier to just pull it out of the air than rebuild every single chemical reaction that produces CO2 (such as heating limestone in the creation of concrete).

You should capture the carbon at the source for concrete production.

But airplanes are an example where producing fuel seems like a pretty good option.

We're going to need significant amounts of storable liquid hydrocarbon fuels to operate long-range transportation. Most of aviation, shipping, and military activities can never be fully electrified. We'll have to figure out how to manufacture those fuels with minimal net CO2 emissions.

Yes instead of battery storage you have hydrocarbon storage.

This isn't a technology or material science or anything problem, this is a reality problem. In reality, you cannot make an energy dense anything without expending at least that amount of energy. "Fuel" like gasoline is nothing more then a chemical battery, and if you want to remake that chemical battery, you literally have to inject enough energy to form the chemical bonds involved.

I would say the second law is more relevant; if you want to reduce entropy in one part of a system, you have to expend an equivalent or greater amount of free energy elsewhere.

Capturing carbon is super easy, barely an inconvenience. Just partially burn wood to make charcoal. Done.

The difficult part is to convince people not to use the charcoal as fuel.

> allow all existing technologies to go green and also give us a good recapture path

Problem is that even if you could do carbon capture for zero energy cost and convert it back to gasoline at 100% efficiency (hint: neither of these things are remotely likely), you still will use more energy to power your ship/plane/miner/truck than an electric version of the same.

It therefore only makes sense for use cases where the energy cost is negligible.

Gasoline (or more likely diesel) is so much more energy dense than a battery that is makes sense to do this even with low efficiency just so that we can operate things distance from a grid connection. Ocean shipping for example (though nuclear would work if we could convince the world to allow it). It is questionable if farming can even be done via batteries. Long distance semi shipping also is questionable (though putting them on a train powered by overhead wires is technology that was mature over 100 years ago and should be preferred - how to get the freight railroads to do their jobs better though I don't know)

We already know how to turn CO2 back into Gasoline. The Germans were doing doing this at scale in WWII since they couldn't get oil. (they were using Coal as a carbon source, but CO2 instead is trivial). South Africa has also done this at scale in the past to get around embargo (again I think they used Coal for carbon). The process is also a minor variation on synthetic motor oil which the US produces it quanity (using natural gas to supply the carbon).

The problem is cost - oil from the ground is a lot cheaper than trying to manufacture it from other sources, and while there is some room for improvement smart engineers have been working on the problem for decades. If they haven't found a solution yet it seems unlikely it can be solved.

> Australia's Fortescue is a major iron ore producer

Basically: "Executive of regulated company doesn't want to be regulated". The incentives don't line up here to take this on faith (no reasoning was given, really, it's not a tech article) like the article does. He's not an expert witness, he's a player with an agenda.

That doesn't mean he's wrong. CCS is absolutely an unsolved problem and all emerging technologies involve risk. But all he's saying here is that CCS is going to impact his business, he doesn't like that, and he'd prefer government try to solve the problem by impacting someone else's business instead.

Australia’s regulatory environment is such that resources companies are nowhere near the point where they need to publicly kick up a fuss to influence government policy. They are more than capable of doing that in private. Twiggy is very much the ‘odd one out’ here in making any sort of public statement about…pretty much anything…ever.

> he's a player with an agenda.

His agenda is REAL Zero Carbon.

Yes he is a ruthless businessman and all businesses want to make profit. He has decided to turn his ruthlessness to improving the planet and the investors pockets at the same time.

How else in a capitalist world is it going to get done? There is not magic wand to wave, there is just economics. He at least is putting his money where his mouth is, to the extent that he's ordered his company to stop claiming diesel tax credits. this alone is worth hundreds of millions a year. He's making Fortescue find green energy ways to do it better and cheaper. money where his mouth is.

Carbon capture devices otherwise known as trees... sigh...

Yes, but also no. If we were still burning fuels derived entirely from plants that we re-grew, it would be a closed loop. But we're digging oil out of the ground and burning it, and also not planting trees, so we're kinda burning the candle at both ends there.

You couldn't plant enough trees to make up for digging coal and oil out of the ground and burning it -- especially since mature forests aren't just carbon sinks. They reach an equilibrium where they're carbon neutral as the decay of wood and leaves releases carbon into the atmosphere.

Don't get me wrong, trees are good, and reforestation helps, but it's more of an umbrella in a hurricane type thing. You'd have to plant trees, chop them down then sequester them geologically somehow to actually make a carbon sink.

[1] https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/why-dont-we-just-plant-lot-t...

> chop them down then sequester them geologically somehow to actually make a carbon sink.

And I suspect if you did that at vast scales, you'd soon start running out of other elements like phosphorus that trees need to grow.

Charcoal doesn't really decay and leaves the soil fertile. So it seems like it should work. Making charcoal is a lot of pollution though.

> Charcoal doesn't really decay

I've often wondered why not... Charcoal must have existed for millennia, and is effectively 'free energy', yet no bacteria have learned how to break it down.

Only if they don't decompose, and only while they are growing.

Trees only prove the concept can work, not that they are the most efficient system to do it.

Do you have a few million square miles of land spare to put the trees on?

If not then stop sighing, it's not that simple.

I'm not saying that the grandparent poster has the right of it, but this is a bizarre objection. Brazil had about a million more square miles of rainforest just four years ago. I'm sure that across the entire planet we could, yanno. Scrounge something up.

We can and should plant lots of trees.

But it's not going to grab very much carbon in the long run unless we find some new empty continents.

The genesplitters need to brew up some skyscraper-sized bamboo, toot sweet, and grow it everywhere. Seriously man, make low income housing in that s#!t. Although, <disappointed_sound/>, it's more likely to be gigantic gengineered algae in tanks, recirculating constantly. Imagine the smell. "Welcome to Saviour Pit Number 1,232". Maybe it can make tasty goop.

I have a bad feeling the Overlords will just keep on keepin' on 'til thirsty countries start hawkin' nukes at each other. Eventually some bright spark Snowpiercers the whole joint trying to stabilize it. Nuclear winter doesn't solve warming any better than jumping in an ice bath cures you of the flu . . but it does knock out a good chunk of your photosynthetic surface. Please, please someone tell Musk and the rest of the techno-aryans to do the space parasol thing, and not the "eternal fog cloud" thing. One you can turn off, which seems like a nice feature.

Notice how much I bring up "unproved future technology" here. Aside from the nukes. It's not really my style, but here we all are. It's a little sad, but Prager U got mad funds. The only solace is that their ex-Blackwater/Xe/Academi security will waste zero time putting a round in the backs of their heads and claiming the Bunker Fiefdom for themselves. What? You think a frickin' ex-Delta guy isn't going to see the writing on the wall? Ever seen Dark Knight Returns? Remember Tom Hardy in that? Yeah. That.

What about trees!

What about them?

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