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Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

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Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#31

Post by reitzensteinm »

esotericn wrote: post #13
brunoTbear wrote: post #7

I'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.

It's a bit of a red flag that they sell their highest plan, 600kg a year, as "approx. 100% of a global average footprint". While that's probably true, the median human does not fly. A one way flight London->New York generates almost this much per passenger.

The mean emissions of those willing to spend 600 EUR/year to offset their travel are going to be at least an order of magnitude higher. You're better off feeling guilty and reducing your travel by 10% (in terms of personal emissions).

I do admit it's tricky, because if everybody is scared off by the true price tag (my lifetime emissions as an Australian would easily be $500k), the technology will never get a chance to get economy of scale and lower prices. That's really what you're paying for when you sign up for the plan.

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#32

Post by ajross »

itcrowd wrote: post #3

This 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…

> However, I am not 100% convinced morally of CCS solutions.

So... let's put off saving the planet because someone has moral qualms? No. This is a legitimate emergency. If we have something that has a net positive impact, we need to do it and stop arguing about it on the internet. Nothing is without tradeoffs, and some are simply going to have to be made. There are no easy solutions. We have seven billion people to feed while we manage to undo all the damage too, remember.

I'm not saying capture solutions are the best choice, mind you. I'm saying that decision needs to be made with numbers and not "morals".

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#33

Post by esotericn »

davidw wrote: post #26
esotericn wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And you've increased the demand, ever so slightly.

Yep.

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#34

Post by doctorpangloss »

esotericn wrote: post #15
doctorpangloss wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Another one will just be made

Can we legislate a cap on the production of anything?

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#35

Post by ajross »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #10
itcrowd wrote: post #3

This 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.

That does nothing to reduce consumption. Oil isn't zero sum. If you make the market less efficient prices will rise a bit, but production numbers will still match demand. Fracking taught us this.

If you want a simple solution, buy a farm and bury the output. Simpler than storing a bunch of oil, even. But not very effective relative to land use.

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#36

Post by sbierwagen »

ac29 wrote: post #8

Interesting 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…

That paper avoids mentioning BECCS, the most extensively researched plan for carbon sequestration: reducing wood to charcoal, burning the syngas you produce during the process to generate electricity, and then sequestering the charcoal.[1] The Kyoto protocol for limiting global warming to 2C requires massive use of BECCS.

Pros: The output material has a higher carbon content, so you're locking up less water, and it's completely biologically inert, so you can just dump it into an open pit instead of burying it, where wood would otherwise rot and release its carbon back into the air. However, you're in real trouble if your giant pile of charcoal is ignited somehow, which can be harder to put out than you'd think.[2]

Cons: Syngas still has some carbon in it, so you're generating more emissions than if you just buried the wood. Running a biomass power plant has higher operating costs than just shoveling wood into a hole.

BECCS requires a particular set of incentives in order to be economical. You need both very expensive electricity and also a high carbon sequestration subsidy. If solar+battery storage is cheap, direct burial makes more sense.

---

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bio-energy_with_carbon_capture...

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal-seam_fire

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#37

Post by esotericn »

reitzensteinm wrote: post #31
esotericn wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's a bit of a red flag that they sell their highest plan, 600kg a year, as "approx. 100% of a global average footprint". While that's probably true, the median human does not fly. A one way flight London->New York generates almost this much per passenger. The mean emissions of those willing to spend 600 EUR/year to offset their travel are going to be at least an order of magnitude higher. You're better off feeling…

Right. US per capita is ~16 tons, UK is ~7. So at least ten times that figure. Agree with the rest of your post.

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#38

Post by itcrowd »

moultano wrote: post #5
itcrowd wrote: post #3

This 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…

Limiting climate change to 2C is such a hail mary at this point that we should look favorably on anything, no matter how imperfect, that moves us in that direction. There are no silver bullets, we need to do everything at once.

While I agree that there are no silver bullets and multiple approaches are required, I don't agree that we need to pursue everything that may help.

First, a lot of R&D must be done (for all types of solutions) and the money to fund this can only be spent once. So we need to pre-select some promising ideas (could still be many ideas, but not all ideas).

Second, sometimes the cure is worse than the disease. While I am pretty neutral / undecided on nuclear power, some argue that the (potential) problems it brings along are not worth the risk, even if it is a carbon neutral method of power production.

Third, CCS technology disincentiveses investment and R&D into fully renewable energy production (the point made before)

(I would like to emphasize here that I am not arguing about the extent or existence of a climate crisis. I am aware of the literature and agree that immediate action is required to limit carbon emissions)

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#39

Post by [deleted] »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #34
esotericn wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Another one will just be made Can we legislate a cap on the production of anything?

[deleted]

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#40

Post by simonebrunozzi »

surfmike wrote: post #20
simonebrunozzi wrote: post #14

It'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.

When a tree grows, it captures carbon. If after N years it is cut, in most cases that carbon is NOT going to go back to the atmosphere. Most CO2 emissions come from fossil fuels (oil, etc), NOT from voluntary wood burning.
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