Sucking carbon dioxide out of the sky is moving from science fiction to reality
Sucking carbon dioxide out of the sky is moving from science fiction to reality
Occidental Petroleum is investing in billion-dollar projects to suck carbon dioxide out of the sky. The effort is raising hopes — and eyebrows
By Daniel Estrin, Camila Domonoske
3-Minute Listen / Transcript available
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Fuck the naysayers: Any realistic long-term solution to this needs to include removing CO₂ that's already in the atmosphere. The best time to start developing this tech would have been 50 years ago. If we don't do this now, someone else will be saying the same thing 50 years from now.
Climate change doesn't have a single-target solution. This tech may not be very impressive yet but it's important we figure it out eventually.
I agree but this is not the way to do it.
Oil companies pumping it underground is just a way for them to justify business as usual.
Removing co2 from the atmosphere requires energy input, If that energy comes from a co2 producing source it will never work.
Developing nuke/wind/solar co2 extraction is possible but this is astroturfing of the highest order.
I think it's more nuanced than that.
Some people are saying it's bad because they're using it to "produce more oil" - and that I don't buy. Sure, they're directly pumping oil with the CO₂ they inject - but this is oil they'd extract either way, with or without direct air capture. In a strict comparison between the two situations, doing it with direct air capture is less bad than doing it without.
The actual harm that could come from it is mentioned in the article - that they want to use this to justify pumping for longer than they would otherwise. It was actually a bit shocking to see how brazen and open the oil company representative was about that. If they succeed in using this to justify continued pumping, then that's definitely bad. I don't think the politics will work out in their favor though, especially not 10 or 20 years from now.
But in the long-term I still see this as an absolute win. Above all else, what this technology needs to do is exist and be effective. For that it needs to be invested in heavily, and built and tested and run even when it's ineffective and unprofitable. We aren't anywhere near the stage where we have the technological capability to actually do direct air capture on a scale that matters globally. Helping us get to that point, to me, makes this move still a net positive. A pragmatic good.
Yeah, it needs to be developed and we need to invest in running it off renewables, but our immediate priority needs to be stopping emissions
While I don't disagree, I think it's important to note that "our immediate priority needs to be stopping emissions" doesn't mean "we shouldn't be investing in this yet". Technologies take time to develop and reach maturity - sometimes decades. If we wait on developing the tech until removing CO₂ that's already out there out-prioritizes reducing ongoing emissions, then we'll be multiple decades behind where we should be when it matters most.
I think this is necessary, but we need to stop trying to make it profitable or using it as an excuse to pollute more. This needs to be paid for through taxes. Any other source of money that is enough to actually get the job done will result in the carbon going right back into the air. Using it for extra oil extraction is doubly bullshit.
I both agree and disagree with this. If it can be made profitable, then all the better - because then economics and policy can combine to bring it about faster than either would alone. But if it can't be made profitable then I agree absolutely that it should be done anyways with tax revenue.
Long-term it's definitely not good to use it as an excuse to pollute more - these won't do an ounce of good if they only exist to offset emissions we still produce. In the short term though, allowing carbon capture to act as an offset for emissions could still be a net long-term positive, in that it would shift the economics more in its favor - allowing faster development and a wider buildout. This assumes that the industries that use it in this fashion do eventually decarbonize anyways - which you could perhaps guarantee by having carbon capture stop counting as offsets at some designated future date.
I think the pragmatic solution is to introduce yearly shrinking carbon caps, and allow them to be offset with carbon capture for a limited time - say, 10 or 15 years after the "net zero carbon" goal date. After that it's all about building up that net negative number.
Any realistic long-term solution to this needs to include removing CO₂ that’s already in the atmosphere.
Let me introduce you to:
PLANTS
A great example of something that needs to be done in addition to direct carbon capture and all the other things that need to be done.
done in addition to direct carbon capture
Plants are direct carbon capture.
Uh huh. They also decay and release their carbon back into the atmosphere.
Uh huh. They also decay and release their carbon back into the atmosphere.
Not if the dead wood gets into anaerobic environment such as sinking to the bottom of swamps. And I don't know if you've heard of it but wood is also a great building material. So you can literally take the wood, build something and afterwards just not incarcerate it but instead store old wood in artificial anaerobic environments.
I'm not going to sit here pretending "We can sequester enough carbon from the atmosphere to make a difference globally by building with wood and sinking trees into swamps" is a good faith argument.
Keep shilling for fossil Big Oil then.
To quote another commentator: "Unless your grid is running on 100% renewables and has excess capacity carbon capture causes net positive emissions."
Stopping deforestation and creating new forests is absolutely a way to sequester carbon.
Considering that trees can live for hundreds of years, it would be beneficial short term, even if at one point a tree dies and release carbon.
And when a tree dies, other new trees can take its place and sequester the carbon the dead tree releases.
For sure it is, and I noted it as one of many steps that needs to be taken earlier in this comment chain. Not to mention that doing this is a no-brainer even without the context of climate change. The problem with relying on them as your only strategy for carbon sequestration is that once the forests are mature, they start being basically carbon neutral - we need to pull out way more than even full reforestation could ever hope to do.
Farming trees could even work for large scale long term carbon capture, if you do something like turn them into coal and re-fill and re-seal old mines with it in mass. I suspect we'll be able to do much better with technological solutions though.