[HN Gopher] Shell's carbon capture plant is emitting more than i... ___________________________________________________________________ Shell's carbon capture plant is emitting more than it's capturing Author : bjourne Score : 135 points Date : 2022-01-22 19:37 UTC (3 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.vice.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.vice.com) | fallingknife wrote: | Correct me if I'm wrong here but it sounds like "emitting more | than captured" here just means reduced emissions by less than 50% | but still a lot. Seems misleading. | lvs wrote: | It's a massive government subsidy for fossil fuel demand. | That's not helping anything. | simondotau wrote: | Correcting you because you're wrong. They're talking | specifically about emissions _caused by_ the capture plant | being greater than emissions it captures. The carbon footprint | would be lower if the plant didn 't exist. | | The plant was not penalised for emissions it failed to capture. | rank0 wrote: | The original study is considering the emissions of the entire | hydrogen plant, not just the carbon capture portion. | | Its a hydrogen plant with a carbon capture piece on top. Not | a "carbon capture plant." | throw8932894 wrote: | And? My country produces electricity mostly from coal, ICE uses | way less energy, but everyone will argue tooth and nail electric | vehicles are CO2 neutral and green! | | Why this creative statistics should not be used in this plant? | For example carbon capture could be in one country, while energy | production and negative externalities in second! Boom, we | captured N millions tons of CO2! | kolinko wrote: | Flagging as a clickbait title. | | The title seems to suggest that shell has a carbon capture plant | that is emitting more than producing, where in reality it's a | hydrogen generation plan that captures some, but not all co2. | | This article is way less better: | https://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/fossil-gas/shell-... | _Nat_ wrote: | Looks like you're right. | | [This fact- | sheet](https://sequestration.mit.edu/tools/projects/quest.html | ) lists the plant has intending a 35% capture-rate. And while | that's a weirdly low target-(capture-rate), it doesn't seem | hidden. | | Looks like [a Canadian-government-hosted report from | 2011](https://open.alberta.ca/publications/quest-carbon- | capture-an... ) also includes this in the executive-summary: | | > The purpose of the Quest Project is to deploy technology to | capture CO2 produced at the Scotford Upgrader and to transport, | compress and inject the CO2 for permanent storage in a saline | formation near Thorhild, Alberta. Over one million tonnes of | CO2 per year will be captured, representing greater than 35% | capture of the CO2 produced from the Upgrader. Quest is a part | of the Athabasca Oil Sands Project (AOSP), an oil sands joint | venture operated by Shell and owned by Shell Canada, Chevron | Canada and Marathon Oil. | | So if they're capturing ~38.4% when they proposed " _greater | than 35% capture_ " to the government, then... that sounds | kinda like they're doing what they said they'd do. | stjohnswarts wrote: | I would like to see the absolute amount of energy produce vs | emitted carbon compared with oil/gas/{fossil_fuel} rather than | an article by a pissed off reporter/magazine. Is it an | improvement over existing technology/efficiency? Is it just the | first step and can be improved or has it been a failure? These | are the types of articles people should write. NetZero carbon | won't happen over night. | DoingIsLearning wrote: | The issue still stands why are governments subsidizing this | dead end research? | | 5.6 trillion dollars of taxpayer money went to Fossil Fuel | subsidies. That's almost 7% of the world's gdp, or about 11 | million dollars per minute just in 2020 [0] | | Oil companies continue to capture trillions in subsidies while | deflecting blame and misleading the public along the way. | | [0] | https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2021/09/23/Sti... | [deleted] | _Nat_ wrote: | It sounds like this was intended. | | It looks like the project may've been based on winning a grant | [from this call [PDF]](https://www.alberta.ca/release.cfm?xID=263 | 8932A61D80-09C7-C9... ) from 2009, which wanted: | | > The first round of commercial scale projects is expected to | achieve annual carbon dioxide reductions by 2015 equivalent to | taking approximately one-million vehicles, or about a third of | all registered vehicles in the province, off of the road. | | Sounds like the Canadian-government was looking for projects | that'd remove a lot of CO2 for the money, rather than necessarily | a high portion of CO2 from the source. | | Then from the executive-summary of [this report from | 2011](https://open.alberta.ca/publications/quest-carbon-capture- | an... ): | | > Over one million tonnes of CO2 per year will be captured, | representing greater than 35% capture of the CO2 produced from | the Upgrader. | | Plus [this project- | database](https://sequestration.mit.edu/tools/projects/quest.html | ) also listed it as being intended to capture ~35%. | | It's kinda weird to capture just ~35%, but apparently they didn't | need to go higher to meet the project-specification. | codewithcheese wrote: | They run this same scam in Australia, see this honest government | ad https://youtu.be/MSZgoFyuHC8 | JulianMorrison wrote: | It's capturing money. | Comevius wrote: | Another way of looking at it is that they captured 6 million | tonnes of CO2, which is not a bad demonstration for the | technology. Shell never claimed that they can achieve zero or | negative emission. It's a hydrogen plant, it creates hydrogen and | CO2. They managed to capture almost half of the CO2. | | Still not climate-friendly, but it's something. | NotACop182 wrote: | It takes as much or more energy to capture the co2 as it took | to create it in the first place. It's just the laws of the | universe. | fatbird wrote: | As someone else said: "We lose money on every sale, but we're | hoping to make it up in volume!" | JoeyBananas wrote: | It's not like Shell would make a carbon capture plant for | nefarious purposes. They wouldn't set up a carbon capture plant | just to accelerate global warming. | WesolyKubeczek wrote: | They don't think along this axis at all, I'm afraid. They try | to maximize profits while having more compliance checkboxes | checked than their competition does. | | Good/bad for planet is more of a marketing sort of issue. | JoeyBananas wrote: | Even if Shell is a completely amoral company (they're | really not) setting up a carbon capture plant that emits | carbon is still not even rational. | brazzy wrote: | As the first comment in this tree pointed out, it's not, | in fact a "a carbon capture plant". It's an oil refinery | with added facilities to capture the CO2 that the | refinery emits. And now it turns out that it captures | less than half of the overall emissions. Which is better | than nothing, but not nearly good enough. | tsimionescu wrote: | If they're not amoral, they are morally evil, since they | have repeatedly tried to cover up global warming, oil | spills, and have many many other sins to their name. | Comevius wrote: | I mean I agree that carbon capture should not be used as an | excuse to prolong the fossil fuel industry, but we sort of | need to produce hydrogen to produce ammonia. | | It's hard to get out of this trap, because ammonia is | critical for the agriculture, and this is not a sustainable | practice, but it's a Sophie's choice. Starve now or kick the | can down the road and likely face bigger problems. | | The fossil fuel industry gets the angry letters, but in this | case agriculture is the one that needs to be reinvented | first. | VintageCool wrote: | Green hydrogen is a thing. It is not economically viable | now, but the costs of electrolyzers are falling. | | The world in 2020 had 300 MW of electrolyzer capacity, but | multiple companies (Cummins, thyssenkrupp, etc) are | building factories with the capacity to build 1 GW of | electrolyzers per year. | | The IEA anticipates 17 GW of installed electrolyzer | capacity in 2026. | | https://www.iea.org/articles/could-the-green-hydrogen- | boom-l... | | Green hydrogen could be cost-competitive in a few years. | zapataband1 wrote: | They set it up for the purpose of staying in business and | staying in business for them means continuing to extract | petrol. So yeah they are doing this to _continue_ to | accelerate global warming. | stjohnswarts wrote: | Staying in business is all the ultimately care about. If | they can use their expertise to make green energy in an | economical way that is on par with their current money flow | they would have no issues with that. It's all about money | in the end with investors. | dasil003 wrote: | Okay, but why is the government subsidizing this? That just | encourages increasing the volume of production that increases | emissions over time. Instead we need to progressively ramp up | taxes on fossil fuels to drive down demand over time. | rzwitserloot wrote: | For the same reason governments the world over subisidize | research (which, on its own, obviously emits more co2 than it | directly saves, as it directly saves zero), or why e.g. | germany has subsidized solar so hard there were plenty of | obvious net-negative cases to be found: | | To pull the technology through the hole where it is | financially inefficient - without having to wait for some | investor to take that gamble (and expect the 10x return that | goes with it). | | _IF_ the subsidies continue forever and _IF_ this technology | now takes over all other attempts, you're totally right: | Utter madness. | | But those 2 ifs are extraordinary claims. | bawolff wrote: | If you only fund things that fully work, you'll never get | anything new because research takes steps. It doesn't happen | in a day. | lvs wrote: | This is not a research effort. It's a scam. | azinman2 wrote: | My question is why the government is funding Shell of all | companies. The ones who have contributed to so much climate | change and climate denial in the first place -- shouldn't | this come out of their own pocketbook? | caminante wrote: | FTA: | | _> Joanna Sivasankaran, the press secretary for the | Minister of Natural Resources, said, "Carbon capture | utilization and storage is not a silver bullet to the | climate crisis but it is an important tool on the pathway | to reaching Canada's ambitious climate goals and reducing | emissions in many industries, including oil and gas."_ | azinman2 wrote: | Oh I'm not suggesting to avoid gov funding research. I'd | just rather see that money go to academics, gov labs, and | startups rather than a multinational who has raped the | Earth for decades, and helped (helps?) fund climate | denial. For those companies, I'd suggest forcing them to | subsidize the research rather than the public subsidize | them. | | No to privatizing profits while socializing loses. | caminante wrote: | _> I'd suggest forcing them to subsidize the research | rather than the public subsidize them._ | | I'm afraid the sanction approach would merely force Shell | to limit research/commercialization efforts and take jobs | and tax revenues out of Canada. | | You're not designing a greenfield system. But if you want | to go hardline, there would be severe consequences for | Canada. | WJW wrote: | It's a pretty pragmatic call: Shell has decades of | experience with large scale chemistry operations, and the | oil majors have been hiring all the smartest engineers in | the field for decades, similar to how FAANG hovers up | much of the software engineering talent by offering | humongous salaries. If there is any company that has a | decent chance at success for scaling up carbon capture | technology, it is probably Shell or one of their main | competitors. | | This type of hardware-based market is much less amenable | to the type of startup-driven innovation that we see in | the software world, because building a large scale | chemical plant is so incredibly expensive. | echelon wrote: | Pragmatism and realpolitik. | | It doesn't really matter who is doing it so long as it's | being done. The incentives align, and they're well | positioned to do this. | afarrell wrote: | Indeed. In the choice between punishing a corporation and | solving the problem, we should pick solving the problem. | hazza_n_dazza wrote: | Thank you for that strawman. In a world with two choices, | I take the third. Lets open up dialouge, not close all | doors but two. | FormerBandmate wrote: | Because carbon is the negative part of using fossil fuels? If | this improves enough there could end up being no problem | whatsoever with fossil fuels. | | We should fund efforts like this with carbon taxes however | because carbon hurts now | mlyle wrote: | Government should do both: tax carbon and use it to pay for | pilot projects and moonshots that could be valuable in the | fight against AGW. | lukifer wrote: | It was definitely a light-bulb moment, recognizing that in | some cases, taxation is not a necessary evil, but a | positive good (in this case, pricing externalities) [0]. | | At this point, I care less about what carbon taxes pay for, | than making sure they exist at all, enough to shift | incentives on both production _and_ consumption. (That | said: the dividend strategy certainly does seem to have | advantages for political viability, and avoiding "yellow- | vest" backlash to regressive taxation.) | | [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigovian_tax | jeromegv wrote: | Canada carbon tax is interesting because it's meant to be | almost a zero-sum game. They take the money and you get | it back in your tax refund. So it is more about pricing | externality and ensure we slowly switch to better | alternatives without disproportionately taxing us. | edgyquant wrote: | That taxes and tax breaks can be used in to create | incentives is one of the fundamental aspects of modern | liberalism. Most people don't have the libertarian idea | of taxes where they are evil/theft. | petermcneeley wrote: | This is like selling 10 dollar bills for 9 dollars. | lukifer wrote: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar_auction | caminante wrote: | Then why is Shell Canada's operating profit margin hitting | 29%? | | [0] https://reports.shell.com/tax-contribution- | report/2018/our-t... | pharmakom wrote: | Because they are selling the tax payers dollar bills. | gmuslera wrote: | It would had captured more carbon (or at least, less carbon in | the atmosphere) if you didn't turn it on. | | It would be great a carbon capture technology, on which | companies should invest billions in a technology that turns | carbon into (natural) gas, liquid (oil) or solid (coal) form | and bury them deep underground. In the same way with that | plant, not extracting them in the first place would be a more | efficient solution. | | But instead we have this kind of placebo technology that not | only does nothing, but worsen the problem, and with some | creative accounting gives them an excuse to extract even more | fossil fuels and delays even more the urgent actions needed to | mitigate the devastating consequences that warming at the | current rate will bring. | kuratkull wrote: | Sounds like a great plan... if you don't need electricity | ajb wrote: | The way the capture guys argue is that if you have a plant that | captures 50% of carbon emissions, then you run it on >50% | renewable fuel, and it ends up carbon neutral or negative. | zapataband1 wrote: | Petroleum companies have captured our governments and are | subsidizing bs technology to stay relevant on our dime, it has | never been about zero emissions for them. | lvs wrote: | No it is nothing. It has concocted a way to launder fossil fuel | demand through another product stream. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-01-22 23:00 UTC)