Live data from Hacker News

Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

stripe.com

1–10 of 217 posts

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#3
This is an amazing pledge and very powerful statement.

However, I am not 100% convinced morally of CCS solutions. The main counter argument being that CCS technology enables the status quo of fossil fuel burning to continue.

On the other hand, there are some heavy industries (steel production?) that do not have any alternatives to coal burning in order to operate and CCS can offset the carbon footprint in these industries. I would however not call this "negative emissions" but rather "emission-free" or similar.

What is your opinion on CCS? Can people convince me in either direction?

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#5
post #3

This is an amazing pledge and very powerful statement. However, I am not 100% convinced morally of CCS solutions. The main counter argument being that CCS technology enables the status quo of fossil fuel burning to continue. On the other hand, there are some heavy industries (steel production?) that do not have any alternatives to coal burning in order to operate and CCS can offset the carbon footprint in these indus…

Limiting climate change to 2C is such a hail mary at this point that we should look favorably on anything, no matter how imperfect, that moves us in that direction. There are no silver bullets, we need to do everything at once.

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#7
I'm surprised by the size of the commit. If $1M is the floor for what a Stripe-sized org is willing to spend, how expensive would a carbon tax actually be? Are there good estimators for my impact as a consumer and how much I need to commit to this?

Basically I want to know how much it costs to feel ok about my flights to go skiing.

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#8
Interesting that they are willing to pay any price the market offers, and expect to pay over $100/t. I wonder to what degree large scale burying of biomass would be effective? It'd be effectively the same process that created the hydrocarbon fuels we use today, which would be fairly effectively sequestered if we didnt drill them out of the ground.

It seems the idea has certainly been thought of: https://cbmjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1750-0...

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#9
post #3

This is an amazing pledge and very powerful statement. However, I am not 100% convinced morally of CCS solutions. The main counter argument being that CCS technology enables the status quo of fossil fuel burning to continue. On the other hand, there are some heavy industries (steel production?) that do not have any alternatives to coal burning in order to operate and CCS can offset the carbon footprint in these indus…

There isn't some intrinsic moral sin to burning carbon. There are just practical problems with having too much in the atmosphere. If you can remove carbon, especially if you can also convert it back into fuel, that solves the problem.

(Carbon isn't the only emission from burning coal -- it contains sulfur and thorium too. But these can also be mitigated with some expense. And if you're converting CO2 directly to fuel, there's no increase in pollution at all.)

Re: Decrement carbon: Stripe's negative emissions commitment

#10
post #3

This is an amazing pledge and very powerful statement. However, I am not 100% convinced morally of CCS solutions. The main counter argument being that CCS technology enables the status quo of fossil fuel burning to continue. On the other hand, there are some heavy industries (steel production?) that do not have any alternatives to coal burning in order to operate and CCS can offset the carbon footprint in these indus…

You could just buy oil and not burn it. Far simpler than CCS.
Post reply on HN