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Launch HN: Noya (YC W21) – Direct air capture of CO2 using cooling towers

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Re: Launch HN: Noya (YC W21) – Direct air capture of CO2 using cooling towers

#121

Post by [deleted] »

fernly wrote: post #120
toomuchtodo wrote: post #4

If you're not injecting the CO2 underground in a stable form, how does this reverse climate change? It sounds like it's simply a cheaper option in some circumstances for sourcing CO2 from the air (compared to traditional solutions by Airgas). Not to take away from your efforts! I think this is a fine improvement to CO2 process needs if you can replace more expensive air extraction techniques, but it doesn't contribut…

What is required is for a third party -- government or quasi-governmental agency -- to create a market by offering to purchase CO2 and sequester it. This would incentivize conversion of cooling towers. The offered price need not be as high as present users of CO2 pay, but merely high enough to prospectively amortize capture equipment over a reasonable time.

[deleted]

Re: Launch HN: Noya (YC W21) – Direct air capture of CO2 using cooling towers

#122

Post by jsantos511 »

fernly wrote: post #120
toomuchtodo wrote: post #4

If you're not injecting the CO2 underground in a stable form, how does this reverse climate change? It sounds like it's simply a cheaper option in some circumstances for sourcing CO2 from the air (compared to traditional solutions by Airgas). Not to take away from your efforts! I think this is a fine improvement to CO2 process needs if you can replace more expensive air extraction techniques, but it doesn't contribut…

What is required is for a third party -- government or quasi-governmental agency -- to create a market by offering to purchase CO2 and sequester it. This would incentivize conversion of cooling towers. The offered price need not be as high as present users of CO2 pay, but merely high enough to prospectively amortize capture equipment over a reasonable time.

There are some companies that are paying people to remove carbon from the atmosphere, but yes, we absolutely need more of them.

Stripe has become a huge leader in the space with Stripe Climate: https://stripe.com/climate

Microsoft is investing $1B into their Climate Innovation Fund to help them remove all of their historic carbon emissions by 2050: https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2020/01/16/microsoft-will-b...

Shopify is contributing $5M annually to remove CO2 from the air: https://www.shopify.com/about/environment/sustainability-fun...

And there are many other examples of big corporations stepping up to undo some of the damage done to the planet.

In the public sector, the state of CA operates the Low Carbon Fuel Standard, which has creating a marketplace for carbon credits (hovering at ~$200/ton now): https://ww3.arb.ca.gov/fuels/lcfs/credit/lrtweeklycreditrepo...

But yes, more is beneficial and will be helpful. We need as many shots on goal as possible!

Re: Launch HN: Noya (YC W21) – Direct air capture of CO2 using cooling towers

#123

Post by jsantos511 »

ip26 wrote: post #101
toomuchtodo wrote: post #4

If you're not injecting the CO2 underground in a stable form, how does this reverse climate change? It sounds like it's simply a cheaper option in some circumstances for sourcing CO2 from the air (compared to traditional solutions by Airgas). Not to take away from your efforts! I think this is a fine improvement to CO2 process needs if you can replace more expensive air extraction techniques, but it doesn't contribut…

Every new technology or company needs that first customer, first revenue stream, to get off the ground. Selling CO2 to beverage companies is the DAC "MVP". Sequestration is an independent problem that can be coupled to DAC later down the road when both are ramped.

This is a great way to put it - this is our MVP, or our "Tesla Roadster", and it will be used to get us to a more permanent, scalable process for carbon removal.

Re: Launch HN: Noya (YC W21) – Direct air capture of CO2 using cooling towers

#124

Post by jsantos511 »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #47
jsantos511 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are two equally-needed levers we have to reverse climate change: the first is reducing current emissions, and the second is removing carbon from the atmosphere. Removing emissions from smokestacks is critical to ensuring we can stop dumping waste into the sky, but we are at the point now where we need scalable, low-cost processes to pull carbon out of the atmosphere. So, we need to definitely do what you're sug…

Thanks for taking the time to reply. I'm still not convinced that pulling atmospheric carbon out of the air makes sense until practically all smokestack emissions are captured at source. Something like putting the heating on while all the windows are open. I wish you guys luck though, hopefully you can carve out a niche market which will mean carbon capture technologies are ready when the time comes.

I hear you and agree - reducing emissions is a very important thing to do, followed immediately by stopping all unnecessary power wasting (like with the windows + heating problem).

In the UN's most recent climate report [1], most of the pathways that are shown to avoid a 1.5°C global temperature rise involve both emissions reduction and carbon removal. Since the current technology portfolio is not anywhere near where it needs to be for any of their suggested pathways, we need new solutions (not just Noya's!) to be developed and scaled to give ourselves a shot of removing the amount of carbon required.

[1]: https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/chapter-2/

Re: Launch HN: Noya (YC W21) – Direct air capture of CO2 using cooling towers

#129

Post by martincolorado »

ping_pong wrote: post #83
jsantos511 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To put it plainly: we need more trees. However, trees cannot get us all the way there. Trees are great for drawing down atmospheric carbon emissions in the short-term, but when trees decompose, they just release that carbon back into the atmosphere. Additionally, the landmass and water needed to sustain all these trees will require another solution to get all of the way to where we need to be with carbon removal.

> when trees decompose, they just release that carbon back into the atmosphere This is false and extremely deceptive. When trees die they don't just release all the CO2 they collected back into the atmosphere over the course of their lifetime. How much CO2 and pollution will your towers produce during its production, while it is being run (it must use some sort of electricity) and when it is eventually dismantled? I…

Agree this is mostly false, and likely not deceptive but fast/sloppy writing. For example, depending on the landscape and forest ecosystem composition, a wildfire could result in the ecosystem becoming a net carbon source. Examples include Ponderosa, Jeffery, and Lodgepole Pine and Douglas fir landscapes in California and Arizona. In a high intensity burn fire where the stand is replaced, it is possible to degrade the soil and emitted soil Carbon through both burning of soil organic matter and subsequent erosion[1][2]. With degraded soil and increasing temperatures the conditions won't be available for Ponderosa, Jeffery, and Lodgepole Pine and Douglas fir to regenerate and the species that succeed them likely don't have the same carbon sequestering potential. This phenomena can be extremely site specific in which former south facing pine stands might not regenerate pine and instead regenerate as chaparral and manzanita (for example, west side Sierra 5000-7000 feet above sea level).

Dying trees and wildfire is especially problematic in Boreal forests in Alaska and Canada[3]. Managing Boreal forests as a carbon sinks is going to be difficult with climate change. In Canada million acre fires are normal as the species composition is susceptible to stand clearing fires and fire intensity can be high resulting in the ecosystem being an atmospheric carbon producing source. Conversely, Redwood forests even at maturity increase their capacity as carbon sinks and are highly resistant to catastrophic fire.[4] So, species composition, soil, and fire influence on whether or not decomposing trees are a carbon sink or source.

Building on the model presented earlier:

CarbonCaptureRateToStopGlobalWarming = growTreesPlantsAndBuryDeadOnes(...params) + newTech(...params)

Replace growTreesPlantsAndBuryDeadOnes with growing fire resistant species that sequester carbon in the soil/biomass at high rates. For example, Redwoods in coastal CA and Oregon.

[1] https://www.firescience.gov/projects/briefs/03-1-1-06_fsbrie... [2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00167... [3] https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-10-3638-5_... [4] https://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=26107

Re: Launch HN: Noya (YC W21) – Direct air capture of CO2 using cooling towers

#130

Post by danans »

jsantos511 wrote: post #116
danans wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ergo pulling 1 metric ton (10^6 grams) of C02 per day The CO2 footprint per capita in the United States is 15 metric tons [1], so at 300M population, that's 4.5e9 metric tons of CO2 per year. At 1 metric ton CO2 removed per day per tower, we would need 4.5e9/365 = 12.3M such cooling towers. Even if the efficiency increased 2 orders of magnitude it is still not enough, and I doubt there is a need for even 123,000 co…

Couldn't agree with you more - the less we emit, the less critical the need for carbon removal technologies becomes. We have two levers for reversing climate change: the first is reducing emissions, and the second is remove carbon from the atmosphere. Most of the pathways in the most recent UN climate report incorporate some amount of carbon removal to maintain global temperature rise below 1.5°C [1]. Humans have bee…

> Humans have been hard at work for a while on our first lever, and we need many shots on goal with the second lever to give ourselves a chance at success.

Agreed, and best of luck with your efforts!

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