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

reuters.com

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

#71

Post by civilized »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #51
dane-pgp wrote: post #2

> The Department of Energy's Carbon Negative Earthshot seeks to slash the cost of carbon removal to $100 a tonne by the end of the decade At 40 gigatonnes a year, that would be $4 trillion, which is about 5% of Gross World Product.[0] It's probably still cheaper to avoid emitting the CO2 in the first place, but that does put an upper bound on the cost of reaching net zero. Of course, no one wants to take a voluntary…

> It's probably still cheaper to avoid emitting the CO2 in the first place, but that does put an upper bound on the cost of reaching net zero. It seems hard to believe that removing CO2 from the atmosphere could ever be less expensive than not emitting it to begin with. You're working against thermodynamics. So the whole thing seems like a fraud. An excuse to keep emitting CO2 while claiming that you'll do something…

Capturing it at the point of emission seems like it should be the priority. Way, way easier to get it at that point. But that would make fossil fuels more expensive, and we can't have that right?

Maybe we should just massively subsidize point of emission carbon capture for fossil fuels. We need it for some use cases that renewables don't work for anyway (yet).

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

#72

Post by BurningFrog »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #41
version_five wrote: post #5

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 c…

I think OP meant it's apolitical in the sense that it can be done without any laws being passed, or summits like COP26, by anyone with some money.

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

#73

Post by ClumsyPilot »

bobcostas55 wrote: post #38
dane-pgp wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure which projections you're referring to, but researchers at UCL concluded: "the damage costs caused by climate change will reach $5.4 trillion a year by 2070, and $31 trillion a year by 2200" https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/energy/news/2020/oct/cdp-and-...

I'm thinking of this projection here: https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2019/02/SR15... Which gives an estimate of 2.6% of global GDP in 2100. The one you mention seems to be in the same ballpark: assuming 2% growth, in 2070 global GDP will probably be somewhere around 220T, so 5.4/220 = 2.4%.

Thats for 1.5 degrees, a target we've already missed. We are now on track for over 3 degrees right now, and every extra degree of heating is exponentially more damaging than the last.

Consider that -4 degrees chage had washington DC under a glacier thats two miles of ice, and now imagine the same change in the other direction.

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

#74

Post by Sankozi »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #51
dane-pgp wrote: post #2

> The Department of Energy's Carbon Negative Earthshot seeks to slash the cost of carbon removal to $100 a tonne by the end of the decade At 40 gigatonnes a year, that would be $4 trillion, which is about 5% of Gross World Product.[0] It's probably still cheaper to avoid emitting the CO2 in the first place, but that does put an upper bound on the cost of reaching net zero. Of course, no one wants to take a voluntary…

> It's probably still cheaper to avoid emitting the CO2 in the first place, but that does put an upper bound on the cost of reaching net zero. It seems hard to believe that removing CO2 from the atmosphere could ever be less expensive than not emitting it to begin with. You're working against thermodynamics. So the whole thing seems like a fraud. An excuse to keep emitting CO2 while claiming that you'll do something…

If you had process that only needs electricity then you run it only when power is cheap (usually when renewables are producing it).

Depending on efficiency this could be better solution than energy storage (instead storing energy you pull CO2 and then burn it later if energy is needed).

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

#75

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

mgraczyk wrote: post #64
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's probably still cheaper to avoid emitting the CO2 in the first place, but that does put an upper bound on the cost of reaching net zero. It seems hard to believe that removing CO2 from the atmosphere could ever be less expensive than not emitting it to begin with. You're working against thermodynamics. So the whole thing seems like a fraud. An excuse to keep emitting CO2 while claiming that you'll do something…

It's more plausible to me when you think about centralization vs decentralization. Sure, it would clearly be cheaper to emit less if the emissions were mostly coming from a small number of controlled facilities. But when the sources are millions of tailpipes and smokestacks across the globe, it's at least plausible that a centralized, new recapture solution would be cheaper than decreasing emissions in millions of ol…

Given how fast electrification of transportation is occurring, I think those "millions of tailpipes" may go down sooner than you think.

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

#76

Post by grayfaced »

mikesabbagh wrote: post #37

Maybe instead of paying 100$ for a ton of CO2 captured, add a CO2 tax of few $ to every ton released

If it costs $100 to remove, then that should set the price. If you can set a reasoned price on a externality then charging anything less is subsidizing the pollution.

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

#77

Post by GOONIMMUNE »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #41
version_five wrote: post #5

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 c…

How does "leaving it in the ground" get us back to 280 ppm?

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

#78

Post by BurningFrog »

AndrewThrowaway wrote: post #4
krisrm wrote: 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.

I guess you need to plant X trees, wait Y years for them to accumulate Z carbon and then bury all the trees M meters underground to stay there forever.

"Forever" is over ambitious.

I'd pile them up in some desert. Should last a few centuries.

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

#80

Post by jorblumesea »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #51
dane-pgp wrote: post #2

> The Department of Energy's Carbon Negative Earthshot seeks to slash the cost of carbon removal to $100 a tonne by the end of the decade At 40 gigatonnes a year, that would be $4 trillion, which is about 5% of Gross World Product.[0] It's probably still cheaper to avoid emitting the CO2 in the first place, but that does put an upper bound on the cost of reaching net zero. Of course, no one wants to take a voluntary…

> It's probably still cheaper to avoid emitting the CO2 in the first place, but that does put an upper bound on the cost of reaching net zero. It seems hard to believe that removing CO2 from the atmosphere could ever be less expensive than not emitting it to begin with. You're working against thermodynamics. So the whole thing seems like a fraud. An excuse to keep emitting CO2 while claiming that you'll do something…

If taken from a purely economic standpoint, yes. But once politics get involved, a more expensive often can feel "cheaper" if it gets everyone moving in the same direction or produces some level of agreement.

Sure, in an ideal world, we would just all do the right thing. But that is not the world we live in.

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