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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

#221

Post by snovv_crash »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #88
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.

You don't need permission to pay people to install wind turbines either. What you need is money. And if you have money, and a dollar spent installing wind turbines goes further than a dollar spent extracting CO2, why are you going to spend it on the inefficient thing?

Because at some point you have enough electricity.

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

#222

Post by perfunctory »

hackeraccount wrote: post #209
perfunctory wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

For every resourced person motivated to capture co2 there will be another resourced person motivated to release it. Do we really want to find out who is gonna win the race. No matter how you spin it, we won't solve the emissions problem without politics.

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

#223

Post by lucb1e »

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…

> An excuse to keep emitting CO2 while claiming that you'll do something about it "tomorrow."

While paying the higher price today to have it removed? That's not much of an excuse, that's buying your way out of it. If people want to go that route and they pay for their own emissions (there, of course, is going to be the problem) then be my guest. If you'd rather go the typically cheaper route of changing the technology or lifestyle (e.g. drive electric or ditch the car altogether), that's also fine.

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

#224

Post by incrudible »

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

> We can shame others when it gets below average

This may come as a shock to some, but pretty much nobody outside the US cares what people from the US think about them.

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

#225

Post by DennisP »

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…

Bear in mind that (a) you're just pulling it from the atmosphere and burying it, not splitting the C from O2 so you can use it as fuel again, and (b) there are applications like long-haul jets and cement production where eliminating emissions isn't that easy.

To put some numbers on (a), David MacKay's book has some numbers[1]:

> The laws of physics say that the energy required must be at least 0.2 kWh per kg of CO2....

> Lackner told me in June 2008 that, in a dry climate, the concentration cost has been reduced to about 0.18–0.37 kWh of low-grade heat per kg CO2. The compression cost is 0.11 kWh per kg. Thus Lackner’s total cost is 0.48 kWh or less per kg.

Burning a kilogram of coal generates 8 kWh[2] and 2.42 kg CO2[3]. So that's 8 kWh generated, requiring 1.16 kWh to pull 2.42 kg CO2 back out out of the atmosphere.

So about 15% of the energy obtained by putting carbon in the atmosphere is needed to remove it.

[1] https://www.withouthotair.com/c31/page_244.shtml)

[2] https://www.euronuclear.org/glossary/coal-equivalent/

[3] https://360energy.net/how-does-using-energy-create-carbon-em...

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

#226

Post by ericd »

HPsquared wrote: post #168
ericd wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems like you’re assuming our current culture stays constant. I’m pretty sure it’s going to change quite drastically after we have our first million+ death heat wave. It’s going to suddenly seem a hell of a lot more tacky to be driving a huge Chevy Tahoe. Which is to say that things that seem impossible politically might suddenly become very politically possible.

Ironically in such a heat wave, lots of people would likely take shelter in their air conditioned cars.

A lot of the people in a lot of the places likely to have those don’t have cars with AC.

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

#227

Post by orf »

missedthecue wrote: post #194
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.

I always forget US gas prices are dollars per gallon. According to Google prices are currently less than a dollar a litre, in Europe the median seems to be about 1.8 dollars per litre (4.5 litres in a gallon). In the UK it is about 7.5 dollars per gallon.

The USA seems addicted to cheap fuel. That addiction needs to end sometime, and if you collectively cry about prices raising to less than the levels the rest of the world deals with just fine it doesn’t give much hope for the future.

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

#228

Post by rcxdude »

MaxGanzII wrote: post #158
cat_plus_plus wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I may be wrong, but I think the world population is growing more quickly than you portray, and will be for some decades yet, and we currently have far too many people for how we conduct ourselves as a species. I may also be wrong to think it, but I would expect if you halved the world population, assuming it was done equally across the world, you would indeed halve human carbon emissions; half as many people, half as…

Based on current trajectories, the world's population is not going to double again (or even increase by 50%), it will level off at about 10 billion and at that point perhaps start to shrink. It's possible this level is not sustainable with an acceptable standard of living, but it's not obvious and it certainly isn't inevitable that humanity will reproduce out of control.

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

#229

Post by DantesKite »

dataflow wrote: post #165
DantesKite wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not clear to me 280ppm is actually ideal, because below 150ppm, most plant life on Earth begins to die from the lack of CO2 in the atmosphere. It takes a couple generations for plants to adapt (which they can), but I don't imagine most crops and forests will survive the transition well. I actually think where we're at is relatively decent. We know what's happening, can reliably predict certain storms. Definitely…

> I actually think where we're at is relatively decent. We know what's happening, can reliably predict certain storms. You mean aside from the massive wildfires, depleting groundwater with droughts in so many parts of the world, etc.? The status quo hits the 'sweet spot' for you?

The observation I'm making is that we know what the bounded risks are. We don't know what the lower bounds (or upper bounds) might do. We've planted lots of vegetation that depends on the growth of CO2 levels year after year (to some degree). It's not clear to me that if it gets too low that would be a good thing.

By the way, I'm not arguing that we shouldn't decrease the CO2 levels. We should. I'm trying to have a nuanced and interesting discussion about a very complex phenomena.

Each of those problems you brought up can also be mitigated with proper engineering as well.

Take for example how Israel effectively solved the drought problem. Now that's an exceptional case and it wouldn't be logistically feasible to expect every nation to dedicate so much of their GDP to such problems. I'm just trying to suggest there are other variables at play, besides moving CO2 levels up and down like a thermometer.

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

#230

Post by notahacker »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #213
notahacker wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 th…

Have you ever been to the developing world?

Battered old cars are worth more than a year's average per capita income in much of the world. They're not throwing away recently manufactured US/European/Japanese cars before 2050 just because their country's 0.1% now find subsidised Teslas more financially attractive than Fords or Mercedes. Actually, they probably won't find subsidised Teslas more appealing than Fords or Mercedes if they drive long distances, because it's a lot easy to find a roadside shack with gasoline than EV hookups.

There are already production EVs cheaper than any US manufactured car made in China, but it isn't going to make much of a dent in the residual demand for the billion ICE cars, trucks vans already in existence in places where people buy second hand and maintain forever.

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