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Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

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Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#151

Post by amelius »

ar0 wrote: post #149
amelius wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google should also do this as zero emissions aligns with "do no evil".

Note that you do not have to wait for Google: You can just start searching using Ecosia ( https://www.ecosia.org/ ) which use their revenue to plant trees around the world and are also a "negative emissions" operation. (Yes, the results are not as good as Google's, but for me they are good enough in the vast majority of searches, and for the remaining I can still hop over to Google.)

They should add a button "Try this search on Google instead" at the bottom of the first page, then I would probably try them. Otherwise it's too much of a hassle, especially on mobile, tbh.

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#152

Post by truthwhisperer »

matznerd wrote: post #87

Major respect to Stripe for starting this program, as this helps solve a real problem in the carbon dioxide removal (CDR) field. At Project Vesta (thanks for the shoutout[1]), while we have a plan for individuals to pay for their CO2 removal by donating directly for a specific tonnage of olivine to be placed on a beach in their name, all of the investors/fund advisors who have approached us and are interested in gett…

No sorry you fully miss the long term strategy. They want to raise the industry standard so any newcomers have to burn even more money to be able to compete with them. Apart from setting up business, onboarding new merchants, KYC, it is just another trick

Don't be fooled. This is just both marketing and long term strategy nothing to be considerd as altruistic. Marketing in the way how to be perceived as an interesting employer for the newgen and strategy how to make sure no one can threaten your role in the system (by raising the bars on each and every possible aspect)

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#153

Post by Nyandalized »

papreclip wrote: post #105

They might make up for their electricity bill 1:1 but they'll never go neutral on the amount of carbon wealth they consume in payment for their services. Imagine I have a business where I busk for money with my guitar outside of a coal plant and a single coal minor is my patron. I may be "carbon neutral" but in fact I owe my whole existence to coal being mined and burnt. Coal is my life blood and the sole source of w…

I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say. Are you discounting their efforts? Their motives?

You're not responsible for everyone else, or if you were, they'd not need to be for themselves.

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#154

Post by Nyandalized »

sremani wrote: post #74

Data centers are factories without smoke stacks, they are voracious consumers of energy and since "cloud" everything computing is the name of the game at least for medium term, tech companies would do a favor if they focus on tackling the datacenter related issue. Also chip fabrication is a dirty dirty dirty business, as the consumers of the computer hardware, we as an industry has responsibility to pollution reducti…

I'd argue that "the cloud" makes traditional computing more efficient. Since their motto is "pay for what you use", it automatically aligns with motives for the most efficient use.

Not to mention that the usage of computers has reduced the need for much more power hungry methods. We can now efficiently calculate much stronger, lighter, easier to manufacture parts and building patterns.

There is no need to drive/ride/walk to a place to hear the message, radio broadcasting is much more effective, even though it itself consumes power.

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#155

Post by Nyandalized »

iamleppert wrote: post #115

What kind of margins do they have that enables them to just throw money around like this? Is the payments industry that big of a cash machine to allow this kind of spending that has nothing to do with their core business?

You would find that banking and it's related fields are indeed very profitable.

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#156

Post by adrianN »

titojankowski wrote: post #114
Rapzid wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is probably a really sensitive topic but.. Donating your time to help get politicians elected who are serious about doing what's necessary may be the best thing you can do.

Politicians are powerless without good technology options. Today, the technology options are not good. but good options are within sight. As a technologist, let's go make better tech. Climate change is a technology problem and a marketing problem. YC's carbon site does a great job marketing for these crucial technologies: http://carbon.ycombinator.com/

The technology options today are good enough. We can start building wind turbines and solar panels right now. We can insulate homes right now. We can replace oil and gas heating with heat pumps right now.

Storage only becomes a problem when a quite significant chunk of the generation is intermittent. But even then, today's batteries are good enough for overnight storage, and for longer term storage we can use power-to-gas processes.

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#157

Post by gnud »

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.

If you cover an area with trees that is today not covered with trees, that area will absorb CO2 from the atomsphere.

Even if the trees die or are cut down, as long as new ones are allowed to grow, that area will absorb roughly constant amount of CO2.

Now, if we can harvest some trees regularly, and use them to replace plastics or fossil fuels, then that's a win for the environment even if those harvested trees end up releasing their CO2 back to the atmosphere, because we didn't introduce any _more_ CO2, we just recycled what we already have.

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#159

Post by dgellow »

abalone wrote: post #117

Just to summarize (warm up those downvotes...): * “almost certainly more” than 84% of stripe’s emissions will not be sequestered because it’s “financially infeasible” * no mention of stripe’s actual carbon footprint * talk of startups and trillion dollar industry “by the end of the century” but no mention of government intervention / green new deal to turn the tide in the next decade before it’s too late Verdict: fre…

> We need massive mobilization at the federal level to hit the necessary emissions reductions within the next 12 years if we are to avoid a catastrophic rise in temperature.

That doesn’t really make sense IMHO, global warming isn’t a US problem, it’s a worldwide issue. Let’s say the US becomes a benevolent dictatorship with the mission to reduce CO2 emissions by any mean necessary (and is somehow successful), you still have the global problem. And then what, do you go to war against other countries?

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#160

Post by azernik »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #147
azernik wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was specifically referring to pyrolysis, where unlike steam reforming no oxygen is introduced and so the carbon comes out as solid graphite. Scaling the process, and running it in a continuous-operation reactor, is still an area of active engineering work (see e.g. https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/d36a/ff0a2db0f99a92c2debd5b... ), mostly focused on designing the physical system so that the solid carbon comes out ni…

What are the benefits of pyrolysis versus steam methane reforming (SMR)? My immediate thought would be that you leave energy on the table, and that storage at scale is harder when the end result is graphite. Moreover, SMR is proven technology at very large scale.

One advantage is that it produces high-purity graphite, which is a moderately expensive commodity, used for electronics manufacturing (especially power components in batteries), structural carbon composites, and machine lubricants.

The percentage of carbon captured is also damn near 100% - quite a bit better than gaseous carbon capture techniques I've heard of.

You do leave quite a lot of energy on the table (losing somewhere between 30% and 50%), so this is a technology that is only economically viable with high emissions pricing. But that seems like the way Europe is going anyway.

And yes, SMR is the proven and clearly superior technology right now; I'd call this TRL 4/5 right now. But with another decade of development?

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