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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

#331

Post by Dylan16807 »

incrudible wrote: post #327
Dylan16807 wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. If you don't have any external pressure or subsidies on you, you can turn off solar/wind in seconds. Re…

Those "slow to ramp" plants are necessary to provide the base load. The cause of the overload is the volatility of renewables. Whether it would be cheaper to curtail renewables and who exactly gets to foot the bill - I don't know. Doesn't seem reasonable to me that, say, France should pay Germany because their very stable nuclear plants can't accommodate for the volatility of renewables elsewhere. Either way, the cos…

> Those "slow to ramp" plants are necessary to provide the base load. The cause of the overload is the volatility of renewables.

Sure, that's true. But what I'm saying is that negative prices don't impact the rollout of renewables because renewables never have to pay them. And in a market with lots of renewables and no distortions, prices won't go below zero anyway.

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

#332

Post by spywaregorilla »

istjohn wrote: post #240
spywaregorilla wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, you just killed the US steel industry and several others. Massive amounts of manufacturing have moved to other industries to avoid the tax. US economy is now significantly less competitive. What's the next move?

Just tax imports from countries that don't have an equivalent carbon tax.

Great idea. Now US companies down the supply chain have a higher cost of goods sold too. US Steel is technically more competitive domestically, but is worse off internationally. You have successfully incentivized even more businesses to leave the United States and have lost millions of jobs. You have possibly violated several trade agreements too but let's ignore that.

So what now? We haven't accomplished much other than moving manufacturing to other countries. Are we just going to tax the finished goods coming into the country too because they were made with dirty fuels too? Because people are already pretty unhappy, including auto manufacturers, pretty much anyone who actually makes stuff, and also people who need to eat food. Especially people who just lost their jobs due to your earlier choices.

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

#333

Post by spywaregorilla »

12ian34 wrote: post #274
spywaregorilla wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, you just killed the US steel industry and several others. Massive amounts of manufacturing have moved to other industries to avoid the tax. US economy is now significantly less competitive. What's the next move?

that's what things like COP26 should have been for - breaking the borders between our made up nations and agreeing to solve this problem together as global citizens

Ideally yes. That's the basic problem with international trade. If you try to do something that's better for the world, someone will eat your lunch, your people will suffer, and little will change.

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

#334

Post by ClumsyPilot »

blue1 wrote: post #329
ClumsyPilot wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We burn monstrous amount of oil, Conservation of mass. A liter of oil produces 3 kilos of CO2, density of rocks is 3-4 kilos per liter.

Imagine. For each tanker truck that goes to a gas pump, you need to carry away a truck of the same size full of rocks. Rather nice image for the idea of "not sustainable".

There is no physics-breaking technofix that can make those tankers full of oil sustainable.

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

#335

Post by kodah »

vkou wrote: post #314
kodah wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a policy that won't pass muster then. Making things work for marginalized groups and rural areas is pretty top priority, unless significant and warranted backlash is to be expected.

Actually, we just need to make things work for the wealthy. If we can do that, all of these changes will go through overnight.

Arguably that's what happened in France in 2018 and that resulted in riots across the nation highlighting their apparent classism.

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

#336

Post by bg117 »

Stitch in time saves nine. It's always better to move to a less polluting lifestyle instead of coming up with a round-about expensive way to capture what was released into the atmosphere. Trying to remove CO2 from the atmosphere is like capturing fart. Except that it is way more complicated.

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

#337

Post by vkou »

kodah wrote: post #335
vkou wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, we just need to make things work for the wealthy. If we can do that, all of these changes will go through overnight.

Arguably that's what happened in France in 2018 and that resulted in riots across the nation highlighting their apparent classism.

In the US, it works a little differently. The rural poor do their best to vote for easing the lives of large landowners and millionaires.

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

#338

Post by incrudible »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #331
incrudible wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those "slow to ramp" plants are necessary to provide the base load. The cause of the overload is the volatility of renewables. Whether it would be cheaper to curtail renewables and who exactly gets to foot the bill - I don't know. Doesn't seem reasonable to me that, say, France should pay Germany because their very stable nuclear plants can't accommodate for the volatility of renewables elsewhere. Either way, the cos…

> Those "slow to ramp" plants are necessary to provide the base load. The cause of the overload is the volatility of renewables. Sure, that's true. But what I'm saying is that negative prices don't impact the rollout of renewables because renewables never have to pay them. And in a market with lots of renewables and no distortions, prices won't go below zero anyway.

> But what I'm saying is that negative prices don't impact the rollout of renewables because renewables never have to pay them.

How do you know? Do you have source on that? It doesn't stand to reason that the cost of excess electricity produced by renewables should be carried by anyone else but the producers of such electricity. It's true that these overshoots wouldn't exist if coal or nuclear plants could be regulated quickly, but it's also true that if these plants didn't exist, nothing would make up for the underproduction.

> And in a market with lots of renewables and no distortions, prices won't go below zero anyway.

Alright, let's assume there's zero cost to curtailment (not true, but close enough) and that excess energy is only produced because the compensation structure works that way: You still have wasted potential energy from curtailment. Increasing the rollout strictly increases that waste. Therefore, it is reasonable to put that energy into fuel production, especially considering that the best combination of volatile renewables today is natural gas, which can be regulated quickly.

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

#339

Post by entropicgravity »

In the antArctic the temperatures can get very close to the freezing point of C02. A little bit of extra energy (nuclear or wind?) would be enough to freeze atmospheric C02 into solid blocks. Would there be any easy and inexpensive way to store those blocks long term? Under the ice sheets? Bottom of the ocean? Send it into space on Musk's rockets?

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

#340

Post by datameta »

thatcat wrote: post #196
datameta wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You're right in pointing this out. What I am saying is that we do not need to deliberately bury biomass. The forest ecosystem is not just the trees.
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