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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

#91

Post by makeitdouble »

jandrese wrote: post #8
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…

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.

This would be a great idea.

I think it’s also interesting to trace how much all of it come from really good, simple and forward thinking principles, to slowly become the state we are in now.

For instance, following your idea, there will be the issue with countries that produce more CO2 than they can afford, but we can’t make them pay as it would literally be a matter life or death to them. So they get an exception.

They then become a beacon of CO2 relocation. We start to pass more laws to limit that trend, but the existing companies will be grandfathered. They then have a monopoly on the scheme, and also find other loopholes, progressively expanding the amount of CO2 they can get away with.

During that time, these countries will be more and more CO2 swamped, degrade beyond belief, and someone will be pesting against the demon that thought about taxing countries in the first place.

To put my naive ideas out as well, I kinda see economic tricks the same way we say “don’t try to solve social problems through technology”. We should straight get the bigger economies to shoulder infra construction in weaker economies no strings attached. No loan, no debt, no nothing. We’re all extinct anyway if we don’t do it.

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

#92

Post by MaxGanzII »

BurningFrog wrote: post #66
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…

Removing CO₂ is far more doable, because you don't have to convince/force 7 billion people to do something. Anyone with the right equipment can just do it, without asking permission, just like CO₂ emitters can.

CO₂ is not the only factor driving ecological damage and indeed, the mass extinction event currently in progress.

There are simply too many humans for the way in which we as a species currently behave.

Either we need single parent families, globally, for a few generations, to get numbers down to a sustainable level, or, we have to convince/force 7 billion people to accept and adhere to major changes in how they live their lives.

CO₂ is a basically easy problem, compared to this, if it is possible to take the route of geo-engineering, because, as you say, it's not necessary to change how people behave; but I think no matter what, there is a need to change how people behave, or billions die from famine and economic failure, induced by ecological collapse.

I don't think people will change (indeed, there will be large numbers of people vocally against change), I think Governments will at best effectively do nothing "(we're building lots of renewable! but we're also building lots of gas at the same time!"), or more likely make things worse ("we'll phase out coal by 2070"), so my expectation is human suffering on a scale never seen before in all human history.

Humans are kākāpō; we're over-reproducing, having as they did no meaningful natural predators to keep us in check, and sooner or later, that leads to ecological collapse.

(The kākāpō went through several cycles of this and evolved to reproduce very, very slowly, and so came into balance with their environment, and then were very nearly almost completely wiped out when humans arrived.)

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

#93

Post by civilized »

BurningFrog wrote: post #66
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…

Removing CO₂ is far more doable, because you don't have to convince/force 7 billion people to do something. Anyone with the right equipment can just do it, without asking permission, just like CO₂ emitters can.

If we're going to talk insanely expensive moonshots, maybe the US should install and maintain free point-of-emission carbon capture for anyone anywhere in the world who wants it, and put the technology behind it in the public domain for anyone who doesn't want it from us.

Point of emission capture is at least technologically feasible.

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

#94

Post by bryanlarsen »

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 efficiency was ever a concern we wouldn't be burning fossil fuels in the first place. A gasoline engine only extracts a small portion of the energy in the gasoline, most of the energy gets wasted as heat.

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

#95

Post by PeterisP »

aunty_helen wrote: post #18
jandrese wrote: 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

We can measure the total amount, but it's rapidly mixing and moving so we can't reliably allocate the CO2 production to states from space measurements, no.

Furthermore, countries only are liable for the commitments to which they voluntarily agree in international treaties or get forced to agree with credible threats of excessive violence.

As all the climate talks have clearly shown, no one is going to sign a treaty which accepts the obligation to pay such a bill even if it could be accurately calculated; the world simply does not work that way.

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

#96

Post by incrudible »

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…

> It seems hard to believe that removing CO2 from the atmosphere could ever be less expensive than not emitting it to begin with.

This is the "get rich by saving money" fallacy. Imagine all the CO2 of a century of industrial development had not been emitted. We'd be enjoying a life without man-made climate change, but also without any of the amenities of modern life.

Consider that air-to-fuel companies are pretty close to profitability with just a modest increase in carbon taxes. Consider also that countries like Germany spent a lot of money on transitioning to renewables, with very little to show for it. Once you picked the low-hanging fruit, there are no more "savings" to be had without drastically cutting down on production. At that point, you might as well turn some of that production into sequestration.

> So the whole thing seems like a fraud.

I get the same feeling with electric cars, solar panels and wind turbines. Why? Because these have all rolled out on account of lavish subsidies, not because the market decided they are the most efficient solution. Just put a price on CO2 and watch the market figure that one out. Results may be not what you expect.

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

#97

Post by cletus »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #55
cletus wrote: post #36

I've said this repeatedly here: the world won't address climate change even if it's mildly inconvenient to do so, let alone the massive endeavours that have been proposed thus far. The solution will be economic. Want to replace fossil fuels with cleaner energy sources? It won't happen until those alternatives are cheaper. When energy is sufficiently cheap or the byproducts are sufficiently valuable, that's when carbo…

"Want to replace fossil fuels with cleaner energy sources? It won't happen until those alternatives are cheaper" We are going to go extinct with that attitude - the laws on nature do not owe us a cheaper method of producing energy. The Moneyed classes have never given up anything willingly: the end of monarchy, the end of slavery and even labour laws were won in blood. Its likely to be the same with climate change

> We are going to go extinct with that attitude

I understand your point and I agree (within limits) but that makes it no less true. Side note: total extinction of the human race is incredibly unlikely at this point and certainly not from climate change. That's not to say that huge numbers of us won't die in the process.

> the laws on nature do not owe us a cheaper method of producing energy

Of course not but increasing fossil fuel costs ultimately make other forms of energy production economic.

> The Moneyed classes have never given up anything willingly: the end of monarchy, the end of slavery and even labour laws were won in blood.

I agree but that's really a whole separate topic. The unwillingness of the ultra-wealthy to pay for the society that makes their wealth possible and the legions of people who adamantly oppose the ultra-wealthy just being slightly less ultra-wealthy is a recipe for disaster.

The ultimate form of wealth redistribution is war and revolution.

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

#98

Post by Supermancho »

bobcostas55 wrote: post #19
detaro wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> extremely cheaply What's that in numbers, so we can compare to the number aimed for here?

Probably https://old.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/pc0reb/an_a...

This is from a preofessor in the Netherlands, 2016 He's giving lots of strategies, other than "Olivine all the things": http://arctic-news.blogspot.com/2016/07/olivine-weathering-t...

This is a whitepaper from that professor 2017: https://www.scirp.org/journal/paperinformation.aspx?paperid=...

His own summarized blogpost, where he is representing the "Olivine Foundation": https://smartstones.nl/the-rate-of-olivine-weathering-an-exp...

So I'm thinking this is probably a good foundation to start from. How long before someone can convince the US, much less China to olivine their fields?

This is not a fake problem. It's a series of problems. I have edited a previous post in the thread to concede the technical effectiveness of this solution.

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

#99

Post by PeterisP »

makeitdouble wrote: post #91
jandrese wrote: 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.

This would be a great idea. I think it’s also interesting to trace how much all of it come from really good, simple and forward thinking principles, to slowly become the state we are in now. For instance, following your idea, there will be the issue with countries that produce more CO2 than they can afford, but we can’t make them pay as it would literally be a matter life or death to them. So they get an exception. T…

> "We should straight get the bigger economies to shoulder infra construction in weaker economies no strings attached"

Who is meant by "we" in this sentence? And in what ways do you consider that it's plausible to "get them to shoulder it" in excess of whatever they freely choose to do?

> We’re all extinct anyway if we don’t do it.

Citation needed - the IPCC published worst case scenarios are far from extinction, and especially in the countries which would shoulder the burden the expected damage the local consequences are "very bad" in the sense that a few percent decrease in GDP growth is an enormously large economic damage. It's not clear if spending 5% of GDP on that (or much more, if you expect them to "shoulder the burden" as well) would be worth it for them, since they'll have to invest in local mitigations anyway due to the already accumulated greenhouse gases.

5% of global gross product is a lot. For example, it's more than what the world affords to spend on all kinds of education together. It's far more than what would cost to truly eliminate world hunger and most major diseases. It's an order of magnitude more than what the world has devoted for charitable purposes. It's literally the equivalent of mobilizing 400 million people to work only on that thing - if the expected bad consequences of climate change are e.g. 200 million displaced people, then that's very bad, but it's not worth to have 400 million people devote their lives to prevent 200 million from needing to migrate.

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