I’m not sure that we should write it off completely…
There’s a thing in Iceland that binds CO2 underground.
It’s pretty cool: https://www.carbfix.com/
Here’s the science behind it https://www.carbfix.com/scientific-papers
Hey, I think the tech has some promise, but my opinion is this: basing our goals and pledges to solve the climate crisis on technology that hasn’t yet proven itself is putting the cart before the horse.
We need to set the objective to stop the increase of emissions, and then we can also try out sucking carbon emissions out as we do that to help accelerate our fix to the climate problem.
Whether the tech works or not, fossil fuel companies as I see it, are just using it as a delay tactic to the world reducing its dependence on their business: by making the central issue something that will help, but not ultimately solve the problem.
The tech is in its kidsshoes, all this pushing for new technologies is almost like a hidden excuse for.continouing their fossil bullshit.
If you Google anything the first results are sponsored links.
…and that should tell you all you need to know.
It should be blatantly obvious just from basic thermodynamics that carbon capture cannot ever possibly be cheaper than not burning the fossil fuels in the first place.
Thermodynamics tells us it takes exactly as much to put the carbon back in as you got out of it by taking it out. So best case scenario we double the price of energy (which also means increasing the price of everything by a lot due to production costs increasing with higher energy costs) and capture as much carbon as we release.
However this is the real world and in the real world processes aren’t 100% efficient. Even a hyper efficient combustion engine is only like 40% efficient in converting the stored energy into a usable form. Our carbon capture techniques suck hard at the moment, but say we improve the tech. That means in the real world we would need to increase energy costs by 4-6 times. Which probably means increasing the pricing of everything by a factor of 10.
That shows just how unsustainable our current consume heavy economy actually is. And that is assuming we have a way of capturing carbon out of the atmosphere in a way that’s both efficient and long term. And do this in time before the processes we’ve set into motion spiral out of control.
And like you say, it puts into perspective how big of a win not releasing the carbon is.
So best case scenario we double the price of energy (which also means increasing the price of everything by a lot
This wouldn’t be wrong, because historicaly the price for polluting the environment and cleaning up the mess afterwards has never been priced in.
Geologist here. I work in Oil and Gas, but not for producers. Service side. We’ve helped with the geology of a handful of carbon capture injection wells this year. They get funded by the majors, but operated by someone else, and they drill them on site of a factory or plant that produces a lot of carbon. That way there is a local site to inject the carbon they capture as a by product od the industrial activity. Pretty cool stuff I’d you look past a quick internet search and make assumptions.
Out of curiosity, how long can we inject captured carbon underground for? Do we have a good estimation of the long-term ramifications?
Ever heard about trees Mr Techbro
Okay? And how are we supposed to deal with the emissions currently in the atmosphere? Even if we abandon all technologies that generate greenhouse gases overnight, we still have shit in the atmosphere warming the planet.
The most compelling strategy I’ve heard is biochar. You immolate organic matter in a medium like nitrogen so you don’t get carbon dioxide, and then you bury the char or use it as fertilizer. The char is relatively stable so shouldn’t create much in the way of carbon dioxide once it’s formed, and because you make it in an oxygen-less atmosphere you don’t get more greenhouse gases from making it.
Absolutely, I also think Biochar is very promising as one way to recapture atmospheric CO2 and to compensate further emissions.
While I understood the production process to be a little different, the benefits of Biochar can’t be ignored.
- low in energy consumption
- low in recourse cost
- very good scalable
- no hidden science or process
- the stored carbon can be used as a soil amendment
