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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

#131

Post by anonuser123456 »

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…

While it may impact GDP, it may not impact productive output. Less stuff will be consumed for the same output. There will be impacts on how money is shuffled around; fossil fuel profits flow from fossil fuel share holders to CCS companies, fossil fuel workers will be displaced by CCS industry workers.

As renewables come online at cost parity, they will displace fossil fuel usage. That will cause a dramatic decline in fossil fuel price as oversupply becomes a constant problem. So people buying fossil fuel will be spending less for the same result.

Now, one might make the following observation; we've taken fossil fuel profits away and consumed them immediately rather then re-investing them (what capital owners typically do). This means less investment and thus growth. Frankly, I find the hypothesis not so compelling. There is little evidence that capital is the bottleneck in Capex spending. My view is the world suffers from too few good ideas chased by even fewer people/organizations and under the constraints of bumbling governments.

GDP issue aside, at 100$/ton this only adds 1$/gallon to the price of gas and 0.50$/therm to the price of natural gas. That's definitely absorbable by the declines that will happen from oversupply.

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

#132

Post by [deleted] »

Factorium wrote: post #130
civilized wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As soon as you add that requirement to coal power plants, they become immediately uneconomic to build or operate. They are already borderline due to the fall in cost of renewables. With a meagre Carbon Tax of $15/tonne, coal costs double in the US. There's nothing that can be done to fix coal power apart from just shutting it all down.

[deleted]

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

#133

Post by DangitBobby »

baron816 wrote: post #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.

I don't think fusion is coming soon enough to be part of the plans for Climate Change. People working on fusion reactors have been misleading the public about progress. They have been using a "Q" value (energy in versus energy out) to describe some internal process rather than the entire process. So when they say something like "67% efficiency" they really meant "1% efficiency."

1. https://whyy.org/segments/fusion-energy/

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

#134

Post by csee »

GOONIMMUNE wrote: post #77
jillesvangurp wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It obviously doesn't and they never claimed that it did. The point is that it's cheaper on the margin to stop polluting than it is to keep polluting and then clean it up afterwards.

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

#135

Post by [deleted] »

civilized wrote: post #93
BurningFrog wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

[deleted]

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

#136

Post by mike_hock »

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…

Indeed.

If their pie-in-the-sky $100 comes through, that is.

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

#137

Post by p1mrx »

civilized wrote: post #93
BurningFrog wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Let's suppose that I can buy an inexpensive carbon capture box and attach it to my gas furnace exhaust. Where does all the carbon physically go?

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

#138

Post by AnthonyMouse »

cat_plus_plus wrote: post #114
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…

Thermodynamics is about entropy AND enthalpy. A stationary algae bloom using otherwise unused sunlight can be a lot cheaper than trying to fly a heavy battery along with 300 passengers. Earth is also full of natural alkaline minerals that can be used as cements or for soil enrichment while naturally absorbing acidic carbon dioxide. Direct consumption of electricity for carbon capture is not necessarily the main solut…

> A stationary algae bloom using otherwise unused sunlight can be a lot cheaper than trying to fly a heavy battery along with 300 passengers.

The alternative isn't just trying to fit a heavy battery into a plane, it's to scoop the algae up and use it to make carbon-neutral biofuels to run the plane.

> Earth is also full of natural alkaline minerals that can be used as cements or for soil enrichment while naturally absorbing acidic carbon dioxide.

Then you're trading the thermodynamic problem for an economic one. You have to mine all of that stuff up, do chemistry on it, lose the economic value of the minerals in their existing form and end up with an incredible volume of industrial waste you have to pay to dispose of.

It doesn't violate the laws of physics for that to be cheaper, but it's still pretty unlikely. Remember that the alternative doesn't have to cover the full cost of generating electricity from non-carbon sources, only the difference in cost between that and burning coal. That's pretty close to zero, if not negative, as it is, and that's without a carbon tax.

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

#139

Post by convolvatron »

cat_plus_plus wrote: post #118
MaxGanzII wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Dude, its not the 50s, most of the world is under replacement rate of reproduction. The problem now is largely the opposite, shortage of young minds to invent carbon free energy grids and young hands to build them. You can cut human population by half and still have a problem of excessive carbon emissions or transition to carbon free economy and have net zero per capita emission. Also I don't want humanity to be almo…

if young minds are really the limiting factor - maybe we could be doing a better job with education.

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

#140

Post by civilized »

Factorium wrote: post #130
civilized wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As soon as you add that requirement to coal power plants, they become immediately uneconomic to build or operate. They are already borderline due to the fall in cost of renewables. With a meagre Carbon Tax of $15/tonne, coal costs double in the US. There's nothing that can be done to fix coal power apart from just shutting it all down.

It would be great to do sane carbon policy, but politics is the limiting factor at the moment. Carbon capture is one of the few universally popular solutions.
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