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So you want to build a carbon capture company

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Re: So you want to build a carbon capture company

#161

Post by rabidrat »

sershe wrote: post #149
barathr wrote: post #127

If a machine were invented that scrubbed carbon from the atmosphere and turned it into useful food, construction materials, animal feedstocks, and fibers, all while rebuilding topsoil, it would be on the cover of every tech magazine in the world and its inventor would be a celebrity millionaire. Yet I’ve never seen a tree on the cover of Wired. https://hipcrime.blogspot.com/2012/06/vertical-farms-and-lab... Sometimes…

Isn't the issue with trees is that they release the carbon back after they die and decompose? You have to actually sequester carbon somehow. No idea how easy it is to do with trees (presumably you'd have to cut them and put them somewhere they don't degrade?).

...can we build houses with them?

Re: So you want to build a carbon capture company

#162

Post by ZeroGravitas »

Seems like the main competition to carbon capture is reduction in carbon release.

Can it ever compete with finding the thing that currently emits the most fossil carbon and replacing it with something that doesn't do that as much?

Seems like a lot of the carbon capture funding has historically came from Industries that did not want to stop emitting fossil carbon, since that was a key part of their main business, and so needed something that was at least vaguely-plausible as a future solution so they could keep emitting carbon today.

A carbon price, as mentioned in the article, would also pit these two things against each other directly. Generate carbon and pay someone to bury it, or just don't emit it in the first place.

Re: So you want to build a carbon capture company

#163

Post by vidarh »

tomjakubowski wrote: post #153
sershe wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the issue with trees is that they release the carbon back after they die and decompose? You have to actually sequester carbon somehow. No idea how easy it is to do with trees (presumably you'd have to cut them and put them somewhere they don't degrade?).

Right, trees provide a buffer. If you can plant faster than the trees are dying, you gain ground.

And as large scale planting projects have shown: planting trees fast and getting them to survive in a cost effective way is a hard problem.

Re: So you want to build a carbon capture company

#164

Post by ratsforhorses »

magicalhippo wrote: post #104
tarjei wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every Norwegian needs this illusion(Or livsløgn as Ibsen would have said) to sustain the idea of belonging to a nation that is up to something good. Reality is that Norway is increasingly subsidizing it's oil industry in a way that is not sustainable - especially not economically. Instead of investing in the future Norway is investing in old dying industries - our Corona package contains almost no investments in sust…

I feel confident that if Norway stops pumping oil tomorrow, it would be pretty devastating to our economy. I also feel confident that other countries would increase production in response. Is that just an illusion? I absolutely agree that we should focus a lot more on making new jobs that aren't oil-related, and stop investing in oil like we do. Oil is most definitely not the future, and we should push hard to make a…

I have a friend from Romania who works in your country...very hard and high cost of living... I personally would prefer your "economy" suffers some contraction so he can come home and help here while you guys "modernise" with all that oil money you have saved.... also your "global game of prisoners dilemma" metaphor (is disingenuous?) it ignores the real time reality climate cliff we are about to fall off... currently we need leaders not Stockholm syndrome followers... I mean isn't asking authoritarian regimes (Putin, MBS, Venezuela) to stop pumpinga pipe dream...?

Re: So you want to build a carbon capture company

#165

Post by surfearth »

qayxc wrote: post #159
Valgrim wrote: post #155

My favorite carbon-capture solution is to breed whales: https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2019/12/natures-s... Whales act as a nutrient pump in the ocean; beside the 30-tons of carbon they capture and sink over their lifetime in their own biomass, they eat in the deepest parts of the ocean and come back to the surface to breathe, where they release a large amount of nitrate, phosphorus and iron every time th…

> restoring whales population to their pre-industrial levels could have the same effect as planting several billion trees. I would like to see the maths on that :D Whales usually don't create their own microclimate or provide a habit for a number of species. They also don't rebuild and support topsoil, can't be harvested for fibres and are not very suitable as building materials. In other words, trees are more versat…

Ideally we would have more of both trees and whales as part of a comprehensive approach to climate change mitigation.

Re: So you want to build a carbon capture company

#166

Post by ratsforhorses »

Tade0 wrote: post #48
godmode2019 wrote: post #19

Here is a untested idea, probably unworkable. Solar has a problem that consumers tend to need more energy during the night. So the solution is to pipe electricity from somewhere east so everyone's electricity is piped in from say a location east where its still light. I got the idea when I heard Singapore wants to run a cable to Australia to get solar because they are too small for renewables. If if could work for th…

> Cool idea, probably unrealistic. There's a 3200km(2000 mile) long, 12GW HVDC transmission line somewhere in China that does exactly that. Its main purpose is to connect regional grids but given the sheer length of the thing the difference in solar time at each end is well over an hour - could have been better, but that would require a different angle.

Technically it was a UHVDC line, " As of 2020, at least thirteen UHVDC transmission lines in China have been completed" ...seems like something the US could invest in with their new infrastructure bill...

"April 2010 announcement for a 2,000 MW, 64 km line between Spain and France is estimated at €700 million. This includes the cost of a tunnel through the Pyrenees"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-voltage_direct_current

Re: So you want to build a carbon capture company

#167

Post by magicalhippo »

ratsforhorses wrote: post #164
magicalhippo wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel confident that if Norway stops pumping oil tomorrow, it would be pretty devastating to our economy. I also feel confident that other countries would increase production in response. Is that just an illusion? I absolutely agree that we should focus a lot more on making new jobs that aren't oil-related, and stop investing in oil like we do. Oil is most definitely not the future, and we should push hard to make a…

I have a friend from Romania who works in your country...very hard and high cost of living... I personally would prefer your "economy" suffers some contraction so he can come home and help here while you guys "modernise" with all that oil money you have saved.... also your "global game of prisoners dilemma" metaphor (is disingenuous?) it ignores the real time reality climate cliff we are about to fall off... currentl…

> also your "global game of prisoners dilemma" metaphor (is disingenuous?) it ignores the real time reality climate cliff we are about to fall off

That's part of my point. Making an impact against climate change requires everyone to work together while sacrificing something, like the mutually best outcome for the prisoners.

However not following that path can be very economically beneficial to a country, at least short term.

Thus there's incentive to ignore climate change and not work together, like the example I gave earlier. If someone else will pump the oil that we won't and the oil is getting burned all the same, why should Norway take that hit? That's what the dilemma the prisoner has.

I mean, just look at how hard the delegations worked to get the Paris agreement signed. I mean, good thing they did but it was a fairly wimpy compared to what was and is likely needed.

Re: So you want to build a carbon capture company

#168

Post by lamontcg »

senko wrote: post #95

Armchair strategizing on the topic I know nothing about (but it's fun to think about!): Constraints: - C removal requires lots of energy (can't avoid thermodynamics) - electricity on that scale is either expensive, dirty, or both Additional concerns: - cheap/clean energy is intermittent (and still a small percentage) - excessive electricity is as bad as not enough electricity Solution: - build lots of new (safe and c…

Nuclear isn't cheap. Molten salt thorium reactors are seriously not cheap, and if you can handle molten salt that well, you can use it to store solar power and release it later and solve the intermittency problem.

Re: So you want to build a carbon capture company

#169

Post by lamontcg »

khuey wrote: post #134
rasputnik6502 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Sun is beaming free energy to Earth already. If it's not enough then humans should become extinct as a species unfit to live in Solar system

There's value in concentrating the energy so that you don't have to cover the entire planet in solar panels.

0.2% of the surface area of land on the planet, when covered in solar panels would produce enough energy to power the entire planet.

Re: So you want to build a carbon capture company

#170

Post by jobigoud »

senko wrote: post #95

Armchair strategizing on the topic I know nothing about (but it's fun to think about!): Constraints: - C removal requires lots of energy (can't avoid thermodynamics) - electricity on that scale is either expensive, dirty, or both Additional concerns: - cheap/clean energy is intermittent (and still a small percentage) - excessive electricity is as bad as not enough electricity Solution: - build lots of new (safe and c…

You'll have to pick two among fast, safe and cheap.
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