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U.S. sets goal to drive down cost of removing CO2 from atmosphere

reuters.com

41–50 of 347 posts

Re: U.S. sets goal to drive down cost of removing CO2 from atmosphere

#41

At a first read, this is great, because it's apolitical. It's about innovation, and is positive, I.e. doing something instead of telling people not to do something. For once this seems like something a government should be doing. I'm almost suspicious I missed something.

Oh this is very political. You just need to follow the money. Basically carbon offsetting is the notion of adding carbon to our atmosphere by continuing to e.g. burn coal or gas and by offsetting that with carbon capture.

The problem with that is that it is kind of expensive. To the point where it would be cheaper to simply stop burning stuff and maybe do something cleaner instead. By instead committing to lowering cost to 100$ per tonne, the US is basically announcing subsidizing the continued dumping of CO2 in our atmosphere by making it cheaper to green-wash that business with carbon offsetting. That is going to inevitably involve some creative bookkeeping. The net effect of that will be lots more carbon ending up in the atmosphere than actually captured. Courtesy of the US tax payer.

The best way to capture carbon is to leave it in the ground.

Re: U.S. sets goal to drive down cost of removing CO2 from atmosphere

#42
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More importantly, having an actual price tag on removing carbon from the atmosphere would allow carbon markets to finally work. Assuming there is enough political will to properly monitor and tax CO2 emissions worldwide, which is a huge ask. A lot of companies and countries will be tempted to lie because it will make their products more competitive.

Cant we see this from space? Estimate the amount of co2 coming from each country that way and send them a bill every year. My first thought was “that’s where auditing and bureaucracy come in” but maybe satellites are a better way

[deleted]

Re: U.S. sets goal to drive down cost of removing CO2 from atmosphere

#43
post #39
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At a first read, this is great, because it's apolitical. This is a strange statement to make about DAC. Once you think about what that means there's a lot of thorny political issues. Removing carbon from the air to store it permanently does not give you anything economically. Someone's going to have to have to pay for it. Is that people who made their wealth based on fossil fuels? People who emit most or who did so…

Side stepping the “is it political” part (which I have no interest in discussing- it’s a tarpit)… There is an economical advantage to reducing CO2 from the environment. It gives you an environment that humans can thrive in (by way of being an environment that the current food chain can thrive in). It’s hard to consider investing in the future when you think it might be apocalyptical. Easier if you think there is a fu…

There is an advantage for society as a whole, but for the person running a single DAC machine the advantage is neglegible. (Which is kinda the inverse why climate mitigation is so hard to begin with - avoiding emissions doesn't give the person doing so a lot of advantage.)

Re: U.S. sets goal to drive down cost of removing CO2 from atmosphere

#44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

5% is still much higher than the costs of climate change for at least a century (at least if you believe the IPCC projections).

>at least if you believe the IPCC projection Maybe you shouldn't. The IPCC does good work, but their predictions are conservative and imperfect, and they mostly ignore tail risks. Up until 2012 they predicted that arctic summer sea ice would last until the 2050s, and now it's estimated to be gone by the 2030s.

> The IPCC does good work, but...

Does anyone do better projection work?

Re: U.S. sets goal to drive down cost of removing CO2 from atmosphere

#45
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cant we see this from space? Estimate the amount of co2 coming from each country that way and send them a bill every year. My first thought was “that’s where auditing and bureaucracy come in” but maybe satellites are a better way

CO2 is colorless, odorless, and is produced in many ways, not just from factories or out of tailpipes. For instance, would we want to bill countries with receding glaciers which release methane, a more powerful greenhouse gas that decays into CO2?

Unless the glaciers are being operated in secret, couldn't we just calculate their emissions and not count them against that country?

Re: U.S. sets goal to drive down cost of removing CO2 from atmosphere

#46
post #20
post #15

I thought a recent study showed the most effective/cheap method of reducing CO2 was very simple: plant a lot of trees. Like, really.

Ah, but how would certain entities make tons of money with trees? They wouldn't. And that's why we've been hearing about this nonsense for well over a decade now. It's about making money while pretending they're doing something.

As other commenters pointed out, the other trickiest problem (beyond feasibility and energy requirement) of CO2 removal is that it's not clear who would be paying for them, since you want to sequester the CO2 and not use it. So in the end, it will be either a voluntary deal, or paid by the taxpayers as part of the maintenance of the infrastructure that is earth. Do people make money out of road and bridge maintenance ?

At some point, you might argue that planting trees can make you more money if something edible grows on them (or under them)

Re: U.S. sets goal to drive down cost of removing CO2 from atmosphere

#47
post #15

I thought a recent study showed the most effective/cheap method of reducing CO2 was very simple: plant a lot of trees. Like, really.

Its impossible to olant enoughbtrees to offset our impact.

Which ofcourse doesn't stio various governments from doing fuck all, when they have vacant land they could have reforested

Re: U.S. sets goal to drive down cost of removing CO2 from atmosphere

#48
Seems to me that everything becomes much easier if we just get fusion right. Carbon removal would be cheap at that point, correct?

I’d like to see governments band together and offer up a $1 trillion prize for whomever comes up with a scalable fusion power plant, which would then be released to the public domain.

Re: U.S. sets goal to drive down cost of removing CO2 from atmosphere

#49
post #3

I do worry about the oversight and auditing of such metrics. The article does refer to the problem of "I planted X trees therefore I removed Y carbon", when that is true only under particular conditions.

It's strange from an environmental "culture" standpoint (the treehugger epithet, "save the trees"), but to truly get a good carbon sink out of planted forests you then need to cut them down, bury them, and plant more ones.

Which is basically what happens if we use wood for all our housing and as many consumer products as possible and chuck them in a landfill.

But yes, lies, damn lies, and accounting is definitely a danger to any environmental regulation. It has been for decades, all the industry players know how to game the system:

- no real penalties

- insiders in the regulatory offices

- hide large amounts of pollution from inspectors

- accumulate penalties and lawsuits? Start new corp, transfer assets, declare bankruptcy for the old corporation

- industry-wide penalties? Offload that back to the government (that is, society) with lobbying and rescue funds and other business subsidies

Re: U.S. sets goal to drive down cost of removing CO2 from atmosphere

#50
post #17

Anything to avoid changing the status quo to reduce emissions. Honestly embarrassing.

How do you expect humanity to get to pre-industrial revolution carbon dioxide levels without atmospheric extraction?

The US could halve their emissions and still emit at the same level of an industrialized country like France. A good starting point is to invest more in nuclear energy.
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