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Comment by isaacfrond | Hacker News Reader

I guess the price of the CO2 butter is vastly higher than that of real butter. So this is probably not going to fly. But speaking more generally, the one thing I miss from CO2 capturing industry is that they have no kill-app so to say. They are mostly a cost center. Seeing stuff that you can actually do with captured CO2 is surely helpful.

I saw the same problem with recycled plastic. We had large plastic recycling plant here. It basically got its raw material free, yet it went bankrupt because companies prefer to buy new plastic which is both cheaper and more convenient. That way things never are going to change.

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> But speaking more generally, the one thing I miss from CO2 capturing industry is that they have no kill-app so to say. They are mostly a cost center

If you discount all externalities that is. Same as cleaning being a "cost centre", until you think what happens if nobody is there to clean, trash piles up, etc.

True, but with cleaning you see the price of not doing it very quickly.

With carbon capture, not so much.

I mean it's not quick, but everyone not brain dead can see weather getting more extreme and more unpredictable. And when you have basically scientific consensus that it's only going to get worse... it's pretty obvious what the ramifications will be. It's hard to estimate the costs, but massive would be an understatement.

Renewable energy, and particularly _wind_ energy, pose a weird new economic question; what if energy is sometimes free (or indeed has a small negative cost; it's generally cheaper to overproduce than to halt the turbines, if you can sink the overproduction somewhere), but you can't control when that happens, or even predict with high accuracy when that happens? We can expect to see a lot more things trying to answer that question.

"The big challenge is to drive down the price so that products like Savor’s become affordable to the masses – either the same cost as animal fats or less," Gates wrote. "Savor has a good chance of success here, because the key steps of their fat-production process already work in other industries."

So it seems they're onto the price problem already. If they can bring the price down fast enough, maybe there's a chance for this product.

They might have a chance too.

There are plenty of ways of making edible fats from crude oil, but it is generally not allowed by governments (hard to make it pure enough to be safe, protectionism by the food industry).

However, CO2 derived fats are much harder to argue against. That makes this one of the places where something that makes little thermodynamic sense might actually make financial sense nonetheless.

This strategy is called CCUS (Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Storage), as opposed to CCS (without the U). As someone who as previously worked in the field, I think it’s a bad idea.

Carbon capture is expensive. Even if you capture at concentrated point sources like power plants or factories, and capture only between 80-95% of the emitted CO2, it’s still quite expensive (e.g. natural gas power can be roughly 25% more expensive when you add carbon capture), and it’s already hard enough to build the capture capacity that we would need to make an impact on global warming.

The goal of paying for all that should be to remove those emissions from the world, whereas most utilization processes end up with some or all of that CO2 in the atmosphere in the end. In which case you have wasted energy and money while not saving the environment.

Yes but if you generate food from plant emissions that reduces demand for livestock, the net production of CO2 drops, in theory.

Your concerns make a ton of sense for some CCUS cases though.

Sure – but I’m willing to bet that we can make butter far more efficiently by cutting out CO2 as a middle man, and e.g. utilizing plant waste more directly in a chemical plant.

To be clear: I’m not saying that all research on CO2 utilization is wasted. I’m all for e.g. research into CO2 as a heat pump refrigerant, or feeding CO2 from composting into green houses.

But the moment you want to use either industrial CO2 or direct air capture for something else then offsetting global warming, then I think it’s a bad idea.

Interesting, thanks for clarifying. I'm inclined to agree, though I think the world has a place for both types of technology.

It can still work in developing countries where the cost of switching is lower due to the "newer" things not being present yet. Think of fiber lines being laid out first in some areas, so they have a better connectivity than some first-world places. Same with payment systems. China and India are arguably a lot better with payments because they simply skipped the credit card phase. You can literally pay a street vendor in India through a QR code.

> China and India are arguably a lot better with payments because they simply skipped the credit card phase. You can literally pay a street vendor in India through a QR code.

I'm not sure I'd say they're "a lot better". Better than the ridiculous US signing a paper bill, yes, but the US is not the standard, they're decades behind it. They use paper cheques ffs! In most of the EU contactless payments that work by card or phone over NFC with well supported/integrated app that work all the same regardless of your bank or exact method of payment sounds much better to me than needing a separate app for the payment provider in question, having to open it to scan a QR code.

My current payment flow is I take out my phone, unlock it, tap; or if I don't have my phone / battery is dead, I take out my card, tap it. Having to have a phone, unlock, open a specific app, scan a QR code (muck with light, angle, focus, etc.) and then fill payment details sounds much worse UX.

I wasn't necessarily talking about the US, although I see how you can come to that conclusion. I'm more talking about some other, very developed countries like Germany, in which most vendors don't even accept "normal" debit/credit cards. It's mostly cash only, or a "girocard" which is a German domestic card type. In other countries, I agree that NFC payments made it simpler, although moving money between B2C users is still a bit lacking.

Still can't do peer to peer pay transfers, still need a bank account, still need to apply for a physical card, still need to pay high transaction fees, still need to fill out credit card information when shopping online, no way to list who is authorized to charge your card and revoke their access, still need a costly terminal to accept payments, etc.

Having used both systems, I'd say WeChat and Alipay's payment systems are vastly superior to credit cards in terms of UX.

You're still comparing with the American banking system, not the EU which I was talking about.

> Still can't do peer to peer pay transfers

SEPA is free and easy to use.

> still need a bank account, still need to apply for a physical card

Both of which can be had for free.

> still need to pay high transaction fees

What high transaction fees? 0.2% isn't high for all the infrastructure involved.

> no way to list who is authorized to charge your card

Yep, but authorizations online require MFA, so that's really not a big problem.

> still need a costly terminal to accept payments

Nope, there a bunch of startups such as SumUp with very affordable terminals.

> [...] than needing a separate app for the payment provider in question, having to open it to scan a QR code.

At least for WeChat/Alipay, the apps integrate with banks. You can also provide your own QR code for payment which gets scanned. The flow is then unlock your phone, show the QR code. There also isn't a step to fill payment details (unless you are comparing to some imaginary payment system).

> much worse UX

Presenting a QR code, opening a scanner, or bringing out the NFC payment UI are all single step operations. (unless you want to manually open the apple wallet app instead of using the double click function, for example.) I don't think you are being fair here. NFC payment has its own problems: you have to line up the devices, which means moving very close to the payment terminal. Often different terminals have different areas to line up. The scanning flow is superior as there is much greater margin of error in positioning and you can pay from a greater distance.

If you bring a bunch of cards instead of having a charged phone, that's a preference but not a UX improvement.

> SEPA is free and easy to use.

Yes, and you will have to have a phone, unlock, open a specific app, fill in payment details.

> The scanning flow is superior as there is much greater margin of error in positioning and you can pay from a greater distance.

True. Some giant screens (e.g. in clubs) in China have a QR code that you can scan and pay to have your message displayed on the screen. Also many restaurants simply stick a QR code on the table for payment. No need for a waiter to carry a terminal. You just scan it when you are ready to pay and leave.

> SEPA is free and easy to use.

Really? Then why do merchants use card terminals at all then?

You want to give a homeless person money on the street, how does the SEPA payment flow look like?

> still need a bank account, still need to apply for a physical card

Free but time consuming. Typically needs to be done in person and requires waiting in line.

> still need to pay high transaction fees

Fees are closer to 1% or more for credit cards.

> no way to list who is authorized to charge your card

It's a problem if you forget who has your credit card info and it's often a hassle to "unsubscribe" yourself. Sometimes, the only way is to call your card's customer service.

> Nope, there a bunch of startups such as SumUp with very affordable terminals.

"A standard fee of 1.69% per transaction applies for all our card readers."

I feel like you just haven't used WeChat/Alipay enough to realize how better it is from a UX point of view. It's really obvious to anyone who has used both systems extensively.

> Really? Then why do merchants use card terminals at all then?

Because it's easier, faster, and has more protections/provisions for payments.

> Free but time consuming. Typically needs to be done in person and requires waiting in line.

There have been fully online banks for around a decade now in most EU countries.

> I feel like you just haven't used WeChat/Alipay enough to realize how better it is from a UX point of view

I haven't no, but none of your arguments are anything about the UX itself. It still sucks, comparatively, to have to open an app, click a button, scan a QR code, and then type information vs just tapping a card/watch/phone with the payment information pre-filled.

The fact that fees might be lower, there might be better b2c and c2c support, etc etc are irrelevant to how bad the UX at the point of use is.

The reality in Europe is that I had recently needed to stop visiting one particular restaurant where their terminal was not working with my card. Both terminal and card from the same country. Neither contactless or entering the card worked. Never had that experience ever since, or before that. Both the terminal and the card worked, separately, just not together, at the same time.

This is not "the reality in Europe", it's a singular anecdote with one bad terminal/card/bank/network.

Scanning a venmo qr code with my phone is not an improvement.

The most profitable thing you can do with captured carbon is probably either burning it or turning it into plastic. The problem is that it is orders of magnitude cheaper to pump carbon from the ground instead of capturing it from the air. The second problem is that burning the captured carbon is forbidden if you want to use carbon capture to reverse global warming.

>yet it went bankrupt because companies prefer to buy new plastic which is both cheaper and more convenient.

I would say that should make plastic recyclers a fair target for government subsidies since they're not making a financial profit, but are a net social benefit.

I would say the issue is more it's not a real butter, because it could be sold cheap as a byproduct of the process

> yet it went bankrupt because companies prefer to buy new plastic which is both cheaper and more convenient. That way things never are going to change.

Well, about that example:

1. Obligatory first point: This is an example of a systematic problem of capitalism, which by default promotes (corporate) profit seeking over other considerations and interests, making it difficult to achieve them.

2. The state could have, theoretically, taxed the purchase of new plastic products, and/or given tax benefits for switching from new-plastic to recycled-plastic, reversing the "cheaper" incentive.

3. There are uses of recycled plastic where new plastic is just, well, just note used (probably because it provides no benefit). Example: Bricks for the construction industry:

https://plaex.ca/about-plaex-building-systems-mortarless-int...

caveat: Have not researched that extensively

4. Quality of recycled plastic can be improved significantly by a combination of sorting and contaminant removal; and it seems that even with these actions, it might be cheaper - on the market as it exists now - than virgin plastic production. There's a paper by McKinsey on this matter:

https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/chemicals/our-insights/b...

Synthetic fuels are a killer app. Especially for transport and home heating (where we have storage and delivery infrastructure nicely worked out).

Like you say, price is an issue, but we could opt into it as a society by restricting use of extracted hydrocarbons.

I don't know how it's working, but I imagine a "killer app" could be in space stations by capturing CO2 emitted by astronauts and produce stuff.

> in space stations by capturing CO2 emitted by astronauts and produce stuff

You mean all ten of them?

https://www.howmanypeopleareinspacerightnow.com/

Thanks for that link ^^ I looked a little bit into the numbers [0] and mostly [1], and it's something around 1 kg of CO2/day/person. According to the guardian [2], with water, electricity, ammonia, nutrients and 2 kgs of CO2, you can make 1 kg of some kind of food replacing the meat. I don't say it's easy to do but maybe it's worth exploring to lower the quantity of food astronauts need to bring with them to space.

[0] : https://www.researchgate.net/post/How-much-will-be-the-human... [1] : https://8billiontrees.com/carbon-offsets-credits/how-much-co... [2] : https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/dec/05/carbon-d...

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