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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

#201

Post by notahacker »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #189
tsol wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>there is nothing at all stopping you from paying people in Africa or South America to buy electric cars I can think of tons of problems with this. It requires more scarce than resources like lithium to make cars. You can be scammed by people selling the car and using that money to buy a house and a cheap commission engine. You don't have the issue with carbon capture. Your likely to face much more political pushback…

> It requires more scarce than resources like lithium to make cars. What do you think it takes to capture carbon? > You can be scammed by people selling the car and using that money to buy a house and a cheap commission engine. How is that a profitable scam? Anybody else could buy the same car with the same subsidy. You can't resell it for more than you paid. > Your likely to face much more political pushback for sub…

> How is that a profitable scam? Anybody else could buy the same car with the same subsidy.

What's the subsidy level? Because people earning a few dollars a day aren't paying much more for your subsidised Tesla than they paid for their 30 year old car with an ICE. And if you start subsidising new EVs to the extent that your giving them away for less than $1k, your scheme might actually be worse for the environment (Production costs are a significant fraction of the carbon footprint of a car, especially if it isn't used very much, and directly or indirectly the subsidy makes brand new cars cheap for a lot of people in developed countries that don't need them...)

The more you consider the logistics of such a scheme, the more carbon capture makes sense, and not because I'm averse to the idea of subsidies for EVs or solar manufacture

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

#202

Post by ratboy666 »

neaanopri wrote: post #172
notahacker wrote: post #116

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? The problem isn't getting wealthy Californians to swap their SUV for a Tesla, it's getting poor Cubans to give up the only car their government w…

Us first. The carbon footprint of a US citizen is very high. We can shame others when it gets below average

"Carbon footprint".

Ok -- Empty out the North.

http://www.mappedplanet.com/karten/klima/januar_temp-na.png

How about it? I get to move to Memphis, where I no longer need to heat my dwelling in the Winter.

https://www.chatelaine.com/home-decor/environment-eco-home-h...

I pay 11.3 cents per k/w for electricy

https://www.torontohydro.com/for-home/rates

Natural gas costs 4.71 US/MMBtu

https://www.torontohydro.com/for-home/rates

Now

1 MMBTU = 293.07107 kWh

So with ALL of this, electricity is 7 times more expensive than natural gas.

Now, it costs $125 or so per month to heat a house here - Using electricity, that would be $875. Per month.

https://www.torontohydro.com/about-us/company-overview

Only 6.3% Natural Gas.

In a nutshell, I can't afford it. That's ok, I can just to Memphis for my retirement.

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

#203

Post by VBprogrammer »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #128
incrudible wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Suppose it costs X to do Y Don't. You can't predict prices like that. Consider that electric cars roll out of the factory having emitted more CO2 than the equivalent combustion vehicle. It takes a lot of miles to break even. If you put a price on the CO2, you may well figure out that combustion engines end up more efficient, because carbon-neutral fuel is close to being economical. > But then they'd still be better…

> Don't. You can't predict prices like that. You can predict that not emitting CO2 will cost less than emitting CO2 and then recapturing it, because it's the second law of thermodynamics. > Consider that electric cars roll out of the factory having emitted more CO2 than the equivalent combustion vehicle. It takes a lot of miles to break even. It takes about the number of miles that the average person drives in a year…

> It takes about the number of miles that the average person drives in a year.

I wish that was true. Volvo recently put out a statement that it takes about 70k miles to recover the initially higher energy input using the world average energy mix. Some 9 years of the average UK milage.

Of course, if manufacturing is made significantly less CO2 intensive then the maths change.

For what it's worth, even if there was no CO2 benefit I'd still be rooting for electric cars to succeed for various other reasons including noise, particulates etc.

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

#204

Post by AnthonyMouse »

incrudible wrote: post #171
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Don't. You can't predict prices like that. You can predict that not emitting CO2 will cost less than emitting CO2 and then recapturing it, because it's the second law of thermodynamics. > Consider that electric cars roll out of the factory having emitted more CO2 than the equivalent combustion vehicle. It takes a lot of miles to break even. It takes about the number of miles that the average person drives in a year…

> You can predict that not emitting CO2 will cost less than emitting CO2 and then recapturing it, because it's the second law of thermodynamics. You're mixing up watts with dollars, a mistake that "green energy" stockpickers make all the time. Consider all the energy that is hitting the Sahara. It's worth zero dollars, because it can't economically be used - but what if you could capture and transport it somehow, you…

> You're mixing up watts with dollars

Watts cost dollars. You lose a lot of watts to heat by converting fossil fuels to CO2 and back. Overcoming those losses is quite optimistic.

> That's the lowest estimate I have ever heard - do you have a source for that?

13,500 miles, the same as the average annual miles driven in the US:

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/when-d...

> Sure, but economics of scale apply to all technologies and unless you let the market do its thing, you won't know the minima and maxima.

What market? We're talking about government subsidies for carbon capture.

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

#205

Post by pfdietz »

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…

Hydrazine is not used very much as a rocket fuel. It's expensive, toxic, mutagenic, carcinogenic, flammable (not escaping that though), and explosive. It also has a freezing point too high to be used in space (MMH, monomethyl hydrazine, is used in spacecraft with NTO as the oxidizer.)

The best fuels for the first stage of launchers are hydrocarbons, due to their low cost and good density. And the first stage is where most of the propellant in a launcher is consumed. The cost of propellant becomes increasingly important as the cost of the launcher is reduced; for SpaceX it is very important. The use of cheap propellants also allows more testing of their engines.

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

#206

Post by notahacker »

neaanopri wrote: post #172
notahacker wrote: post #116

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? The problem isn't getting wealthy Californians to swap their SUV for a Tesla, it's getting poor Cubans to give up the only car their government w…

Us first. The carbon footprint of a US citizen is very high. We can shame others when it gets below average

US emissions are ludicrously high per capita but shrinking. The rest of the world's are higher overall and growing.

I'm not sure the mentality that it'd be rude to consider tackling the latter problem unless and until US per capita emissions drop below the global average is going to help the planet.

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

#207

Post by AnthonyMouse »

inglor_cz wrote: post #200
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Are you implying that any of those isn't or couldn't be produced synthetically or as a biofuel?

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

#208

Post by scottcodie »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #138
cat_plus_plus wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ab…

It's easier than that, simply make carbon neutral transit cheap and carbon intensive transit expensive then the market will innovate. It's just no country wants to take a hit on their economy to force the transition to happen.

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

#209

Post by hackeraccount »

perfunctory wrote: post #111
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.

> because you don't have to convince/force 7 billion people to do something. Well, at least you'll have to convince them to pay $100 per tonne captured.

Maybe not. Imagine what a rhinoceros is worth to someone in an Africa. It's (hypothetically making up numbers here) a car or a house or food for a year.

For the right person in the US the cost of keeping that rhino alive in their backyard (or safe from poachers in a reserve in Africa) is much much more but both not an inconceivable amount to pay and not an undesirable one.

The best part CO2 capture is that motivated resourced people could in theory act without the worlds cooperation. People who aren't motivated and/or resourced could choose to not act and the problem could still get solved.

Currently the only way to achieve that kind of effect is to help under-resourced people to act by giving them resources. I would suggest that for a lot of reasons this is a very tricky solution.

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

#210

Post by pfdietz »

opportune wrote: post #177
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…

Renewables don't all have steady load, so it could be an alternative to batteries/hydro batteries. Use natural gas peakers when renewables don't produce enough, use excess renewable power to remove CO2 from the air when they are producing more than you need. Basically it's using the atmosphere as a reverse-battery

The alternative there is to do pre-combustion CO2 capture on the methane, storing hydrogen (or hydrogen + nitrogen) for use in the peaking turbines.

Another possibility is to store CO2 underground, and when "charging" use a solid oxide electrolyzer to turn it to carbon. When discharging, it would be run as a SOFC and produce CO2, which would be cooled and stored again. I believe Noon Energy is looking into schemes like this.

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