[HN Gopher] The carbon capture crux: Lessons learned ___________________________________________________________________ The carbon capture crux: Lessons learned Author : tpc3 Score : 18 points Date : 2022-09-01 15:17 UTC (2 days ago) (HTM) web link (ieefa.org) (TXT) w3m dump (ieefa.org) | andrewmutz wrote: | I don't know why it matters that the existing users of carbon | capture are oil companies. | | Sure, that means it hasn't yet been used to sequester carbon in | other contexts, but there's no reason it can't be. | | It's like trying to discredit nuclear fission in 1950 by saying | that it's a poor source of energy because all existing users of | fission tech are weapons designers. | abdullahkhalids wrote: | From OP | | > Captured carbon has mostly been used for enhanced oil | recovery (EOR): enhancing oil production is not a climate | solution. | | > Using carbon capture as a greenlight to extend the life of | fossil fuels power plants is a significant financial and | technical risk: history confirms this. | | Also from OP | | > Some applications of CCS in industries where emissions are | hard to abate (such as cement) could be studied as an interim | partial solution with careful consideration. | | Unlike nuclear fission in 1950, we don't have twenty years to | continue extracting oil and gas. Most oil and gas extraction | should have been hard stopped twenty years ago. | andrewmutz wrote: | Yes I read the article, but none of this discredits carbon | capture. It discredits burning oil and gas. | | You don't need to capture carbon to pump out the oil and gas, | and you don't need to pump oil and gas to capture and | sequester the carbon. Just because that's what oil companies | are doing at the moment, doesnt mean that that's the best way | to use carbon capture tech. | | Let's keep doing the carbon capture and stop burning the oil | and gas. | lozenge wrote: | Sure but carbon capture is useless without the storage | component. If you just sell the CO2 for food manufacturing or | any industrial use it will just go back into the atmosphere. | | Unfortunately fossil fuel companies and politicians are | throwing around the term "carbon capture and storage" as if it | will solve everything and allow fossil fuel power plants and | fossil fuel extraction to keep running. All the evidence is | that it can't. | andrewmutz wrote: | I absolutely agree that we can't just keep burning fossil | fuels and use CCS to fix the problem. | | But it doesn't matter if no one buys the carbon we capture. | Sequestering it underground is a good outcome. | | And yes, it's not currently profitable for anyone to capture | carbon and send it underground, but it is a positive | externality and that's where government needs to step in. The | government pays companies to do all sorts of things, and CCS | should be one of them | MobiusHorizons wrote: | The uses for a technology are largely driven by the people who | initially pay money for it. Here, clearly, carbon capture has | been paid for by oil and gas companies and no one else. It feels | like they have given up on the technology simply because some | companies have used it for purposes they don't approve of. As I | see it, no one is willing to pay the cost to purchase and dispose | of the CO2, so more profitable uses needed to be found. This is | something we could solve simply with funding it seems. If it's | really too expensive to collect and dispose of CO2, that would be | a different (much more compelling) argument, but one which the | article fails to make. | tpc3 wrote: | From the report: Captured carbon has mostly been used for | enhanced oil recovery (EOR): enhancing oil production is not a | climate solution. | PaulHoule wrote: | And also much natural gas comes out of the ground with a lot of | CO2 in it and has to be removed to be saleable. In fact, there | are places you can drill in Texas where you get almost pure CO2 | and when people started doing EOR with CO2 that is where they | got the CO2. | vorpalhex wrote: | What if it is? | | If we can make oil carbon neutral or even slightly carbon | negative.. why not? | outside1234 wrote: | It won't work because it doesn't scale. | | About 19.64 pounds of carbon dioxide (CO2) are produced from | burning a gallon of gasoline that does not contain ethanol. | About 22.38 pounds of CO2 are produced by burning a gallon of | diesel fuel. | | Just think of the numbers involved to scale this to the | planetary usage of fossil fuels. | Schroedingersat wrote: | Burning 2kg of coal and injecting 100g of oil worth of carbon | to extract and burn 1kg of oil is barely even greenwashing. | usrusr wrote: | You seem to assume that the amount of carbon pushed down is | roughly identical to the amount of additional carbon brought | up. Is that just a hopeful symmetry reflex or do you know any | numbers? (I don't) | Fiahil wrote: | Carbon capture requires power. It's never ever gonna be | carbon neutral nor carbon negative. | | Unless you grow trees. They are - by far away - the most | efficient and effective CC device that exists. | sokoloff wrote: | Trees are a temporary store of carbon. When they die and | rot, the carbon is re-released. (Turning them into | building materials makes this overall process take | longer, of course.) | outside1234 wrote: | The reality is that carbon capture is no where near sufficient as | a wholesale solution. | | It can help on the margins -- in terms of perhaps airplanes and | other weight bearing users of fossil fuel that are not super well | addressed with electrification -- but otherwise is a distraction | from real solutions. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-09-03 23:00 UTC)