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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

#191

Post by notahacker »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #154
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which number do you think is larger, the cost for the US to dictate industrialisation policy for the rest of the world or the cost for the US (and possibly other governments more interested in reducing global warming, if the tech is there) to offset some of their emissions? You only have to dictate policy to them if you're trying to get them to pay for it. If you're going to pay for it yourself, there is nothing at…

> you would have to convince your taxpayers to pay to offset emissions in some other country I strangely think the rich world would be more comfortable building carbon capture infrastructure at home than clean energy offshore. The jobs are domestic. And you aren’t handing a productive asset to another country. Hell, find it with an import tax on polluting countries and we don’t even have to pay for most of it.

Don't think it's even a strange thought; the US has been always much happier with industrial policy than welfare. "NASA, but for your climate" is a much easier political sell than "let's give foreigners [almost] free luxury goods".

And if you don't want people in the developing world to simply sell the brand new Teslas you've swapped for their 30 year old bangers, you're also going to have to build out a charging infrastructure, ensure that new power stations built to handle the increased electricity demand are renewable, and shut down people's routes to simply buying new ICE cars manufactured in other countries and pocketing the difference between that and the cost of the Tesla. Even assuming that politics doesn't exist and the world will do exactly what the US wants if they spend enough money. the cost of offset doesn't seem quite so expensive after all...

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

#192

Post by exyi »

X6S1x6Okd1st wrote: post #28
Kapura wrote: post #17

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

There is no way to fix this problem without carbon removal, even if emissions go to zero today.

yea, but just reducing the emissions ASAP does not seem to a big priority for many states at the moment

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

#193

Post by JumpCrisscross »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #160
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you would have to convince your taxpayers to pay to offset emissions in some other country I strangely think the rich world would be more comfortable building carbon capture infrastructure at home than clean energy offshore. The jobs are domestic. And you aren’t handing a productive asset to another country. Hell, find it with an import tax on polluting countries and we don’t even have to pay for most of it.

The solution to that is to subsidize production of the alternative products in your own country for export. Then subsidized US-made solar panels and electric cars would be cheaper for people in Africa and South America than burning coal, but you get all the US jobs etc.

> subsidized US-made solar panels and electric cars would be cheaper for people in Africa and South America than burning coal, but you get all the US jobs etc.

You're still giving productive infrastructure to foreign countries. A Nazi doormat could get elected running to redirect those panels and subsidies for domestic use.

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

#194

Post by missedthecue »

xyst wrote: post #69

Impose a tax on O&G industry, remove all of their subsidies, and earmark the collected tax towards CO2 removal and other climate change reversal methods. Could get to the $100 per tonne in a fraction of a time.

A tax on the O&G industry is a tax on consumers. Demand for energy is largely inelastic, so costs are easy to pass on. Gas prices at only $3.50 are already sending Joe Biden's approval ratings through the floor. Sending gas prices past $5 or more means a reactionary panel of candidates get elected next cycle, which is counter-productive.

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

#195

Post by andrei_says_ »

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…

In Ministry for the Future, governments started paying fossil fuel companies more money to keep the fuel in the ground than they could make by extracting and selling it.

Only then the extraction slowed down.

Maybe we can start by including the cost for sequestering the CO2 in the cost of the fuel?

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

#196

Post by thatcat »

datameta wrote: post #27
AndrewThrowaway wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A forest will only grow as a carbon sink on the century timescale, which is the window in which we irreversibly enter headlong into the anthropocene or mitigate our global anthopogenic effects. We don't have to plan for burying them.

That's incorrect, if you look into regenerative agriculture you'll see that soil carbon content can be increased from 1 to 8 percent in less than a decade. Carbon sequestration isn't just from biomass above the soil, it also occurs through carbohydrate transfer to microbes and as a result of the increase in microbial biomass in soils.

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

#197

Post by missedthecue »

exyi wrote: post #192
X6S1x6Okd1st wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no way to fix this problem without carbon removal, even if emissions go to zero today.

yea, but just reducing the emissions ASAP does not seem to a big priority for many states at the moment

The costs are too high, and therefore the electorate is unwilling.

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

#198

Post by missedthecue »

hourislate wrote: post #32

Just convert everything to solar, wind, hydro and nuclear, the earth will heal itself. No new taxes, departments, bureaucracies, crooks and additional burdens on the tax payer who will foot the cleanup bill while corporations keep on keeping on.

Electricity production is only 25% of GHG emissions.

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

#199

Post by AnthonyMouse »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #193
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution to that is to subsidize production of the alternative products in your own country for export. Then subsidized US-made solar panels and electric cars would be cheaper for people in Africa and South America than burning coal, but you get all the US jobs etc.

> subsidized US-made solar panels and electric cars would be cheaper for people in Africa and South America than burning coal, but you get all the US jobs etc. You're still giving productive infrastructure to foreign countries. A Nazi doormat could get elected running to redirect those panels and subsidies for domestic use.

If you haven't already replaced all of your own fossil fuels, redirecting them to domestic use is fine. If you have, they would have to fight all the people who want to keep their jobs making products for export.

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

#200

Post by inglor_cz »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #180
pharke wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on what the dollar cost of not burning fossil fuels turns out to be. I think being able to close the carbon loop is extremely important, there will inevitably be use cases where burning fossil fuels is the superior or only option. Rocket launches immediately jump to mind and are looking to be an area that will continue to experience explosive growth throughout the next century. We had better have a viable opt…

Rocket fuel isn't gasoline, it's hydrazine. It's not pumped out of the ground, it's synthetic. This is a good lesson for the carbon capture economics. We know how to make synthetic fuels and biofuels. As a general rule, making them costs around the same as carbon capture. "Grow some plants or something" is actually one of the most efficient known methods of carbon capture. Biofuels cost more than pumping crude out of…

There isn't a single rocket fuel.

Some launch systems fly on hypergols (hydrazine is one of them; it is not used in the West anymore as a main fuel, being too toxic), some burn hydrogen with oxygen, some burn kerosene (RP-1), a new system is coming online that actually uses methane (Starship).

And these were just the liquid propellants. There are also solid fuel rockets.

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