Carbon capture and storage is a fantasy
vox.com
vox.com
In practice it's so much harder to debunk these solutions because we don't have good ways of dealing with bad-faith actors.
The non-dismissive way to view Carbon Capture is this:
Carbon Capture will be relevant when we actually reach zero emissions, and not a minute sooner. Until then, it is at best, creative accounting that does nothing, and at worst actively preventing electrification.
The thought experiment I remember giving me clarity on this is: Imagine you have a solar plant that is fully dedicated to removing carbon from the atmosphere. 100 times out of 100, you would rather just stop the emissions at the source by making the emitter use the green energy.
Where does this mindset come from that this is necessary? There's no data to back this up.
OR that Carbon Capture is necessary when we reach it?
Zero emissions seems necessary to stop climate change escalating. Carbon Capture seems necessary when we get to Zero emissions to attempt to reverse course.
A carbon tax is regressive because it affects poor people much more than rich people. One way to fix that is to provide a progressive CO2 tax rebate. Based on your income, you get your theoretical carbon tax back; the amount decreases as income/wealth increases.
Given that sorry state of the existing facilities, we've committed a truly embarrassing amount of public funding to the tech. That said, my understanding is that we really could use a working form of carbon capture to make the math work around the edges of reduction targets. It's a bit of a double scam: where oil companies have diverted money away from developing a technology we actually need and also where we've diverted money away from areas that are much more important overall to invest in a scam.
Of course, the fossil fuel industry's idea of carrying on business as usual offset by carbon capture is a total delusion.
Yep, solutions involving austerity are a non-starter. In particular if you have no plan to help the third world develop beyond it's current state they will never cooperate with your ideology.
> reverse the damage wreaked over the past century.
We also accomplished quite a bit and cleaned and improved a lot of land over the last century.
> the fossil fuel industry's idea of carrying on business as usual
The business and all users of the product have changed significantly over the past several decades. New forms of energy are being developed and earnestly deployed. Progress is always slow. It's unlikely we will be finished in our lifetimes, but that's hardly any reason to abandon hope.
Developed countries should help developing countries leapfrog the fossil fuel stage. They should subsidize a massive buildout of solar, wind, geothermal, batteries, and some nuclear and hydro. Standing around pointing fingers doesn't help anyone.
> your ideology.
Not everything you disagree with is an "ideology".
> We also accomplished quite a bit and cleaned and improved a lot of land over the last century.
We also ruined and destroyed a lot of land over the last century. I love economic progress, modern comforts, and modern medicine. But let's honestly acknowledge it has had downsides.
Yes and food should be free. Why is this not happening then?
> Standing around pointing fingers doesn't help anyone.
Standing around and promulgating unworkable ideas is no better. This is a forum. We are here to discuss. If you want to "help anyone" you are in entirely the wrong place.
> Not everything you disagree with is an "ideology".
We can agree about the problems. The solutions are almost always ideological. My opposition is rooted in a different ideology. There's nothing wrong with this; however, trying to convince people to hamstring themselves for the sake of my ideas is likely to fail.
For what I hope are obvious reasons. I'm thinking of ways to actually solve the problem with realistic strategies. I tend to do this whenever the "climate doom and gloom" set come out of the woodwork and broadcast their hopeless message in a backwards effort to "look cool." The deep irony, of course, is they all do this from the developed world and probably have never been to the places I'm thinking of.
> We also ruined and destroyed a lot of land over the last century.
Obviously. There's no point in examining this outside of questioning "was it worth it?" To which I've clearly answered "yes, and I think you're a bit deluded if you insist otherwise."
Why should food be free? I didn't say that. However, aid for developing countries has been a thing for quite a while now. Why can't it be to promote clean energy?
Why isn't it happening? I assume politics and "ideology". Like for real this time.
> The solutions are almost always ideological
I still don't know what "ideological" means honestly. It sounds like you mean "pinko communist nonsense I don't agree with" which isn't a terribly rigorous definition.
> I'm thinking of ways to actually solve the problem with realistic strategies
Develop clean energy technology. Penalize carbon-emitting technology to incentivize adoption of clean tech. Subsidize clean energy technology for poorer countries. Unless "realistic" means "won't cost me a single penny personally", this is pretty damn realistic. Climate change is going to be expensive one way or another so let's do it the way that will minimize human suffering.
I'm reminded of a classic @dril tweet:
> drunk driving may kill a lot of people, but it also helps a lot of people get to work on time, so, it;s impossible to say if its bad or not,
It's bad. Even if they get to work they're drunk which is almost certainly not part of their working contract because nothing good can come from that.
Next time you see a refrigerated medication being delivered why don't you try to stop it because they're using petroleum. Or.. do you have no problem deciding if that's "good or not?"
Just cut all the other sources of carbon emission that can be replaced, like cars with batteries and hydroelectric plants for electricity.
Moreover, some kind of biodiesel may be the solution for "zero" emission airplanes, because liquid fuels are just very good for that application.
> In the limit, then, "there is no hope" anyway since it's a natural cycle
If it was merely a natural cycle we'd have much better odds of adapting because we'd have thousands of years.
> We either cope or we die, as a species
No doubt we'll need to adapt. Reducing carbon emissions and developing useful carbon capture improves the chances that large numbers of people don't die.
So when i saw this VOX article, i felt the need to post this here a la "told you so".
I am bullish on some kind of fuel-from-air technology gaining widespread adoption. Something to act as a sink to the increasingly glut of “free” renewable energy (assuming they can beat out the crypto miners). As far as I know, it is strictly a matter of price, there is no technological reason why it cannot work.
There is, however, a big thermodynamics reason: EROEI
It comes down to economics. Electricity is less valuable than a combustible fuel in several contexts.
And that overproduced solar is made using... petroleum.
The argument is very simple: we're basically just burning up oil with extra steps, then pretending the intermediate products can somehow undo the damage caused by burning up that oil (and now claiming that we're getting fuel back!) aka "extend and pretend"
We need to stop putting that carbon into the atmosphere, because the reality is that the process isn't reversible on human timescales. The only answer seems to be degrowth, but asking for negative GDP is basically heresy.
Not my math. Industry's math. And it's bonkers because "green products" have to sell, electric cars have to sell, etc. The economy has to keep growing. Big Line has to keep going up.
What doesn't sell, but might actually help us get out of this mess? Mass transit, dense subsidized housing, remote work, degrowth (negative GDP). None of this stuff sells, especially the last one.
>they can
I'm not arguing hypotheticals here
https://environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2023/7/3/solar-pa...
In fact ROI is more important to focus on, given solar panels last 20 years and the cost of installation is covered in 10 years, it will create profit for 10 (oversimplifying). Then the methane can be converted to LNG and transported by ship to Europe/US or somewhere else
Spreadsheets do not reflect the actual reality of our rapidly-heating planet and dying biosphere, though.
Alternatively some sort of world government or dictatorship would work too, but in democratic/capitalist society the problem wont get solved unless someone can make the moneys
Same energy as "yeah we got addicted to heroin, and the best way of getting out of this mess is to subsidize heroin so we can keep buying"
How about not putting that carbon into the atmosphere in the first place? Oops, that upsets The Big Line.
>democratic/capitalist
The fact that you put these words together with that symbol clearly demonstrates that you Just Don't Get It.
"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." — Upton Sinclair, probably
Trees, bogs, and permafrost are already super efficient at carbon capture. This is more of a culture/incentives problem than a technology problem.
Plant forests, cut them down, turn them into housing or whatever. Voila: carbon captured for the next 50 or so years. People would love to pay you for cheaper abundant lumber.
> Peatlands are the largest natural terrestrial carbon store. They store more carbon than all other vegetation types in the world combined. Damaged peatlands are a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, responsible for almost 5% of global anthropogenic CO2 emissions.
https://www.iucn.org/resources/issues-brief/peatlands-and-cl...
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/02/21/headway/peat-...
Also burning the stuff negates the carbon capture part.
The numbers don't work for using plants for sequestration. 1-3% of the world's land is urbanized, the rest is either already green or doesn't support extensive plant life. We can increase the green land area number, but not substantially.
We can release thousands of years worth of carbon sequestration in a peat bog in a few days by destroying the bogs. We don't have thousands of years to put it back.
The economics don't work for industrial sequestration. The numbers don't work for green sequestration. Our only choice is to stop putting the carbon into the atmosphere in the first place.
We could engineer these systems to be very aesthetically pleasing, with colorful 'leaves' and various types of cellulose layers of different colors and hardness. They'd be useful as shade structures, and they could also have other uses such as preventing soil erosion.
Might well prove to be a valuable resource for large scale energy production in a distant future!
The section titled ”Tree. You’ve invented a tree.” may be of interest to you.
Also the late David mackay has a great chapter in his book about this
I think overall it'd be cheaper to make fuels for ICE from air than to trash and rebuild every single vehicle. We probably need fusion energy to make that a reality though.