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Carbon Removal Technologies

carbon.ycombinator.com

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Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#441

Post by strainer »

bbojan wrote: post #283
gustaf wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is Gustaf from YC. I wrote the first Carbon Removal RFS. Planting tree is actually a great carbon removal technology. Unfortunately most forest owners in the world don't know or don't have incentive to care the about the carbon impact the forest have on the climate. Biggest reason forests are taken down is to grow cattle for beef. If you are working on a startup to reverse this we'd like to fund it too

Grassland, if properly managed, can sequester more carbon than a forest. This is related to the (unintuitive) fact that grasses are more efficient producers of organic matter than trees. Joel Salatin has done some great work related to this and collected decades worth of data. So the irony is that we could grow more beef and pull carbon out of the air at the same time, only if we cared. But we don't, it's easier to s…

Grassland does not tend to develop soil, so if employed in feeding cattle, the cattle is where the carbon is "sequestered" to - into and through them, out the rear end. If the grass is cut and harvested (at some expense) instead of fed to cattle, then we get a lot of carbon negative hay to do something with. Bury it maybe (to sequester) or biofuels (to release again).

With traditional timber plantations we get the carbon in a load of timber mostly. Build with some of it, pulp and burn the rest. Timber plantations tend not to build soil either.

With relatively unheard of silviculture - the detailed management of mixed forest, the optimum efficiency of carbon absorption can be arranged with select and native symbiotic species, while producing wood and foods and building soil mass. In addition to economic (and atmospheric) services advanced management of mixed forestry and groves can tolerate and support ancient plant and animal species - for future generations - which have been critically devastated by the persistent strategy of individuating production goals.

We don't need to get any smarter at all, we need to get wiser. There is plenty enough grassland now, its time to grow trees.

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#442

Post by gustaf »

state_less wrote: post #438
gustaf wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Carbon Engineering and Climeworks are two incredible companies working on Direct Air capture and Air-to-Fuel and we'd like to fund more companies like them. There are less than 5 companies worldwide that are serious about getting Direct Air Capture to scale. The world need more bets that that on such a promising technology

You could put compressors next to windmills so that on days there is too much wind, you could start up the compressors and make dry ice, liquid nitrogen or some liquid air feed stock. Cheap energy seems like the key ingredient. The compressor equipment to do the task seems within reach. One could reverse the process and feed the air (de)compressor gas to make energy on low wind days. I'd be interested to know what th…

Yes, you are correct. Cheap energy is the main input to Direct-Air-Capture. Overflow energy from Solar and Wind is a great source of that.

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#443

Post by gustaf »

dharma1 wrote: post #216
gustaf wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Carbon Engineering and Climeworks are two incredible companies working on Direct Air capture and Air-to-Fuel and we'd like to fund more companies like them. There are less than 5 companies worldwide that are serious about getting Direct Air Capture to scale. The world need more bets that that on such a promising technology

If Carbon Engineering can really scale (and they can reduce costs to below $100 / tonne of CO2) - why not just pour money into them?

People are. But that's just one bet. There are lots of components in the ecosystem needed to make everything succeed

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#444

Post by DTrejo »

wdewind wrote: post #334
bbojan wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grassland, if properly managed, can sequester more carbon than a forest. This is related to the (unintuitive) fact that grasses are more efficient producers of organic matter than trees. Joel Salatin has done some great work related to this and collected decades worth of data. So the irony is that we could grow more beef and pull carbon out of the air at the same time, only if we cared. But we don't, it's easier to s…

> So the irony is that we could grow more beef and pull carbon out of the air at the same time, only if we cared. I want this desperately to be true as someone who loves meat but everything I've read tells me it's not. There is definitely a nice symbiotic relationship that exists between cows grazing and grasslands but it is significantly more expensive to raise animals this way, and you can raise significantly fewer…

Salatin’s mob grazing creates soil.

It is cheaper to raise them this way because you don’t need to buy corn feed.

The cows digest grass well. They do not digest corn well, which means corn fed cows produce methane and get sick, and don’t build the soil (sequestering carbon).

Definitely worth watching some YouTube videos and reading about it, it’s pretty fun and interesting.

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#445

Post by gustaf »

aoner wrote: post #202
gustaf wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Carbon Engineering and Climeworks are two incredible companies working on Direct Air capture and Air-to-Fuel and we'd like to fund more companies like them. There are less than 5 companies worldwide that are serious about getting Direct Air Capture to scale. The world need more bets that that on such a promising technology

Hi Gustaf, I read earlier that you are more interested in Direct Air Capture technologies than others. Do you have any specific reasons? I think another way we could look at things is finding "cheap" forms of carbon that would have otherwise been burned/left to rot and reprocess those into building materials.

The reason I'm so interested in Direct Air Capture is:

- It's primarily a tech solution which allows for scale. If you build one Machine you can build a million. It won't actually require very much space, it need access to cheap energy and abilities to store/sequester the CO2 captured.

- Technology have the benefit that can be optimized and optimized and optimized to the point where the cost is not very high. The less tech the less changes for optimization

- There is a big risk many countries won't meet their responsibility. Getting wealthy democracies onboard is hard enough. We need a scalable way to solve this that doesn't require everyone to help because they prob won't after all

- Any negative emission solution that requires a large land-mass will create other problems (dealing with land-owners etc).

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#446

Post by AtlasBarfed »

greglindahl wrote: post #416
intended wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes or they don’t work. I’ve spent way to much time as lay man trying to penetrate Econ speak to get the issue, but the crux seems to be this: Currently markets and goods don’t price the cost of economic damage into products. So plastics are cheap as hell because they don’t reflect clean up costs. This means we have plastic straws which are so cheap on a per unit basis, that you can sell 100s in a single bundle. Sara…

So if I buy a car that has much better gas mileage, my quality of life is lowered? If I buy a product that has less packaging, so there's less waste, my quality of life is lowered? If I take up bicycling, and as a result drive less, is my quality of life lowered? If the hotel I stay at starts using containers of soap instead of single-use packets, is my quality of life lowered?

1) a car that truly gets fantastic gas mileage is small and aerodynamic to the point it loses many practical features of a traditional car

2) If the packaging results in greater spoilage, reduces stimulated demand, or is more expensive to produce than cheap plastic

3) more time to do things, less ability to transport equipment and goods

4) you're being moronic at this point

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#447

Post by cagenut »

wdewind wrote: post #334
bbojan wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grassland, if properly managed, can sequester more carbon than a forest. This is related to the (unintuitive) fact that grasses are more efficient producers of organic matter than trees. Joel Salatin has done some great work related to this and collected decades worth of data. So the irony is that we could grow more beef and pull carbon out of the air at the same time, only if we cared. But we don't, it's easier to s…

> So the irony is that we could grow more beef and pull carbon out of the air at the same time, only if we cared. I want this desperately to be true as someone who loves meat but everything I've read tells me it's not. There is definitely a nice symbiotic relationship that exists between cows grazing and grasslands but it is significantly more expensive to raise animals this way, and you can raise significantly fewer…

no the main issue with cows is land-use (the thread topic here), methane is just another way they're really terrible. its a hell of a one-two punch.

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#448

Post by wdewind »

DTrejo wrote: post #444
wdewind wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So the irony is that we could grow more beef and pull carbon out of the air at the same time, only if we cared. I want this desperately to be true as someone who loves meat but everything I've read tells me it's not. There is definitely a nice symbiotic relationship that exists between cows grazing and grasslands but it is significantly more expensive to raise animals this way, and you can raise significantly fewer…

Salatin’s mob grazing creates soil. It is cheaper to raise them this way because you don’t need to buy corn feed. The cows digest grass well. They do not digest corn well, which means corn fed cows produce methane and get sick, and don’t build the soil (sequestering carbon). Definitely worth watching some YouTube videos and reading about it, it’s pretty fun and interesting.

The problem with mob grazing (and really any kind of similar system) is that you cannot support nearly as many animals per sq ft. in comparison to more industrialized farming.

Salatin's solution is to shift a major portion of the work force/economy into making sustainable food. It sounds amazing from a utopian standpoint but is a total fantasy.

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#449

Post by astrodust »

agumonkey wrote: post #326
philipkglass wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To stay below 2 degrees of warming via CO2 curtailment alone, serious curtailment would have had to start a generation ago. I wish that we had acted with urgency then, but we didn't. Now we need curtailment and active interventions.

Think about it, a generation ago the ozone layer was the most we did. The rest was impossibly deep in humanity subconscious. And to add the club of rome report came out before most of us were even born...

I still can't believe that ozone depleting CFCs and putting toxic lead in gasoline were the the inventions of the same guy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Midgley_Jr.

Given more time I'm sure he would have come up with other world destroying chemicals.

Re: Carbon Removal Technologies

#450

Post by plierhead »

antt wrote: post #389
gustaf wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is Gustaf from YC. I wrote the first Carbon Removal RFS. Planting tree is actually a great carbon removal technology. Unfortunately most forest owners in the world don't know or don't have incentive to care the about the carbon impact the forest have on the climate. Biggest reason forests are taken down is to grow cattle for beef. If you are working on a startup to reverse this we'd like to fund it too

I've read through the prospectus and seems like it's only for US based companies. I'm in Australia and the geology of the Tasmania/South Victoria region is the best in the world for carbon capture using trees. Specifically it's the native habitat of the Tasmanian blue gum, the worlds fastest growing tree, and here it grows between 20-100% faster than anywhere else. Is there any option for having non-US startups funde…

I'm in New Zealand and trees grow here like weeds. A hectare of pine trees reaches maturity in 25 years and holds 200 odd tons of carbon. Once mature, those trees can be harvested and the carbon locked away in furniture, buildings, etc. As far as I know, it doesn't matter where on the planet the carbon is being sequestered, so a global view will likely be more effective.
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