[HN Gopher] Charm delivers Stripe's carbon removal purchase ahea... ___________________________________________________________________ Charm delivers Stripe's carbon removal purchase ahead of schedule Author : etxm Score : 105 points Date : 2021-04-20 13:49 UTC (9 hours ago) (HTM) web link (charmindustrial.com) (TXT) w3m dump (charmindustrial.com) | wedn3sday wrote: | This seems like such an ass-backwards approach. They're making | oil and injecting it into the ground using and old oil well. | Wouldnt it be way better to just pay Saudi Arabia/Norway to NOT | to pump this much oil out of the ground? | capableweb wrote: | I don't really know the subject, think it's called "Carbon | sequestration"? Your "making oil and injecting it into the | ground" made me curious, and it does seem like a grand | simplification of what's happening. | juancampa wrote: | I understand that the oil they are pumping in is not nearly as | useful as the oil companies pump out | pkrein wrote: | This. Equivalent CO2, but bio-oil has 1/3 the energy content | of crude oil. | graeme wrote: | This is in fact the central idiocy of oil burning: we will have | to put it back into the ground, at great cost. | | However there is no good way to buy the rights to permanent | sequestration of a given oil resource. It would, however, be | optimal to tax oil burning from stored reserves. | m3kw9 wrote: | Maybe they are already not pumping this much. Just discount it | 20% from any number. It's free carbon removal by your proposal. | They'd fleece you if you offer that payment to them lol. You'd | never be able to track it | yaacov wrote: | The idea is to figure how to do this cheaply now so that in the | future when we have abundant clean energy we can deploy it at | scale | throwaway894345 wrote: | Or better yet, tax the daylights out of oil so oil producers | don't have incentive to produce? But as others mentioned, we | can also pull carbon out of the atmosphere. | PeterisP wrote: | If you (probably in this case "you" means some government) | actually tax the daylights out of oil, then your population | will riot, remove you from power and reverse the tax before | it has had any meaningful impact. | | "Gilets jaunes" riots two years ago were caused in part by a | relatively minor fuel tax increase. Actually taxing oil so | much as to significantly reduce its consumption would be a | huge impact on population and cause much larger resistance, | probably violent. | kisamoto wrote: | Yes, absolutely. | | These are not mutually exclusive events. | | We need to reduce our emissions and stop pumping oil out | (develop clean alternatives). | | We need to remove the existing excess of emissions in our | atmosphere to get down to more natural levels. | evolve2k wrote: | Having someone actively put oil "back in the ground", | actually really helps the narrative and ongoingly highlights | the hypocrisy you speak of. It's a next step. | StavrosK wrote: | How do you do that? Are you paying them to shut the pumps down | for X hours? What if the rest of their demand remains constant? | I don't see how this can possibly work. | oh_sigh wrote: | No, because the oil isn't fungible. We're getting high quality, | grade-A organic, family-owned oil out of the ground and putting | the bottom of the barrel sludge back in. | bishnu wrote: | I feel like the covid pandemic has definitively answered the | question "What's better, government policy and collective | action, or a small well-capitalized group implementing a | technological solution?" | | Efforts like this are the only way we make a dent in climate | change. | londons_explore wrote: | 416 tons of CO2e is what... The amount emitted by a single family | in a few days? | | I reckon I could turn my thermostat back a few degrees and save | that. | teej wrote: | Qatar is the highest in the world at 49 tons per capita per | year. So you're off by a lot. | | That doesn't make 416 tons a lot by any stretch, but we are | still early in the technology cycle for carbon | removal/sequestration. | ktta wrote: | Your numbers are way off. ~7 tons of CO2 is what the average | American family emits per _year_ | Klwohu wrote: | Carbon removal seems like slapping a band aid on a sucking chest | wound until the Chinese and Indian problems are dealt with. | reissbaker wrote: | To be fair the US is a bigger problem than India, and is only a | smaller problem than China by virtue of having a far smaller | population. The US is the second largest source of CO2 | emissions in the world, and per capita is higher than both of | those countries. | | However, building these technologies may help everyone reduce | net CO2 emissions. | Klwohu wrote: | The US is absolutely nowhere near India's carbon emissions, | nor China's. And none of the famously popular proposals such | as Paris even address it. | | It's cool, they already serve as our garbage dumps and | contain the toxic waste that fuels your iPhone. Just saying | the USA isn't anywhere near the peak of the problem. | tito wrote: | As someone working in carbon removal, this milestone is a big | deal. Congrats to the Charm team on hitting this milestone! | | I hosted an interview at AirMiners with Shaun, Charm's Chief | Scientist, last June right after they received the purchase order | from Stripe here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lk0k0ioXqkM | | The conversation included 3 of the other Stripe finalists (Vesta, | Climeworks, and CarbonCure, who just won the Carbon XPRIZE), plus | Ryan from Stripe. | | For those of you interested in more details, Charm has a blog | post about their process here: | https://charmindustrial.com/blog/2019/3/17/making-grass-flow... | | Congrats again, and cheers to many more. | DivisionSol wrote: | Random unverified search: 1ppm is 7.8x10^9. Just say 300ppm is | reasonable. Currently 417ppm. | | 7.8x10^11 tonnes of Carbon to remove from the atmosphere to | return to "normal" (Handwavy approximations) | | This was 4.16x10^2, in, let's just say 12 months. | | Assuming an absurd 100% increase in volume year over year... | they'll drop the carbon ppm by 1 after... 24 years. | | Not meant to doom/gloom, just curious. | ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote: | In the 1980s it cost 100000 dollars to launch a kg low Earth | orbit, today it's 1000. [1] | | In the 1970s solar cells cost 100 USD/Watt, today 0.2 USD/Watt. | [2] | | These napkin calculations are fairly meaningless on those time | scales with emerging technologies, 30 years is a long time. In | fact they don't even hold for this year. They finished | delivering 150 tons in January of this year and the rest in | march so that'd be 300 tons in 3 months. | | [1] https://www.futuretimeline.net/data-trends/6.htm | | [2] https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/evolution- | of-... | dillondoyle wrote: | Does anyone know the rough cost per /tonne? I doubt Stripe is | investing much. | | a 100% increase in volume doesn't sound ridiculous to me. zoom | alone grew revenue over 100% in like a month - dumb example but | there are lots of others. The triple, triple, double, double, | double unicorn formula is widely marketed as another example. | | There would surely be scale efficiencies in all these | techniques too? | | I think we are past catastrophe at this point and even with | your math that sounds like more of a win than I would have | guessed! | | We have spent Trillions in the last year on stimi. that could | have been targeted for dual purpose... and especially the | proposed infrastructure bill should be changed but that would | be another longgg thread. | | Just trying to argue a point that even 'small' and maybe even | not feasible at the moment ideas need to be actively pursued | and scaled when they work, even if not as efficient as a HN | engineer's dream we need to have basically an immediate all out | war to fight climate catastrophe at this point. | | Do this on 1000 different ideas and spend much bigger much | faster we might stand a chance.. | kisamoto wrote: | Stripe bought 416 tons at $600/ton [0] and Shopify has | committed $5million annually[1] to carbon removal (including | Charm at what I presume is a similar price point) | | I am heavily bullish at the growth of carbon removal. Not as | an excuse to continue emitting but as a growing awareness of | necessity to restore more natural CO2 levels. | | * [0] https://stripe.com/blog/first-negative-emissions- | purchases * [1] | https://www.shopify.com/about/environment/sustainability- | fun... | dillondoyle wrote: | Thanks very interesting. I agree. And if we end up killing | our civilation maybe we'll be burying new oil for some | future peoples to get similar explosive growth from | basically free energy - and hope they learn from our | mistakes ;) | | Though seems like a tree can easily be more than a tonne | and way cheaper than that. Even if worried about keeping | the carbon in the forest could bury it too! | mstipetic wrote: | This video might be interesting to you | https://youtu.be/GmWpFCjh0Fk | shakezula wrote: | It's truly the only way we'll be able to curve carbon | emissions and CO2 ppms. We need a carbon tax now, to create | a framework for companies to become accountable for their | emissions. | tango118 wrote: | Okay, but under your assumptions they would reduce carbon | concentration by >100 PPM after just 30 years, which actually | sounds pretty good. | [deleted] | salmonfamine wrote: | Depending on investment, greater than 100% growth is not | necessarily absurd. The article is about the carbon capturing | capability of a single, essentially PoC plant. Carbon | Engineering is building a plant that will -- according to their | own press release, anyway -- capture up to a megaton of carbon | annually (https://carbonengineering.com/our-story/) | | Either way, it remains to be seen how effective carbon capture | plants will be. A lot depends on investment and proving a | business model. Renewables have the upper hand on fossil fuels | now, because they solve a proven business problem, cheaper. | Carbon capture companies have to prove that there's even a | market for their services. Although, some would advocate for a | Keynesian approach to building out mass DaC infrastructure | funded directly from federal spending. | | Changing agricultural practices probably has a better outlook | for carbon sequestration at the moment. | pjfin123 wrote: | Purchasing this type of carbon removal potentially has a massive | second order effects if it helps encourage big unit cost | reductions like what happened for solar. The Collinsons have | talked a lot about creating the conditions for progress so I | wonder how intentional this is. | adamsvystun wrote: | Let me try to offset the cynicism here. | | These are welcome news. Seems like a small company in short | amount of time was able to develop and validate carbon removal. | Stripe's commitment helped them do this, which is great. I wish | them further successes in making the process cheaper and faster. | shakezula wrote: | I would love to see this model made feasible with a carbon tax, | so that companies that couldn't meet a carbon goal could just | buy their way down artificially or pay the government the | taxes. | whall6 wrote: | > ' Research from Oxford, Stanford and Berkeley has found that | 85% of nature-based carbon offsets sold today are not | "additional"' | | I was imagining that this would be the case. I was reading about | pine farms being paid to halt harvesting. My very first thought | was "I wonder if it makes sense to buy forested land to make a | profit." Clearly other people have already thought the same | thing. | andrewpk wrote: | I know they make a point in reasoning "why not landfill?" but I | have to wonder if "injecting our magic bio-oil deep underground" | just sounded better to the VCs vs "we we just friggin' buried the | corn husks." | kisamoto wrote: | On a serious note...that's not a bad idea. I will need to find | out why that's the case (although I imagine it's something to | do with the pyrolysis leaving a more stable and predictable | carbon-rich mass rather than leaving the degradation to nature) | quadrature wrote: | they cover this here https://charmindustrial.com/faqs#bury- | biomass | | "Others are working on this method. The landfills are | expensive to dig, the geology is critically important, and we | don't believe the capacity to be as scalable or as permanent | as injecting carbon-containing liquid into deep geological | storage. The conversion of biomass into bio-oil via pyrolysis | results in a liquid form with a higher carbon density, and is | more easily handled, transported, and injected into existing | wells." | boringg wrote: | Which carbon registry and third party verifiers confirmed the | removal? This marketing piece doesn't actually point to any | project details / offset protocols / verifiers etc. | | FWIW believe in carbon offsets but have deep skepticism about | geologic storage (go see Aliso canyon as an example of geologic | storage gone awry). | salmonfamine wrote: | I've always wondered if we could find a way to shoot it into | space. | PhilipVinc wrote: | Shooting the rocket would probably generate more CO2 then you | are sending to space... | gruez wrote: | depends on the rocket fuel. hydrogen or hydrazine doesn't | produce co2 on combustion. | salmonfamine wrote: | If we get to a world with hydrogen-fueled rockets, we'll | probably have much bigger dreams than just carbon | sequestration. | philipkglass wrote: | The Delta IV Heavy is already fueled purely with | hydrogen: | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta_IV_Heavy | PeterisP wrote: | Still, you could burn that fuel in a power plant instead | of e.g. natural gas, and that would offset much more CO2 | than what you can shoot into space. It's just not an | efficient use of energy, and any large quantities energy | saved or not generated has a pretty direct impact on the | CO2 that we could not produce. | mvzvm wrote: | PR fluff piece? | Judgmentality wrote: | It's the corporate website, so yes. | PradeetPatel wrote: | If a corporation is doing something good, shouldn't they have | the right to show it off to the rest of the world? | | It has been observed that this is a valid tactic to consolidate | their reputation, and encourage others to follow in their | footsteps. | purple_ferret wrote: | It's interesting to compare this (creating bio oil and injecting | into the ground) to using ethanol in gas, which many people | seemed to have concluded was/is a wasteful endeavor. | | It'd be funny if at some point they concluded, 'storing this is | much less efficient than burning it as fuel. Let's just burn it | instead of petroleum based oils!' | 8ytecoder wrote: | I don't fully understand you so I'm going to assume you meant a | sequestration process that captures CO2 as bio oil. If we | capture existing CO2 and then burn it again to produce CO2, | that's just re-circulation (from an ecological pov; pollution | is a different story). Growing new crops to then burn it very | likely adds new CO2 - not per se, but because these crops | would/could only replace existing crops - which simply moves | elsewhere or trees/forestland and not result in afforestation. | | Also, if our goal is reduce the CO2 in the atmosphere, not just | keep the balance, we need permanent sequestration. | jmstriegel wrote: | I'm excited for technologies like this to become available for | regular individuals. I'm not sure what the current figure is, but | in 2008 the average American was responsible for 20 tons of co2 | every year[1]. At $600/ton[2], that's roughly a $12,000/yr unpaid | externality on the American lifestyle. | | It's likely that even with incredibly aggressive elimination of | co2 waste, several economic sectors will continue to produce | significant amounts of co2, and we'll need sequestration to make | up the difference. | | [1] | https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080428120658.h... | | [2] https://stripe.com/blog/first-negative-emissions-purchases | graeme wrote: | Actually you can buy Carbon Sequestration through Climeworks | right now. They're one of Stripe's other partners: | https://www.climeworks.com/subscriptions | darepublic wrote: | Perhaps a naive question but what is the carbon overhead of | the removal. And is that taken into consideration? edit: am I | right in calculating that the average American citizen would | need to purchase the 7 Eur plan 170+ times over to make | themselves carbon neutral for a year | [deleted] ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-04-20 23:00 UTC)