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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

#211

Post by SECProto »

diordiderot wrote: post #190
GOONIMMUNE wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Imagine a boat filling with water, you would want to plug the whole before you start bailing out water

Imagine the first hole has been leaking for 200 years, and also getting a new hole each year. Also each hole grows every year. The boat is on track to be totally sunk in a couple decades.

You probably want to start bailing immediately, also start plugging holes immediately. Except our technologies for bailing aren't practical yet (and may never be). If we don't plug the holes, we'll sink. If we don't start bailing, we'll sink. If we do both immediately, we might still sink but we've got a better chance.

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

#212

Post by redisman »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #159
redisman wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In rich western pockets like Norway and SF Bay sure. Globally though your median car owner can in no way afford to replace their car with a new one

Sure, for now. But pretty much all of Europe, large parts of the US, much of China have plans to ban gas vehicles in the near future ( I definitely see this happening much faster than any attempts at atmospheric capture would even make a tiny dent.

I’m definitely in the strategy bucket of let’s do everything and hope it’s enough

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

#213

Post by AnthonyMouse »

notahacker wrote: post #201
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 (P…

You don't have to subsidize against the alternative of a 10+ year old car from the US or Europe if you stop selling ICE cars in the US and Europe, because in ten years the ten year old cars will all be electric too.

So the subsidy is only the amount required to make a new electric car cheaper than a new gasoline car, for the people breaking into the middle class who can now afford that. That's the same as it is in the US, isn't very much, and is declining as batteries get cheaper. It may be soon that it won't even be necessary.

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

#214

Post by guilhas »

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…

This looks like they finally found how to tax the oxygen

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

#215

Post by summerlight »

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…

The point is that upfront investment cost of developing industry specific carbon neutral solution doesn't have uniform ROI and can be (either economically or politically) quite expensive or sometime infeasible. This is an extremely long tail problem and we do need a more general solution applicable even after we exhausted all the low hanging fruits. This is what "upper bound" means in the parent post. So in the ideal scenario, it's more like we eliminate 80% of low hanging emission sources, significant reduce 15% of them and negate the rest with carbon removal to achieve carbon neutrality.

In addition to this, removing historical accumulated carbon is also pretty important. The expected cumulative damage at the point of 2050 will be catastrophic even in the most optimistic projection.

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

#216

Post by Tanjreeve »

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…

With the way capitalism works there'll be a lot more takers to solve a harder but more measurable problem that someone will pay them for (remove the CO2 we'll pay by the ton) than there will be to solve a less measurable problem (prevent CO2 being released generally). Perverse incentives for sure but within the existing parameters likely more effective.

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

#217

Post by BobbyJo »

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 could never be less expensive in the same way a a sled will continue to slide forever on a frictionless surface: theoretically.

Material limitations, and technical limitations may make it cheaper practically.

As an example, let's look at rockets. Which is cheaper, removing the CO2 after release, or developing switching technologies, for instance, to using O2 and H. Well, for certain applications, where the energy density and logistics of the fuel matter, pulling the CO2 out afterwards makes more sense.

Now, yes, that is a small example, but my point is just to show thermodynamic efficiency doesn't translate directly to cost effectiveness for all applications.

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

#218

Post by incrudible »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #204
incrudible wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 sca…

> Watts cost dollars.

It's not that simple. For instance, when there's too much electricity on the European grid because, say, wind energy is particularly strong that day in Germany, producers need to pay for someone else to take that electricity. It has negative cost. This is rare for now, but it does limit the rollout of renewables.

I thought the example of solar energy in the Sahara was rather convincing? It's a lot of untapped potential energy, it just needs a business case. CO2 prices can make that happen.

> You lose a lot of watts to heat by converting fossil fuels to CO2 and back

Again, just because it's a loss in the thermodynamic sense doesn't make it a loss in an economic sense. Fuel cells are quite efficient in the thermodynamic sense, but they're not economical when the whole pipeline is considered. That said, a technological breakthrough can turn that calculation around. You can't predict that, so you shouldn't pick winners.

> Reuters Fact Checkers made an attempt at science

Color me suspicious with that one. At least they're pointing out that other researchers arrived at far less impressive numbers.

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

I'm a strong proponent of CO2 prices. That said, if the government insists on picking winners with subsidies, they shouldn't narrow themselves down too much.

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

#219

Post by incrudible »

to11mtm wrote: post #124
incrudible wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get that, but what are the implications? Consider that the vast majority of CO2 emissions today are coming from the countries that are still developing to that standard we enjoy. We have no right to ask them to cut down. Therefore, we have no choice but to invest into sequestration, because that's the only way to pay down that "debt".

As an alternative, would it be worth it to help developing countries build green solutions now, maybe the economies of scale will help offset some of the short-term cost? You're right that it's not right to force still developing countries to halt their progress. I just wonder if there's a way to help them develop in a way that is better long-term.

Absolutely, technology that scales out to the rest of the world is the only hope to actually make a substantial difference. That includes sequestration, renewables, but also nuclear fission and (hopefully) fusion.

Unfortunately, most of the activism seems to revolve around "us sinners" needing to abstain from our indulgences.

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

#220

Post by unilynx »

listenallyall wrote: post #164
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…

Lol "5% pay cut". Classic ivory tower, wealthy first-world thinking. 4 trillion dollars is $500 per person on earth, which is more than the annual wages for a significant percentage. Energy cost increases put vastly more of the burden on low-income individuals due to the demand inelasticity of heat, fuel, light.

But GP didn't say it had to be distributed evenly, but referred to a 5% of GDP expense. That's 5% of income, whether it's $1000 or $100000.
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