Not sure how you will provide updates but I think satellite imagery over time would be really neat for reforested areas.
Launch HN: Wren (YC S19) – Offset Your Carbon Footprint
61–70 of 125 posts
Re: Launch HN: Wren (YC S19) – Offset Your Carbon Footprint
#62I'm more interested in setting up consumer/hobbyist level carbon capture processes (if thermodynamically possible).
Rough outline from Rod Fitzsimmons:
- capture of CO2 from the atmosphere using a variety of techniques, usually adsorbtion (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_capture_and_storage). This takes quite a bit of energy.
- Conversion of the dissolved CO2 into alcohols. Reaction is 2CO2 + 9H2O + 12e- → C2H5OH + 12OH- so it's energy-uphill and needs an energy input. Maybe solar cells or a wind turbine. Requires a catalyst, often a variety of copper matrix. Catalysts are the major subject of research. To figure out whether you could do this in your garage you'd probably need to go to the literature.
- Distillation of the alcohols - usually done with heat, requires 800-900 deg C. Possible but hard and energy intensive. This is where Prometheus sits, they have a nanoscale membrane that does room-temperature separation of the alcohols using electricity input (more energy in!)
- Conversion of the alcohols into gasoline, diesel, kerosene etc. This is a pretty well-known process that uses a catalyst called ZSM-5 plus heat (mo' mo' energy!). I haven't looked into the chemistry or the availability of the catalyst.
This seems like a better startup idea than a project funding aggregator.
Re: Launch HN: Wren (YC S19) – Offset Your Carbon Footprint
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
> "Start encouraging people to to put down their digital devices and live simpler. That will make a hell of a lot larger impact than telling people to pay 20$ a month to plant trees". Makes complete sense. But there's probably no business there. Everybody wants to be connected and not miss out these days, especially young people. Most people won't even consider "putting down their digital devices", but they would hap…
>But there's probably no business there. Because God forbid we try and preserve the vast majority of life on earth instead of pursuing generating millions of dollars of profit every month. The vast majority of human beings haven't put 1 minute of thought into global warming, in fact it wouldn't surprise me if there were billions of human beings walking around today that have never even heard of global warming or clim…
I understand your reservations about this being done by a for-profit.
I don't understand your opposition to the idea of individuals contributing to carbon offset projects. It seems like the reservations you've expressed (it's not a whole solution, it's not feasible for people earning less than $2 per day, it might have too much of a "feel good" effect, etc) are equally true of many ideas you'd probably like, including the ideas you put forward yourself.
I liked this part of your comment: "RUN THE NUMBERS please". I did. Illuminating! My back-of-napkin:
Global CO2 emissions were 10b tons (10 Gigatonnes) in 2014 (https://www.co2.earth/global-co2-emissions)
$4.5B per month * 12mo = ~$50 billion per year
Carbon offset costs vary wildly. That's the big Q. You will have to do your own research on this, but to me, $100 per ton seems conservative, and $10 seems very generous.
If Wren collects $5B per month, and offsets cost $100 per ton, they would offset 5% of 2014-level annual emissions. (Probably less than our annual increase.)
If offsets cost $10 per ton, it's 50% -- more meaningful!Re: Launch HN: Wren (YC S19) – Offset Your Carbon Footprint
#64I'm more interested in setting up consumer/hobbyist level carbon capture processes (if thermodynamically possible). Rough outline from Rod Fitzsimmons: - capture of CO2 from the atmosphere using a variety of techniques, usually adsorbtion ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_capture_and_storage ). This takes quite a bit of energy. - Conversion of the dissolved CO2 into alcohols. Reaction is 2CO2 + 9H2O + 12e- → C2H…
- plant a tree
It solar powered and even self-replicating!
Re: Launch HN: Wren (YC S19) – Offset Your Carbon Footprint
#65I'm more interested in setting up consumer/hobbyist level carbon capture processes (if thermodynamically possible). Rough outline from Rod Fitzsimmons: - capture of CO2 from the atmosphere using a variety of techniques, usually adsorbtion ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_capture_and_storage ). This takes quite a bit of energy. - Conversion of the dissolved CO2 into alcohols. Reaction is 2CO2 + 9H2O + 12e- → C2H…
- plant a tree It solar powered and even self-replicating!
Let ivy grow on your walls. The kind with glue pads will not harm walls, and the leaves provide shade in the summer and fall off in the winter.
Re: Launch HN: Wren (YC S19) – Offset Your Carbon Footprint
#66Do you have any plans to expand to B2B? I'd imagine it might be a larger impact, along with the positive psychological effect of it not being an individual's money on the line.
Great idea! We're actually piloting that right now. I think it would be promising especially since companies ask employees to travel and have otherwise larger footprints from work.
The B2B was the first thing I wondered when clicking the site. Would be neat to say 'were off setting our footprint via wren' and a 'click here to view our carbon profile and who were donating to.'
Re: Launch HN: Wren (YC S19) – Offset Your Carbon Footprint
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh perfect. We're using Stripe and accept Debit Cards currently. The credit card wording we're using is pretty confusing, we'll change that!
I think that's a misunderstanding, sorry. I was talking about SEPA debit, via an IBAN. The checkout form doesn't appear to accept those atm.
Oh got it. Yes, we'll add in an ability to checkout with debit via an IBAN / Paypal soon. Will keep you posted!
Re: Launch HN: Wren (YC S19) – Offset Your Carbon Footprint
#68Super neat! One note that I found odd: km/L is a weird way to talk about fuel efficiency for metric. Everywhere that I've seen typically uses L/100km rather than just doing a MPG equivalent conversion.
Oh great to know. We recently added in support for metric conversion and weren't familiar with the standard for mpg to metric. We'll change that!
Re: Launch HN: Wren (YC S19) – Offset Your Carbon Footprint
#69I'd love to see a further breakdown in options.
Like as someone who mostly bikes but does use a car a during the summer months there's a clear scale. I'm also a meat eater but have very little red meat. This would half the food emissions of an average American. Some sort of scale would make me feel like I'm getting a more accurate answer to nuanced questions (ones that I think a lot of people concern themselves with).
I was also suspicious when I put in vegetarian, car, and 2 flights a year I also find the "if everyone" part misleading (though I get why it's there, to show privilege), but I think it is also effective to promote competition within a country. I can be the best American but have a hard time beating someone from the third world. Maybe have both?
Also, if you're going to allow fake emails why don't you let people calculate first? Or maybe email required for a more nuanced position, if you're trying to harvest them (since that probably gives you a better set of people that you're looking for).
Re: Launch HN: Wren (YC S19) – Offset Your Carbon Footprint
#70Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Project Drawdown has 99 more: https://www.drawdown.org/ You keep mentioning Project Drawdown in this thread. Why should people pay you 20% instead of just donating to Project Drawdown. Will you continue to take 20% when you reach those 'several million people' subscribing? I mean, at 5$ a month each that's 'several million' dollars a month for what, web hosting and 3 salaries? I see on LinkedIn you're listed as a s…
There's a lot to be negative about wrt our climate crisis for sure. However overwhelmingly negative messages I believe can contribute to inaction through people moving straight from the denial phase to the "what's the point, we're all doomed" phase. Just to pick the first of your points to rebut: > Electric bikes (going to largely be powered by, fossil fuels) 1) in my country the grid uses 70+ renewable energy (mainl…
>1) in my country the grid uses 70+ renewable energy (mainly hydro), so EVs are extremely promising.
Sadly that's not the case for most of the world. Petroleum, natural gas, and coal—combined accounted for about 77.6% of the U.S. primary energy production in 2017. Fossil fuel energy consumption in China was reported at 87.48% in 2014.
> progress made on EVs will pay off in the future, when/if the grid becomes greener.
Only if new battery technologies are created that can be manufactured quicker, in a greater capacity, than lithium batteries are now.
>There’s little risk of lithium supplies running low in any absolute sense; the next decade will probably see less than one percent of the world’s lithium reserves depleted. The real danger is that lithium won’t be recovered and made available quickly enough to meet the rising demand.
>There are two sources of lithium: brine and mineral deposits. Brine is recovered through a process known as brine mining in which dissolved lithium (and other useful elements) are extracted through a long, energy-intensive, and costly process. Recovering lithium from mines is more straightforward, but most of the world’s lithium is in brine pools in South America. About half of the 35,000 metric tons produced in 2016 came from brine operations in Chile and Argentina.
https://blog.energybrainpool.com/en/is-there-enough-lithium-...
From the same article we also have to factor in how rapidly lithium prices are increasing:
>Anxiety about lithium’s availability has caused its price to spike. In 2010, lithium sold for $5,180 per metric ton. By 2012, the cost was over $6,000 per metric ton, and by the end of 2017, a metric ton was going for about $14,000 – a 270 percent increase over 2010 levels.
So what happens when you start churning out EVs 10x faster than Tesla is, 100x faster?
And how much more fossil fuels will need to be burnt in power plants (it's worth noting that roughly 6% of power generated at a power plant is lost in transmission before it arrives, then more will be lost changing voltage at a charging location, then more as it feeds into the battery) instead of as gasoline as more and more cars come online? And all of the infrastructure that will have to be created to support them? 17% of Americans live in an apartment or a condo, they can't just pay to install a plug in their garage as in most cases they do not have a garage or even a dedicated parking spot and businesses, you're going to have to convince businesses to spend large sums of money to install charging infrastructure in their parking lots for tens or hundreds of parking spots, and likely to support that new lines will have to be run to the area, widespread adoption of electric vehicles in a country like the United States suddenly means tens of billions of dollars in just power lines and substations, wiring and charging stations.And adding a bunch of EVs will mean you'll need to add a bunch of grid storage or bring more fossil fuel plants online to meet the demand of all of the cars getting plugged in at 8-9am in each time zone as people arrive at work... renewable energy doesn't work well for spooling up to meet demand.
Plus with widespread EV adoption in a given country you have to basically retool every firehouse in that country to also be able to handle EV accidents, pierce a cell on an EV and you have a fire situation that can last DAYS as cells rupture one by one in a worst-case scenario (like when Richard Hammon crashed that Rimac Concept One supercar).
>Yet your comment is written as if it makes no sense. It conveys a strong sense of doom and pointlessness.
No my comment points out that the organization Wren keeps listing, has a bunch of whimsical fantasy ideas that are not remotely viable and I don't see why I should give Wren my hard-earned money to take 20% for themselves before they hand 80% over to organizations, or individuals, that are chasing fantasy technologies that won't be viable for decades, if ever.