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Carbon Capture and Storage is necessary to keep global warming below 2°C

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Re: Carbon Capture and Storage is necessary to keep global warming below 2°C

#211

Post by AstralStorm »

hannob wrote: post #23
hurricanetc wrote: post #21

CCS is absolutely going to be necessary. So is nuclear. What is the renewable alternative for the cement, steel, shipping, and aviation industries? Environmentalists need to get out of their own way and stop treating good as the enemy of perfect. Some progress is better than no progress. All technologies and approaches will be required. https://mobile.twitter.com/Peters_Glen/status/11948866002552...

> What is the renewable alternative for the cement, steel, shipping, and aviation industries? For steel the possibilities are hydrogen or electrolysis, both are being tested by some companies. You need the political will to price emissions to make it profitable though. For everything fuel-based synthetic power-to-x-based fuels are a (costly, but CCS isn't cheap either) alternative. Cement is the biggest "we don't rea…

The expensive alternative to concrete would be to switch to epoxide resin bonded concrete. Use natural plastics. The formulations exist already and are comparable.

The main downside in some cases is they're harder, so post machining is also harder and more expensive.

It works with sea sand too.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6416622/

Re: Carbon Capture and Storage is necessary to keep global warming below 2°C

#212

Post by MuffinFlavored »

throwaway5752 wrote: post #186
MuffinFlavored wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

dumb question but like, 100 years, was it 0.03% and little by little it has crept up to 0.04% due to "humanity" lately?

It's not a dumb question. You're right. It was just below 300ppm a century ago, and it's a bit over 410ppm now. https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2915/the-atmosphere-getting-a-... is a good overview. The NOAA has a station on Mauna Loa in Hawaii. It has been continuously collecting CO2 data since 1958 and CO2 has gone from just over 300ppm to the current 414ppm.

How much carbon capture would it take to get from 414ppm to 300ppm? Or is the new goal to just stay at/around 414ppm and not go backwards?

Re: Carbon Capture and Storage is necessary to keep global warming below 2°C

#213

Post by johnmorrison »

FooHentai wrote: post #205
johnmorrison wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Observations of biodiversity loss are, for me, sufficient to move beyond the debating and towards the changing phase. There's a lot wrong here. (a) Over the past two centuries, we've been doing hundreds of crazy new things we've never done before. Correlation =/= causation: you can't just assume biodiversity loss is mostly caused by atmospheric carbon (btw: it's not) (b) You're painting me as a caricature that has…

With you on all points. Sorry for the caricature, wasn't intended as a personal judgement.

Thanks! I think we've reached a productive agreement.

I do share your frustration with skeptics in life who just debate, I think this is a natural frustration for people who have an action bias and prefer to make things happen.

The world will always need those kinds of people, though, to keep us on the right track.

Re: Carbon Capture and Storage is necessary to keep global warming below 2°C

#214

Post by joe_the_user »

avmich wrote: post #177
joe_the_user wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, CCS is the inherently, a-priori, the least efficient possible way to prevent carbon from being in the atmosphere. That's basic thermodynamics. But things are sounding really bad and carbon capture technologies may be necessary once ordinary methods of reducing carbon production are exhausted. But geeks getting excited about carbon capture now reminds me of a guy eating a burger and saying "sure, the cholester…

A better analogy would be this. You have very limited mobility, your head is immovable, and your feed is a conveyor belt which slowly brings to your mouth hamburger pieces. You've been doing this for a while. Your hands have some mobility, so you can affect what's on the conveyor, but rather slowly. In this situation you suddenly realize that cholesterol is bad. Remember, you've been doing this feeding for quite a wh…

Well, there is a problem becoming evident with any further "we'll take action once the situation proves itself so bad that action is unambiguously necessary".

That problem is that human civilization is becoming less rational in response to the stresses of the situation.

The degree to which a country or the entire world has ever able to act "selflessly" or broadly altruistically has always been limited but some things have happened - banning Ozone destroying chemicals was an action. Wars have shown change (negative change but change) can happen quickly if a society needs it. I don't think there's a fundamental technological barrier to forcing a lessening of green house gas production. Rather, it's a loss of capital investment barrier. The forces arrayed to prevent oil assets from losing value are huge. Maybe a fund could just buy these assets and let them wind-down or maybe we're all doomed or maybe there's another escape.

I'm not sure but I think pushing for quick, not slow action, is appropriate, whatever one think is realist (the end of the human race looks realistic, certainly but I don't see a reason to simply accept it).

Re: Carbon Capture and Storage is necessary to keep global warming below 2°C

#215

Post by acidburnNSA »

strainer wrote: post #193
acidburnNSA wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The nuclear fleets peak was decades ago when environmental and safety regulation was more permissive than it was today, and the long term problems and threats were not as well known. That doesn't stand to evidence. The Browns Ferry fire in 1975 was the real tipping point for regulations. After 1979, the regulations and QA requirements were very serious. The improved quality cost the plants more up front but they be…

My prophecy that solar and renewables will continue to scale is based on their performance to date which is not so much prophecy as standard extrapolation. Your proclaimed "serious environmental, regulatory, or economic challenges " are so far entirely mysterious which are just somehow or other likely to "show up". Wouldn't you be more comfortable suggesting things will continue until they level out at some point? (l…

Nuclear is very affordable when a standard design is chosen and built multiple times in serial as proven by Korea and France.

> EROI of renewables is fine and continuing to improve.

That it gets worse as a function of the amount of energy storage fraction is simple to understand. I'd be shocked to read about other studies that suggest EROI with increasing energy storage is actually improving. Can you provide such a reference to your statement?

This peer-reviewed journal article linked above has the following abstract:

Abstract: A novel methodology is developed to dynamically assess the energy and material investments required over time to achieve the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources in the electricity sector. The obtained results indicate that a fast transition achieving a 100% renewable electric system globally by 2060 consistent with the Green Growth narrative could decrease the EROI of the energy system from current ~12:1 to ~3:1 by the mid-century, stabilizing thereafter at ~5:1. These EROI levels are well below the thresholds identified in the literature required to sustain industrial complex societies. Moreover, this transition could drive a substantial re-materialization of the economy, exacerbating risk availability in the future for some minerals. Hence, the results obtained put into question the consistence and viability of the Green Growth narrative. Keywords: Energy return on energy investment; Transition to renewable energies; Energy trap; Green growth; Integrated assessment modelling

Iñigo Capellán-Pérez, Carlos de Castro, Luis Javier Miguel González, Dynamic Energy Return on Energy Investment (EROI) and material requirements in scenarios of global transition to renewable energies, Energy Strategy Reviews, Volume 26, 2019, 100399, ISSN 2211-467X, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esr.2019.100399.(http://www.scienc...

Re: Carbon Capture and Storage is necessary to keep global warming below 2°C

#216

Post by acidburnNSA »

pfdietz wrote: post #209
acidburnNSA wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That feeling when you work to improve deployment of a 24/7 low-footprint energy source that previously scaled at 20 GWe/yr and emits a mere 12 gCO2eq/kg and someone tells you that you're delusional. :o Just FYI I got into nuclear specifically for climate reasons. Climate has been the goal from before I knew what nuclear reactors really were. The assumption that all new nuclear plants in the US will be as bad as the m…

We have to go with the data we have. Nuclear has a long history of promising more than it delivered, when it comes to cost. Investors can't ignore this. And I can't ignore it either, no matter how much you want yet another do over. All the "but next time will be different" doesn't change that. Nuclear's competitors don't have to resort to this increasingly desperate salesmanship. Renewable installations come in withi…

Current renewable costs quoted are generally the cost when the sun is shining or the wind is blowing (which is about 30% and 45% on average in most places). The other times, we're burning fracked natural gas. This is highly warming fossil fuel from pipeline leaks (methane) and from combustion (CO2).

Nuclear proponents questioning the economic viability of civilian nuclear power is extremely well documented from 1945 to about 1965, after which it did well for about 4 years before falling into a wild ride of a comparison with coal (also increasing in price due to air pollution controls in the 1970s) and more recently with natural gas. At the moment, France's standardized nuclear fleet is about 20% cheaper than natural gas. Not too shabby. Certainly worth deploying to help, you know, save the planet. Some builds in the West have been bad. Many have been good. We understand today how to make them all good: pick a design and build a lot of them.

How do you feel about the Energy Return On Investment (EROI) of renewable energy systems as energy storage system fraction ramps up? This paper [1] says it drops from 12:1 down to 3:1 and then stabilizes at 5:1, well below what's often quoted as necessary to sustain industrialized civilization.

[1] Iñigo Capellán-Pérez, et. al, Dynamic Energy Return on Energy Investment (EROI) and material requirements in scenarios of global transition to renewable energies, Energy Strategy Reviews, Volume 26, 2019, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.esr.2019.100399.

Re: Carbon Capture and Storage is necessary to keep global warming below 2°C

#217

Post by natch »

Valgrim wrote: post #30
natch wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the reference to cement supposed to indicate here?

Cement releases CO2 as part of it's chemical curing process. It contributes to about 8% of worldwide emissions. Another industry where CO2 as a chemical byproduct is vented at a massive scale in the atmosphere is with the steel industry. Both are good targets for carbon capture at the source.

Our local cement factory (huge, and one of the top polluters in California) burns coal on site as a source of heat. So there's that, too.

Re: Carbon Capture and Storage is necessary to keep global warming below 2°C

#218

Post by detritus »

tito wrote: post #154
detritus wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neat! Not sure how useful it would be to others, but the first thing I tried to do was sort the list by country.

Great feedback. Were you looking for your country in particular, or what would you like to do with a country-level sort?

My country in particular, to check its efforts against those of related countries - i had my eye on Germany, China and the US also.

Re: Carbon Capture and Storage is necessary to keep global warming below 2°C

#219

Post by ProjectVesta »

mdorazio wrote: post #48

Plug for Project Vesta [1], which I donate to. It's the only energy-practical proposal I've seen so far for real carbon capture aside from replanting a million acres of trees and hoping people don't burn them... again. [1] https://projectvesta.org/

Hi mdorazio, thank you for mentioning our project! We are around HN and have some notification for mentions, so feel free to call us in whenever :) Have some updates coming soon, will maybe submit a link tomorrow with an update from our latest poster with our plan for deployment of of Phase Ia Safety Pilot Project. Let us know if you have any questions.

Re: Carbon Capture and Storage is necessary to keep global warming below 2°C

#220

Post by ProjectVesta »

funklute wrote: post #117
mdorazio wrote: post #48

Plug for Project Vesta [1], which I donate to. It's the only energy-practical proposal I've seen so far for real carbon capture aside from replanting a million acres of trees and hoping people don't burn them... again. [1] https://projectvesta.org/

I was quite curious about this project a while back. But I later talked to an academic, a friend who happens to be an expert in the kinds of reaction kinetics the project relies on. His view was that they are not using the correct reaction rates in their calculations. He said they were linearly extrapolating existing data, when in reality it is a non-linear relationship. So my understanding is that their reaction rat…

Hi Funklute, most of the models out there for dissolution kinetics and weathering rates are a type called "shrinking core models" such as those used in analysis by Hangx and Spiers (2009). Those models definitely do not take into account the effect of grain-on-grain collisions, surface abrasion, the constant refreshing of warm, acidic water, and/or fauna such as lugworms[1]. For example, the constant collisions chip off fine fractions of olivine that themselves weather rapidly. And the constant grinding removes a silica coating that dramatically slows the weathering rate of stationary olivine. Lugworm digestion can speed up the weathering rate by 100x-1000x, etc.

Ask your friend if he knows of any models that take even some of these considerations into account, as all of them will be present in the coastal environment and contribute to our accelerated weathering rates. Also, please show him these simple desktop shaker experiments here [2] and here [3], that show the rates are much higher than the core shrinking models calculate when the olivine is in motion (and these experiments are in fairly cold water compared to the tropics). This is the type of research that we base our calculations on. That said, we are in agreement that we need the rates to be empirically validated. So, first we are going to deploy a Phase Ia Safety Pilot Study, and once that is on the beach we will begin work on our Phase Ib Speed Pilot Study to demonstrate the accelerated rates. Thank you for your optimism for the project, we welcome feedback and hope to help spread the understanding of the underlying processes that make the project viable :)

[1] https://projectvesta.org/science/#dflip-df_88/1/ [2] https://projectvesta.org/science/#dflip-df_67/4/ [3] https://projectvesta.org/science/#dflip-df_90/9/

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