why should they waste investor money so they can feel good about themselves and feel “noble”.
the most recent investors are suckers
Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment
11–20 of 217 posts
Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment
#12Interesting that they are willing to pay any price the market offers, and expect to pay over $100/t. I wonder to what degree large scale burying of biomass would be effective? It'd be effectively the same process that created the hydrocarbon fuels we use today, which would be fairly effectively sequestered if we didnt drill them out of the ground. It seems the idea has certainly been thought of: https://cbmjournal.bi…
The problem with burying biomass is that it gets metabolized by bacteria into CO2 and (worse) methane, which escapes into the air. Some landfills manage to capture most of the methane, but on the 100-year time scale it's not clear that burying is very effective.
Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment
#13I'm surprised by the size of the commit. If $1M is the floor for what a Stripe-sized org is willing to spend, how expensive would a carbon tax actually be? Are there good estimators for my impact as a consumer and how much I need to commit to this? Basically I want to know how much it costs to feel ok about my flights to go skiing.
The highest ClimeWorks plan, if it's trustworthy (can't personally vouch for it) is approx 1 USD per kg CO2 captured, or $1k per ton.
That's pretty expensive. But at $100 it starts to look a lot more favourable when compared with a personal footprint - 30 tons emitted would be $3K, perfectly achievable for someone who's talking about flying to go skiing.
Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment
#14It's a small step in the grand scheme of things... But it's a huge step (and commitment) coming from a single company.
I can honestly say that no company the size of Stripe has even come close to being this "cool" (in a good way, not in a superficial sense) on so many things: company culture, remote-ok, perks, and now environment. At least from my point of view.
Kudos. Lots of kudos. Keep the good work, guys.
As a side note: I personally think that the way we look at environment and impact is plainly wrong. E.g. it is much more effective to plant trees (called "afforestation") rather than sequester CO2. Here's some old but decent sources [0], [1]. Can't find a proper source, but afforestation, when done together with habitat restoration, can be even cheaper than these numbers, when done in certain areas of Africa, South America and Central Asia.
If Stripe wants to go the proverbial extra mile, it should consider "educating" people on the subject AND take consequent action, as opposed to "just" taking action following conventional wisdom.
[0]: https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R40562.pdf
[1]: https://www.fs.fed.us/pnw/pubs/pnw_gtr888.pdf (afforestation "price" starting at ~$50/ton)
Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment
#15This is an amazing pledge and very powerful statement. However, I am not 100% convinced morally of CCS solutions. The main counter argument being that CCS technology enables the status quo of fossil fuel burning to continue. On the other hand, there are some heavy industries (steel production?) that do not have any alternatives to coal burning in order to operate and CCS can offset the carbon footprint in these indus…
You could just buy oil and not burn it. Far simpler than CCS.
Eh? That assumes oil production is static. We have effectively infinite resources of fossil fuels still yet to be extracted.
That's like saying you can reduce car miles driven by buying a car and not driving it. Another one will just be made.
Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment
#16Interesting that they are willing to pay any price the market offers, and expect to pay over $100/t. I wonder to what degree large scale burying of biomass would be effective? It'd be effectively the same process that created the hydrocarbon fuels we use today, which would be fairly effectively sequestered if we didnt drill them out of the ground. It seems the idea has certainly been thought of: https://cbmjournal.bi…
The problem with burying biomass is that it gets metabolized by bacteria into CO2 and (worse) methane, which escapes into the air. Some landfills manage to capture most of the methane, but on the 100-year time scale it's not clear that burying is very effective.
The study I linked addresses that point - they suggest that "only 0–3% of the carbon from wood are ever emitted as landfill gas after several decades". I don't consider myself qualified to evaluate that claim, but it certainly seems plausible, given that wood clearly decays far slower than, for example, kitchen scraps found in household bio-waste.
Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment
#17Interesting that they are willing to pay any price the market offers, and expect to pay over $100/t. I wonder to what degree large scale burying of biomass would be effective? It'd be effectively the same process that created the hydrocarbon fuels we use today, which would be fairly effectively sequestered if we didnt drill them out of the ground. It seems the idea has certainly been thought of: https://cbmjournal.bi…
The problem with burying biomass is that it gets metabolized by bacteria into CO2 and (worse) methane, which escapes into the air. Some landfills manage to capture most of the methane, but on the 100-year time scale it's not clear that burying is very effective.
Additionally, the required storage volume looks pretty insane (see one of the figures in the linked paper).
I'm not convinced of biomass burial.
Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment
#18I'm surprised by the size of the commit. If $1M is the floor for what a Stripe-sized org is willing to spend, how expensive would a carbon tax actually be? Are there good estimators for my impact as a consumer and how much I need to commit to this? Basically I want to know how much it costs to feel ok about my flights to go skiing.
The highest ClimeWorks plan, if it's trustworthy (can't personally vouch for it) is approx 1 USD per kg CO2 captured, or $1k per ton. That's pretty expensive. But at $100 it starts to look a lot more favourable when compared with a personal footprint - 30 tons emitted would be $3K, perfectly achievable for someone who's talking about flying to go skiing.
Terrapass seems to say my CO2 emissions from flying so far this year are going to come in around 13 metric tons.
At $1000 per ton this isn't feasible. At $100 I'd think about it. At $10 it's not a question that I'd buy it.
At $1000 per ton I'd change my air spending habits. At $100 per ton built into the price per flight I would probably take the same trips.
tl;dr: get this price down an order of magnitude and I'm in.
Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment
#19why should they waste investor money so they can feel good about themselves and feel “noble”. the most recent investors are suckers
You got downvotes, I hope because your tone isn't super productive, not because HN doesn't like the realist viewpoint you're taking.
Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment
#20It's a small step in the grand scheme of things... But it's a huge step (and commitment) coming from a single company. I can honestly say that no company the size of Stripe has even come close to being this "cool" (in a good way, not in a superficial sense) on so many things: company culture, remote-ok, perks, and now environment. At least from my point of view. Kudos. Lots of kudos. Keep the good work, guys. As a si…
Don’t you then need to worry about enforcement mechanisms to keep those trees from getting cut down? If they’re all harvested after say n decades, there’s no net effect on climate.