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Launch HN: Carbon Crusher (YC W22) – Carbon Negative Roads

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Re: Launch HN: Carbon Crusher (YC W22) – Carbon Negative Roads

#91

Post by tomsyouruncle »

hansarne wrote: post #88
tomsyouruncle wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe the concern others are expressing here can be thought of as the risk of double counting of carbon. If I run an industrial plant that's currently fuelled by burning waste lignin from the paper industry, and I decide to stop that and install some solar panels instead, it seems reasonable for me to claim that change is carbon negative (i.e. I've reduced carbon emissions). Now if CarbonCrusher comes along and buys…

This is a very fair question. We need to be mindful going forward in how we communicate. We can say that our Scope 3 emissions are negative, but scope 1 we are slightly positive (but still much lower than competition) Just to clarify; we go from 7-10kg CO2 positive for traditional methods, to 5 kg negative in two steps; Step one is we reduce emissions from transport, extraction etc because we have a better Crusher wh…

Thanks a lot for adding these details about scoping[0]. I’ve definitely learned something there.

So my scope 1 emissions can be your scope 3 emissions if I emit carbon to make something that I sell to you… but the “real” emissions are always _somebody’s_ scope 1. Interesting stuff!

[0]: https://www.carbontrust.com/resources/briefing-what-are-scop...

Re: Launch HN: Carbon Crusher (YC W22) – Carbon Negative Roads

#92

Post by anamax »

tomsyouruncle wrote: post #78
anamax wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're switching contexts. When you switched from burning lignin to solar, you reduced your carbon usage. However, what happened to the lignin that you stopped using? If it was burned somewhere else, the total carbon usage remained the same even though you changed your usage. If it was stockpiled and is now decomposing over three years, the carbon usage was time-shifted and will be back where it was in three years. (…

> When you switched from burning lignin to solar, you reduced your carbon usage. However, what happened to the lignin that you stopped using? In my scenario, CarbonCruncher bought the lignin I stopped using and made a road out of it. Crucially, in doing so they claim to have a negative carbon impact because they'd trapped that carbon in the ground. But I already claimed that impact when I stopped buying and burning i…

What's the relevance of "claim"?

Thousands of people get "best grandma" coffee mugs each year. Logically, only one of them actually is, but who cares and why?

Re: Launch HN: Carbon Crusher (YC W22) – Carbon Negative Roads

#93

Post by throwawaylinux »

hinkley wrote: post #80
throwawaylinux wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No that's just your reading comprehension problem.

You're having a petri dish problem. Taken out of an environment, a lot of experiments and math look very good. It's interesting, might even be new knowledge, but it's not applicable. That giant machine in their PR materials didn't just appear out of nowhere. It doesn't run on rainbows. It has a considerable embodied carbon footprint. It has an operational footprint, and a transportation footprint. It assuredly produc…

You're shifting the goal posts because you badly misunderstood my initial post.

Re: Launch HN: Carbon Crusher (YC W22) – Carbon Negative Roads

#94

Post by vlovich123 »

hansarne wrote: post #21
vlovich123 wrote: post #16

Do your estimates include the carbon cost of of the lingen transportation network needed to bring the lingen from where it's generated to where the road repair is being performed? What does that aspect of the cost look like and how does it compare with existing resource networks for traditional road repair? What is the cost comparison per foot of road between traditional road repair and your approach (factoring in th…

Thanks for digging into this, awesome questions! Transport is included in all of our estimates, but we haven't yet done the comparison for every location in the world. We are working on a tool so we can on the fly update the CO2 calculation for each customer based on the location in our next markets which are North America and Southern Europe. That said, traditional road repair uses bitumen from oil production, or fl…

Yeah I guess my implicit question there was the relative weights and density of the material needed to be transported per mile of road.

I’m sure your analysis is much more accurate than my native questions since you actually spent time in this space whereas I’ve spent none. Is there a paper you can share? I’d love to forward it to my friends in the space to bring you to their attention as doing cool stuff.

Re: Launch HN: Carbon Crusher (YC W22) – Carbon Negative Roads

#96

Post by hinkley »

throwawaylinux wrote: post #93
hinkley wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're having a petri dish problem. Taken out of an environment, a lot of experiments and math look very good. It's interesting, might even be new knowledge, but it's not applicable. That giant machine in their PR materials didn't just appear out of nowhere. It doesn't run on rainbows. It has a considerable embodied carbon footprint. It has an operational footprint, and a transportation footprint. It assuredly produc…

You're shifting the goal posts because you badly misunderstood my initial post.

Projecting. This is projecting.

My goal post is us not choking on our own filth. We are in a closed system. Any bullshit that moves pollution around in time or location doesn’t fix anything, and because of the laws of thermodynamics there are only very narrow envelopes where doing something is globally better than doing nothing. Cooling a house heats the planet more than the house cools.

We can’t be celebrating systems that don’t move us toward 50% of our current budget. And some solutions that move you a quarter of the way there but then get you stuck at that point are a form of bargaining. In the end you have to let those go and he longer you delude yourself the worse things are.

We need less driving and fewer roads. Fuel efficiency and road efficiency actually increase demand. We’ve seen this, it is known.

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