Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How do we cut down on emissions from steel, cement, and plastic?

gatesnotes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 129 posts

Re: How do we cut down on emissions from steel, cement, and plastic?

#51

Post by SECProto »

garmaine wrote: post #36
SECProto wrote: post #33

> Making steel and other materials—such as cement, plastic, glass, aluminum, and paper—is the third biggest contributor of greenhouse gases, behind agriculture and making electricity While I agree in broad terms that eliminating greenhouse gases in the materials sector is important medium-term, I agree with other posters here that we need to focus hard on implementing solutions we DO have now - specifically, in the e…

It’s not the source of power. It’s the chemical process itself. You get oxygen out of a metal oxide by binding it with carbon and releasing the CO2. Canadian smelting is just as dirty in this respect. The only other alternative is electrolyzing water to get hydrogen, which binds with the metal oxide’s oxygen to make water again. But not only is this really inefficient by comparison, but now you’re adding O2 to the at…

I understand that the process itself uses carbon. The site I linked is a carbon-free production process (which would result in zero carbon in combination with hydro power)

Re: How do we cut down on emissions from steel, cement, and plastic?

#52

Post by zzzcpan »

SECProto wrote: post #33

> Making steel and other materials—such as cement, plastic, glass, aluminum, and paper—is the third biggest contributor of greenhouse gases, behind agriculture and making electricity While I agree in broad terms that eliminating greenhouse gases in the materials sector is important medium-term, I agree with other posters here that we need to focus hard on implementing solutions we DO have now - specifically, in the e…

> we need to focus hard on implementing solutions we DO have now - specifically, in the electricity and transportation sectors.

You should understand that there are no good enough solutions for electricity yet, so not much is going to change on electricity wrt greenhouse gases on the global scale, and the solution to transportation is to essentially stop making cars for personal use, but we only see the opposite happening.

Re: How do we cut down on emissions from steel, cement, and plastic?

#53

Post by dev_dull »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #31
travisoneill1 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You conveniently forgot to list the costs of storage from the source you linked. The costs range from $108-$471 for utility scale storage. So nuclear is the clear winner in cost because it doesn't require this.

My comment within this thread communicates my belief that batteries will get cheaper faster than nuclear (solar and wind are fast approaching 1 cent/kwh; as that cost continues to decline storage will be the bulk of the cost of utility power). If you think I'm wrong, invest in nuclear. If nuclear was a clear winner, it would be funded and built. But it seems there are better ways to replace the last 100GW of US nucle…

Nuclear is being funded and built all around the world. There's 50 reactors under construction right now[1]. My original statement was that the aversion to it is political, not economical and certainly not scientific.

There is no panacea. We need a well-rounded, safe, stable, and diversified energy portfolio and it must include nuclear. It also needs wind, solar, and high-density energy storage (batteries and other such strategies).

1. https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-an...

Re: How do we cut down on emissions from steel, cement, and plastic?

#54

Post by semi-extrinsic »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #41
Ygg2 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Batteries will get cheaper faster than nuclear ever will That's a bold claim. Batteries could also suffer from law of diminishing returns. It might not be physically possible to store energy much more densely, without catastrophic failures.

> That's a bold claim. I don't think it is [1] [2]. Regardless of cell and pack density, there's plenty of open land to install outdoor enclosures. Utility storage isn't cars, where density is terribly important. [1] https://i2.wp.com/evobsession.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06... [2] https://cleantechnica.com/2018/06/09/100-kwh-tesla-battery-c...

I fear you do not sufficiently appreciate the gravitas of the energy storage problem.

The big Hornsdale power reserve in Australia is 130 MWh. Say you want to store 6 hours of US average energy consumption. That's 1 500 000 MWh, or 11 000 Hornsdale stations. Just for 6 hours of electricity storage.

Re: How do we cut down on emissions from steel, cement, and plastic?

#55

Post by AnimalMuppet »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #50
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems likely. But (yet another unpopular opinion): "Zero emissions now" is also genocide, or at least large-scale death.

I don't know why this is being downvoted. If we went zero carbon tomorrow we'd have no replacement for the Haber process which produces the massive amounts of fertilizer needed to feed the human population.

Or for most of the tractors and combines that work the farm fields, or the trucks, trains, and ships that transport the food. Or for the power plants that run the air conditioning that keeps some people from literally dying in the summer, or for the natural gas that keeps some people from dying in the winter.

Re: How do we cut down on emissions from steel, cement, and plastic?

#56

Post by bryanlarsen »

sirmike_ wrote: post #48
bryanlarsen wrote: post #43

My climate change plan is simple: a ratcheting carbon fee with dividend[1], together with a carbon tariff as part of a climate club[2] The industries where it's easy will take the easy way to avoid the carbon fee. The industries where it's hard will pay the fee but will see the ratchet coming and will be furiously researching alternatives. Worse come to worse, at some point the fee will be more than sequestration cos…

No, just no. adding extra taxes will not do anything to solve the climate problem. It will only put first world countries at a disadvantage to 2nd and third world who will continue along using coal and other cheaper forms of energy. Why would I pay more taxes just to have them come back to me? No. Just no!

> It will only put first world countries at a disadvantage

My second link is a plan to avoid this free-rider problem

Re: How do we cut down on emissions from steel, cement, and plastic?

#57

Post by philipkglass »

_Microft wrote: post #44
garmaine wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not the source of power. It’s the chemical process itself. You get oxygen out of a metal oxide by binding it with carbon and releasing the CO2. Canadian smelting is just as dirty in this respect. The only other alternative is electrolyzing water to get hydrogen, which binds with the metal oxide’s oxygen to make water again. But not only is this really inefficient by comparison, but now you’re adding O2 to the at…

Is using hydrogen for that an actual process or just an idea? There's the problem that hydrogen can make metals brittle, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_embrittlement

It's an actual process. The ability of hydrogen to reduce hot iron oxides to metallic iron has been known at least since the early 19th century. But it has not been done on an industrial scale before because using fossil fuels is cheaper, and reducing GHG emissions has not been a significant priority until recently.

EDIT: Joseph Priestley actually discovered that iron oxide ("calx of iron") could be reduced to the metallic state by hot hydrogen ("inflammable air") in the late 18th century.

https://archive.org/details/b22281824/page/n57

Re: How do we cut down on emissions from steel, cement, and plastic?

#58

Post by ThrustVectoring »

garmaine wrote: post #36
SECProto wrote: post #33

> Making steel and other materials—such as cement, plastic, glass, aluminum, and paper—is the third biggest contributor of greenhouse gases, behind agriculture and making electricity While I agree in broad terms that eliminating greenhouse gases in the materials sector is important medium-term, I agree with other posters here that we need to focus hard on implementing solutions we DO have now - specifically, in the e…

It’s not the source of power. It’s the chemical process itself. You get oxygen out of a metal oxide by binding it with carbon and releasing the CO2. Canadian smelting is just as dirty in this respect. The only other alternative is electrolyzing water to get hydrogen, which binds with the metal oxide’s oxygen to make water again. But not only is this really inefficient by comparison, but now you’re adding O2 to the at…

O2 is roughly two orders of magnitude more abundant than atmospheric CO2. Industrial scale O2 release in this manner is still relatively negligible.

Re: How do we cut down on emissions from steel, cement, and plastic?

#59

Post by bryanlarsen »

news_to_me wrote: post #46
bryanlarsen wrote: post #43

My climate change plan is simple: a ratcheting carbon fee with dividend[1], together with a carbon tariff as part of a climate club[2] The industries where it's easy will take the easy way to avoid the carbon fee. The industries where it's hard will pay the fee but will see the ratchet coming and will be furiously researching alternatives. Worse come to worse, at some point the fee will be more than sequestration cos…

Cool, now the price of steel skyrockets and brings up the cost of everything that uses steel. Maybe we can find a way to do this in a less economically violent way?

You can spend trillions on reduction or you can spend trillions on adaptation or you can die. There's no cheap option.

Re: How do we cut down on emissions from steel, cement, and plastic?

#60

Post by [deleted] »

eduren wrote: post #28
kd5bjo wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans are really good at adapting to new situations; even if climate change causes a massive reduction in population and standard of living, I’m confident that some humans will survive. I don’t know what the solutions will look like, but sci-fi authors have shown us some semi-plausible solutions: domed, climate controlled cities here or elsewhere in the solar system; generation ships that aren’t dependent on any pla…

>I’m confident that some humans will survive Well yes, at our current technology levels ecological and climate based collapse has almost no chance of making humans 100% extinct. But I don't think that anyone is arguing the opposite. The moral calculus for addressing climate change isn't that affected by differences in the survival rate of 0% vs 5% vs 50%. All of the above would be catastrophically bad in human terms.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN