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A couple of months in the past, Sami Khan, a Simon Fraser College Professor and MIT engineering PhD, reached out to me. He’d learn one thing I’d printed on ocean geoengineering and needed to know if I used to be focused on speaking together with his PhD, grasp’s diploma, and undergraduate college students concerning the topic, and carbon seize, utilization, and sequestration as a visitor lecturer in a CCUS co-op course he was working.
I checked to guarantee that he knew how bearish I used to be on carbon seize typically, and he did, and needed to show his college students to me regardless. Not too long ago the date arrived and I spent three hours with Khan and his college students. First, a little bit of background on this system.
Khan was one of many first school members of Simon Fraser College’s Sustainable Engineering Program on the Surrey campus and had the chance with early colleagues to form it. It’s a forward-thinking initiative designed to deal with the urgent environmental challenges of our time by revolutionary engineering options. Established with a imaginative and prescient to combine sustainability rules into engineering training, this system focuses on the event of applied sciences and methods that promote environmental stewardship, vitality effectivity, and sustainable improvement. College students are outfitted with interdisciplinary information and expertise, getting ready them to design and implement sustainable engineering practices throughout varied sectors. The curriculum emphasizes hands-on expertise, vital considering, and problem-solving, guaranteeing graduates are well-prepared to guide within the transition in the direction of a extra sustainable future.
I’m at all times desperate to spend time with terribly vibrant and educated folks and be challenged by them, however this was one thing extra for me. As I’ve mentioned many instances, engineers are a finite useful resource and it’s straightforward for them to be seduced into doing technically attention-grabbing however in the end nugatory work. The engineers engaged on city air mobility, hydrogen transportation, gravity storage that isn’t pumped hydro, and a bunch of different issues might be transferring the needle as an alternative. And carbon seize and storage is among the many greatest time and vitality wasters going. I hoped to assist these engineers, who’re simply beginning their careers, decide properly.
What’s with the Venn diagram? Effectively, that’s the dimensions of the CO2 within the ambiance proper now, with the dimensions of our historic additions and the dimensions of our annual additions. There are about 3,000 billion tons of CO2 within the ambiance proper now, and we put a 3rd of it there for the reason that starting of the Industrial Revolution by burning fossil fuels.
The invisible dot is our present annual consumption of CO2 as a commodity. The only greatest marketplace for CO2 right now is enhanced oil restoration, over a 3rd of the 230 million tons that someone pays for yearly.
Any purported resolution has to start out with the truth that we’re including tens of billions of tons of CO2 a 12 months to the ambiance, and the full overage to contemplating drawing down is round 1,000 billion tons. Materiality means one thing that may scale to 1% of the 1,000 billion tons, or 10 billion tons in whole.
An analogy I take advantage of is attempting to get horses again into the barn after the door has been left open and so they’ve wandered away. Besides there are trillions of horses, they’re microscopically small, they’re invisible, and so they have wings. It’s vastly extra environment friendly to not allow them to escape within the first place.
That implies that options that may obtain 1,000,000 tons a 12 months or ten million tons are merely immaterial. Even 100 million tons a 12 months simply isn’t all that. They aren’t related, however as an alternative are a distraction. Who advantages?
That results in the issues with mechanical direct air seize, beginning with the sheer quantity of the air that must be moved to be able to get a ton of carbon dioxide. For sports activities followers, consider the Houston Astrodome, one of many greatest sports activities stadiums on the planet, which might maintain as much as 67,000 folks. It’s enormous.
Your entire factor incorporates just one.1 tons of carbon dioxide in the entire air within it. That’s at 100% effectivity of capturing the CO2 out of the air. Trendy DAC applied sciences usually have seize efficiencies starting from 70% to 90%. To get to a non-material million tons a 12 months, we’d must multiply the Houston Astrodome till it was larger than New York or Tokyo, two of the most important cities on the planet.
100 million tons, entering into sight of materiality, would require 100 of Tokyo’s or New York’s areas lined in Houston Astrodomes. Getting a way of how absurdly massive the ambiance is, and the way little carbon dioxide is in it?
Getting a way of how a lot air needs to be moved simply to have the ability to seize a cloth quantity of CO2?
Enter an answer with a wall of followers 2 kilometers lengthy, 20 meters excessive, and three meters deep. That’s ample to seize 1,000,000 tons of carbon dioxide a 12 months, which as famous above, is much beneath the dimensions of materiality.
Have people constructed any machines which are two kilometers lengthy? Not likely. Pipelines, roads, and a few bridges are that lengthy, however they’re principally inert objects with extremely few transferring components.
The Nice Wall of China is so much longer, but it surely simply sits there and it’s solely 6 to 7 meters tall. Zero transferring components, zero know-how and shorter. If your complete Nice Wall had been become one in every of these options, it will be thrice taller, a bit thinner, and be capable to seize maybe 12 million tons of CO2 a 12 months. And 12 million tons doesn’t get to materiality. Oh, and an infinite variety of transferring components between the followers, the liquid pumps, the warmth system, and the like.
I assessed this resolution 5 years in the past, rebuilding my mind into an inexpensive imitation of a chemical processing engineer’s. The facsimile and energy was ok to win me a bunch of nerdy, PhD-laden, chemical engineering followers. Not remotely sufficient to make me a chemical processing engineer, however at the least they revered the hassle.
The answer makes use of liquid containing potassium hydroxide. When air is pulled into the system, the CO2 reacts with this chemical and will get trapped. Subsequent, it provides one other chemical, calcium hydroxide, which helps launch the trapped CO2 and clear the liquid so it may be used once more. To get the CO2 out, they should warmth the combination to a really excessive temperature, about 900 levels Celsius (1,652 levels Fahrenheit).
The unique peer-reviewed paper for this resolution mentioned it was going to be powered by pure gasoline and that a few further carbon seize options had been going to be bolted on to take care of the emissions from burning the gasoline. Each ton of CO2 captured from the ambiance was going to create one other 0.5 tons of CO2 from carbon that was beforehand sequestered.
I noticed on the time that the one pure marketplace for this type of know-how was enhanced oil restoration. When 40% of the marketplace for CO2 was enhanced oil restoration, it wasn’t a giant leap. When US shale oil was additionally leaking monumental quantities of unmarketable, undesirable pure gasoline, it actually wasn’t a giant leap.
The enterprise capital idea of a pure market refers to a enterprise discovering its preferrred buyer base naturally, without having heavy advertising or compelled efforts. On this case, it wasn’t coping with local weather change, it was getting extra oil out of the bottom.
A few months after I printed that prediction, the agency discovered its first consumer, an oil and gasoline main that was going to construct a facility on the Permian Basin to make use of unmarketable pure gasoline to energy the system to seize CO2 to pump underground into tapped out oil wells to get extra oil out. Once I bumped into one in every of their engineers at a convention, they let slip that they had been receiving $250 per ton of CO2 that they pumped underground from a few totally different governmental packages.
When a ton of CO2 is pumped underground, it unlocks 1 / 4 to a ton of oil, which when used as directed releases as much as three tons of CO2 into the air. This isn’t remotely a local weather resolution. Not that way back, the agency was purchased outright by the oil and gasoline main that was its first and certain solely buyer.
That is foreshadowing, a legitimate and revered literary gadget, in case anybody is protecting monitor of such issues.
A agency is exploring mineral weathering as a seashore sand supplementation scheme, one in every of many thought experiments about spreading finely crushed olivine or different minerals which react with atmospheric CO2 over absurd expanses. Regardless of varied mineral weathering approaches, none have withstood scrutiny when confronted with key questions on sourcing, logistics, effectivity, vitality use, environmental influence, and value. None have been deployed outdoors of tiny trials.
This one focuses on olivine, a typical magnesium iron silicate plentiful within the earth’s crust. When uncovered to the ambiance, olivine reacts with carbon dioxide to kind magnesium carbonate. One ton of finely crushed olivine can take in a ton of CO2. This method, first talked about in a 1990 Nature publication, has not but been commercialized regardless of ongoing educational curiosity and enterprise capital funding for associated startups.
The agency goals to mine olivine, grind it into sand, and use it to replenish storm-eroded seashores, hoping to realize group assist over time. Nevertheless, sensible and ecological issues stay. Olivine’s weathering course of is sluggish, taking about 100 years to achieve 70% efficacy for grains smaller than a millimeter, which is to say, within the vary of sand.
Olivine’s inexperienced hue, whereas distinctive, poses challenges. Communities worth their seashores’ present look and texture, which olivine sand would alter considerably. Financial issues are important. Seashore tourism generates substantial income, and the price of seashore replenishment is usually lined by cobbled-together public funds. In Florida, seashores are very important to the financial system, with one examine I learn suggesting over 50% of Florida’s annual GDP was associated to seashores, and altering their sand composition might cut back their enchantment.
There’s a single inexperienced seashore on the planet which is a vacationer attraction — one in Hawaii the place the locals have considerably blockaded the street to it to be able to extort extra money out of vacationers. Then there are three different seashores, principally in colder components of the world, which have patches of inexperienced sand. Not precisely seashore meccas.
Widespread adoption of inexperienced seashores is unlikely and the economics are deeply unlikely to work out. The venture has secured $1.6 million in grants and is looking for Collection A funding, primarily supported by a group of teachers finding out olivine weathering. Even with optimistic projections, potential carbon drawdown stays a fraction of present annual emissions. As soon as once more, materiality issues.
In Iceland, a tiny pair of direct air seize amenities have been constructed close to Reykjavik. The method entails giant followers drawing ambient air into collectors, the place a specifically designed filter materials traps the CO2. As soon as the filter is saturated, the CO2 is remoted by a heating course of, releasing it from the filter for subsequent use.
After capturing the carbon dioxide, it’s saved by mixing it with water and injecting it deep into the basaltic rock formations present in Iceland. By way of a pure mineralization course of, the CO2 reacts with the basalt and solidifies into steady carbonate minerals inside two years, successfully locking it away and stopping it from re-entering the ambiance.
The power at present captures round 40,000 tons of CO2 yearly, after the ‘big’ enlargement. Observe, hundreds, not even tens of millions, by no means thoughts billions. It is a rounding error on an emaciated gnat’s thorax.
And an costly rounding error. The price of capturing CO2 with this know-how is estimated to be round $600 to $800 per ton. That price isn’t going to go down, as a result of it’s actually primary stuff not amenable to the levers which have pushed down computing energy, wind turbine, battery, and photo voltaic panel price.
Let’s pivot from the lifeless finish of air carbon seize to the challenged and wetter finish of oceanic geoengineering and carbon sequestration.
When the ocean absorbs carbon dioxide from the ambiance, a collection of chemical reactions happens, considerably impacting marine ecosystems. Initially, CO2 dissolves in seawater, forming carbonic acid. This acid dissociates into hydrogen ions and bicarbonate ions, and the hydrogen ions can additional react with carbonate ions to kind extra bicarbonate. This shift within the carbonate ion to bicarbonate ion steadiness reduces the supply of carbonate ions, that are essential for shellfish and different marine organisms that depend on them to construct their calcium carbonate shells and skeletons.
The method is known as ocean acidification, reducing the pH of seawater and decreasing its alkalinity. This course of not solely threatens the structural integrity of marine life, but in addition diminishes the ocean’s capability to soak up CO2 over time, doubtlessly accelerating the speed of local weather change. It’s known as oceanic acidification, however actually it’s reducing alkalinity and sucking away mollusk shell constructing blocks.
For a bit extra helpful context, about 90% of the carbon within the ocean is locked up in bicarbonate ions. About 9% is in carbonate ions — those that shellfish want — and about 1% is dissolved CO2. These ratios are essential, as getting CO2 out of ocean water means breaking down the bicarbonate and carbonate ions, and placing extra CO2 into ocean water means reducing the carbonate ions.
A special agency tried to make use of magnesium hydroxide, generally known as milk of magnesia and used as an antacid. When launched into seawater, magnesium hydroxide bonds with the carbonic acid from absorbed CO2, forming magnesium carbonate and water, thus stopping carbonate ions from being become bicarbonate ions and diminished ocean alkalinity. This retains ocean alkalinity steady and doesn’t eat up the carbonate ions shellfish want for his or her shells.
Nevertheless, the approach doesn’t instantly take away atmospheric carbon dioxide. Conserving ocean alkalinity from declining retains the ocean’s capacity to soak up CO2 up, round a bunch of different components that influence absorption, with a biggie being temperature.
The agency secured important funding, together with grants and the celebrated $1-million, Musk-backed CDR XPRIZE. A part of that’s as a result of they’d a California PhD who has been publishing about this for many years as their scientific officer. With the cash, they constructed two pilot vegetation which they function.
It’s exceptional that they received some huge cash, awards, and pilot vegetation due to some primary stuff it took me about 25 minutes to determine from scratch after listening to concerning the know-how.
The primary massive one was that the method of producing magnesium hydroxide carries a carbon debt larger than the oceanic carbon drawdown enchancment. There isn’t any local weather win when the uncooked supplies required have a giant carbon debt. Full lifecycle carbon accounting is required for any resolution, and this one fails that sniff check.
The second massive one is that the uncooked materials, magnesium hydroxide, is pricey. We’ve been manufacturing it for hundreds of years and are doing it as cheaply because it’s ever going to be carried out. The top to finish prices, even when there was web carbon drawdown, would have been lots of of {dollars} per ton.
The third is that we don’t actually have a very good deal with on what quite a lot of magnesium carbonate would do in ecosystems. It’s assumed to be comparatively benign, however that’s totally different than being confirmed to be benign.
All three of those are trivial to find out from public information sources right now, and analysis within the Nineteen Nineties established the info. This has clearly been a lifeless finish for approaching 30 years, but teachers and now this agency have tried to implement it, and run full velocity into the brick wall of the truth.
The carbon debt and financial failures of the method imply that after profitable prizes, getting funding, and constructing pilot vegetation with its proposed resolution, the agency is pivoting to exploring using mining waste to provide alkaline substances to dump into the ocean as an alternative. That means lies much more crimson flags.
A California-based carbon seize firm has raised over $33 million to seize CO2 from seawater. Its technique entails pumping seawater, splitting a bit off to make it way more acidic with electrolysis and a proprietary membrane, then combining it again into the principle stream. This dissolves the carbonate ions and bicarbonate ions, turning them into CO2. They bubble the CO2 out of the water with normal vacuum gasoline separation methods, then rebalance the alkalinity of the water earlier than returning it to the ocean.
Sharp eyes can have observed the bit about turning carbonate ions into CO2 and eradicating them from the seawater. Sure, this course of would take away shellfish-essential components from the seawater. It is a native course of, so may be managed the place there’s a sturdy facet present bringing new ocean water previous the power each hour and no down-current shellfish life to talk of.
One other challenge lies in seawater’s complexity. Wealthy in life, salts, and minerals, seawater could cause fast fouling of the system’s proprietary membranes, that are each costly and difficult to take care of. Moreover, the method of extracting carbon dioxide from seawater is energy-intensive and inefficient. The agency would want to course of billions of tons of seawater yearly to seize a million tons of CO2.
Simply elevating that a lot heavy seawater the doubtless 5 meters can be energetically costly, by no means thoughts the vitality for the method itself. Additionally they must do one thing with the CO2 itself, and extra on that later. The vitality required for this course of — tens of GWh yearly — can be higher utilized in powering houses, electrical automobiles, and industrial operations, considerably decreasing emissions extra instantly.
And simply to drive the nail dwelling, the most important downside with ocean acidification is eradicating the components shellfish want, and this doesn’t clear up that.
One other startup’s course of entails capturing CO2 from an exterior supply and mixing it with seawater. It makes use of electrical energy to change the seawater’s electrochemistry, accelerating the conversion of CO2 to carbonic acid, which then reacts to kind bicarbonate ions whereas depleting carbonate ions. This handled water, now heavy with bicarbonate ions, is returned to the ocean.
The pilot plant in Singapore will sequester 100 kilograms of CO2 every day in seawater, and produce low-carbon hydrogen if powered by inexperienced electrical energy. The plant’s course of is actually hydrogen electrolysis, which might produce 300 kilograms of hydrogen by mixing CO2 with seawater. Their current paper signifies they will sequester about 4.6 kilograms of CO2 per cubic meter of seawater, that means sequestering a ton of CO2 would require round 217 tons of seawater. The CO2 needs to be pure, in fact, in any other case problems of each chemistry and ocean biology come up.
In fact, what they’re doing is electrolysis of salty water, which is the chlor-alkali course of which makes chlorine, a lethal toxic gasoline. How they get round that isn’t described. Regardless, the method depletes the carbonate ions essential for shellfish.
Do they point out shellfish of their literature? Do they point out chlorine and its risks to people and aquatic life? Have they got a biologist on workers? No, no, and no.
Talking of pure CO2, let’s discuss Satartia, Mississippi. It’s a tiny village of 41 residents in western Mississippi. In 2020, a CO2 pipeline 1.6 kilometers away that transported the gasoline to an enhanced oil restoration facility — there’s that phrase once more — breached due to a minor landslide.
No massive deal, you suppose, CO2 is a gasoline and it’ll simply disperse. Not so quick. Plenty of CO2 pipelines use liquid section CO2 as a result of it’s so much simpler to pump an incompressible and far denser fluid than a compressible and way more voluminous gasoline. That’s what was within the Satartia pipeline, liquid CO2. When the pipeline burst, the liquid turned quickly right into a gasoline, about 590 instances the amount because the liquid.
No massive deal, you suppose, the ensuing CO2 is a gasoline and it’ll simply disperse. Not so quick, but once more. CO2 is heavier than the nitrogen and oxygen in our ambiance, and so it’ll roll downhill in a thick blanket and settle into depressions, dispersing solely after hours. Consider dry ice machines, which use frozen CO2 to create a layer of fog alongside dance flooring or in sporting occasions.
The pipeline was uphill from Satartia.
The blanket of CO2, meters or tens of meters thick, rolled downhill, throughout an intervening freeway the place it left individuals who had pulled their automobiles right into a relaxation cease unconscious and thrashing. It rolled over Satartia, the place it left everybody on the town unconscious and thrashing on the bottom or of their houses. They noticed it coming, because it was tinted a bit by the presence of hint components of hydrogen sulfide, the toxic gasoline that smells like rotten eggs, however in too small quantities to be dangerous.
So why was everybody left unconscious and thrashing? Why didn’t they simply drive away? People can’t breathe an excessive amount of CO2. In quantities as little as a thousand components per million, minor cognitive impairment begins to be detectable. At 2,500 components per million, we’re diminished to the mental capacities of kindergarten youngsters. At 30,000 components per million, we’re at quick and severe well being danger. And inner combustion automobiles don’t work with out oxygen both. Individuals’s automobiles wouldn’t begin and emergency responders couldn’t get into the realm. A few hundred folks had been evacuated and 46 hospitalized.
Hours later, CO2 at ranges of 30,000 components per million had been nonetheless current in some rooms in buildings within the village.
What does this must do with carbon seize typically?
Earlier this 12 months, I put this graphic collectively as a part of a dialogue associated to CO2 pipeline security issues. I took a inhabitants density map of Europe and one of many proposed CO2 pipeline, terminal, and sequestration maps from an EU doc associated to carbon sequestration, and overlaid them.
What you see as you have a look at the map is that we make quite a lot of carbon dioxide from varied processes the place there are lots of people. Europe is nearly solely extra densely populated than western Mississippi. CO2 pipelines right now are virtually solely for enhanced oil restoration within the southern United States, in areas which are sparsely populated.
Any local weather technique that depends to any important extent on carbon seize and sequestration can have quite a lot of CO2 pipelines working by densely populated areas. The protection issues are apparent.
There are mitigations, however all they do is make the answer fairly a bit costlier than claimed. All pipelines by even reasonably populated areas must be gasoline section. They’ll be a lot larger and therefore costlier for a similar mass of CO2 traversing them. They’ll require part shut-offs in all probability each kilometer to restrict the releases of CO2. They’ll have fairly costly legal responsibility insurance coverage.
Even then, relating to native acceptance of CO2 pipelines, Satartia will come up repeatedly and once more, resulting in huge opposition to them. Not in my yard, would be the fairly cheap cry.
Why is NIMBY cheap on this case and never others? As a result of issues about wind generators, transmission strains, and photo voltaic farms are overblown nonsense, whereas issues about huge CO2 leaks are fairly actual. As a result of wind generators, transmission strains, and photo voltaic farms cease carbon dioxide from being emitted vastly extra cheaply than attempting to place all of these trillions of invisible flying horses again into the barn.
Equinor’s Sleipner facility is usually touted as an entire success story for carbon sequestration, placing tens of millions of tons a 12 months into long run sequestration beneath the North Sea.
That’s as massive a fantasy because the identify, which comes from Norse mythology. It was Odin’s creepy eight-legged spider horse that Loki bore after reworking right into a mare and seducing the horse of a grasp builder who was erecting Asgard’s partitions as a part of some crafty plan.
Why is it as massive a fantasy? As a result of all the power does is take pure gasoline with too excessive a ratio of CO2 out from beneath the North Sea, strip off the CO2, and put it again beneath the ocean mattress. When the pure gasoline is used as meant, burning it releases about 25 instances as a lot CO2 as was sequestered. Sleipner eliminates about 4% of the CO2 emissions from the power. That’s not a giant win, that’s a tiny enchancment.
To be clear, Norway is a frontrunner in guaranteeing that methane doesn’t leak from its amenities, in contrast to the USA, which is a worldwide chief in leaking methane. And the Sleipner facility is the most cost effective carbon dioxide sequestration facility from a capital and working price on the planet, principally as a result of a lot of it was required simply to get the pure gasoline out.
Why does Equinor do that virtuous act? As a result of the federal government pays iit to. Final time I estimated it, the corporate had obtained over a billion {dollars} for not utilizing the ambiance as an open sewer.
Are there another fossil gas majors that are asserting sequestration advantage that doesn’t maintain as much as scrutiny? Actually, ExxonMobil, well-known for its inner scientists realizing that local weather change was actual, severe, and attributable to Exxon, telling administration that, and Exxon then muzzling the scientists and funding international local weather denial and disinformation campaigns.
It claims to have the very best CO2 sequestration facility on the planet with its Shute Creek website within the USA. What does that website do? It extracts pure gasoline with an excessive amount of CO2 (sound acquainted?), strips off the CO2, after which places it in a pipeline to be transported to close by oil fields, the place it’s used for enhanced oil restoration. That’s, when the oil corporations are prepared to pay for the CO2. In any other case they simply vent it to the ambiance. And, in fact, each ton of CO2 utilized in enhanced oil restoration often leads to much more CO2 from the oil that comes up as a result of its use, and all of that pure gasoline each leaks and turns into CO2 when used.
There’s nothing virtuous about ExxonMobil’s ‘leadership’ in CCS. It’s a shell sport.
Not too long ago Canada handed Invoice C-59, which requires corporations selling sustainability claims to be each factual and to have the ability to again up their claims with third celebration validation. Naturally the oil and gasoline business took this as a frontal assault. Additionally naturally, all three main fossil gas propaganda and lobbying teams took all of their sustainability claims off of social media and the online. That meant eradicating all of their media bulletins as properly. Why did they really feel the necessity to do that? As a result of their claims had been specious nonsense, they knew it, they knew that they couldn’t defend them, and Invoice C-59 has enamel with 3% of income to a $15 million cap per offense. That might flip into massive cash in a short time.
What concerning the concept of bolting carbon seize onto fossil gas electrical era vegetation? Effectively, that’s been tried too. In Saskatchewan, the utility added carbon seize know-how to the Boundary Dam coal plant. It operated for a handful of years. The outcomes?
Very costly wholesale prices of electrical energy, about $140 per MWh, far above wind and photo voltaic firmed by transmission and storage. That’s even with the inevitable enhanced oil restoration with the captured CO2.
The utility is on report as saying that it’s by no means going to contemplate that once more.
Maybe it’s an outlier? No.
The Petra Nova coal plant within the southern USA added a carbon seize rig to one in every of eight boilers on the facility. Then they added a pure gasoline cogeneration plant to supply the electrical energy and warmth for the carbon seize course of. It required 15% to twenty% of the vitality generated by the coal plant to separate the CO2 out of the flue gasoline, clear it up, and compress it.
The plant managed to stand up to 92% seize charges when the requirement is far nearer to 100%, and CCS advocates claimed victory. With a view to method 100%, one other carbon seize know-how solely can be required to course of the output of the primary carbon seize know-how, so issues would simply get extra energetically nonsensical. In fact, the methane-powered cogen plant was utilizing what methane arrived at it and didn’t leak, and had methane slippage of its personal. Additional, the CO2 from the cogen plant was not captured both. The 92% is much worse than that in actuality when the total end-to-end CO2e emissions are thought-about.
This was very costly as properly, a few billion {dollars}, even with governmental grants, tax breaks, and a few income from enhanced oil restoration. The Petra Nova facility is conspicuously not increasing the carbon seize program to the opposite boilers.
A couple of years in the past, I checked out the entire CCS websites on the planet claiming to sequester 1,000,000 or extra tons of CO2 a 12 months. I used the World CCS Institute’s public information for this. What’s the GCCSI? It’s a lobbying and propaganda group funded by the oil and gasoline business.
Unsurprisingly, the info set was lacking quite a lot of related information. It had the location, the situation, and the claimed annual sequestration. It didn’t have the capital prices, working prices, the place the CO2 was coming from, or whether or not the CO2 was used for enhanced oil restoration.
I went out and located all of that information from different public websites to assemble a strong sufficient information set. I initially made the beneficiant assumption that each one CO2 was captured, and so solely adjusted claimed sequestration for enhanced oil restoration, for which I made the beneficiant assumption of low enhanced oil restoration.
The tasks went again to the Seventies, so I made up my mind how a lot cash had been spent every decade. Then I requested the straightforward query about how a lot carbon avoidance that cash might have purchased if it had been spent on wind and photo voltaic as an alternative. In any case, every MWh of renewably generated electrical energy pushes a MWh of fossil gas generated electrical energy off of the grid, keep away from the emissions from it. I adjusted era for historic capability components as properly.
With all of those advantages of the doubt, the cash spent on CCS would have averted thrice as a lot CO2 as was sequestered by these amenities over their lifetime to the date of my evaluation.
And, in fact, because the case research present the bulk case is definitely CO2 that was already sequestered being pumped up from underground and put again once more for enhanced oil restoration or federal tax breaks. When the CO2 was beforehand sequestered, claiming advantage in extracting and re-sequestering it’s like strolling as much as a rubbish can on the road, kicking it over, then righting it and refilling it and demanding to be recommended on your civic advantage.
There are locations the place carbon seize will find yourself penciling out because the optimum alternative, however they’re few and much between. One of many nice hopes is for hydrogen. That is the newest iteration of my demand projection by 2100 for hydrogen.
One factor to recollect is that hydrogen is a greenhouse gasoline emissions downside on the dimensions of all aviation globally proper now, over a billion tons of CO2e yearly. That this enormous local weather downside is being touted as a local weather resolution is a little bit of a head-scratcher.
Even the dimmest eyes will notice that I venture that demand goes down, not up. That’s as a result of I’ve checked out the entire present and purported demand sectors for hydrogen and have a very good sense which path they’re heading. Floor transportation is simply going to affect, and that’s an enormous demand space for fossil fuels right now. Electrical era goes to be renewables, transmission and batteries, with hydrogen being an costly and lossy loser within the competitors. Biofuels are fully match for objective for the components of aviation and maritime delivery that gained’t electrify and can nonetheless persist. In any case, 40% of bulk delivery is of fossil fuels as cargo, and that’s going means.
Additional, the most important present demand phase for hydrogen right now is from oil refineries. It’s used to take impurities, particularly sulfur, out of crude oil, and to crack it into lighter and heavier fractions. The heavier and better sulfur the crude oil, the extra hydrogen is required. I estimate that 7.7 kilograms is required for a barrel of Alberta’s crude oil. That hydrogen needs to be decarbonized to decarbonize oil and gasoline manufacturing, so it’s going to be blue or inexperienced hydrogen, each of that are costlier.
That implies that the standard low cost for Alberta’s and Venezuela’s merchandise are going to go up simply as oil demand is flattening and declining with peak oil. The world will likely be awash in mild, low-sulfur oil, so heavy, high-sulfur oils gained’t be economically aggressive. That implies that refinery demand for hydrogen will plummet a lot sooner than oil refining will decline.
In different phrases, blue hydrogen will likely be utilized in refineries, but it surely has a brief demand lifespan. In consequence, the associated CCS will likely be restricted too. There will likely be some, and it will likely be pretty low-cost as refineries are typically inbuilt oil nation the place there are the abilities, expertise, corporations, gear and geological traits to assist carbon sequestration comparatively inexpensively.
The remainder of demand will principally be met with inexperienced hydrogen, the place carbon seize and sequestration are pointless.
I just lately accomplished my end-to-end evaluation of cement, concrete, and all of the purported options, in addition to one in every of my ordinary projections of demand and profitable options by 2100. For years I’ve been asserting that one of many few locations the place blue hydrogen and its associated carbon seize and sequestration may pencil out is on cement vegetation.
The issue is course of emissions from decomposing limestone into lime — the first element of cement — and carbon dioxide, which traditionally has been a conveniently odorless invisible waste product that disposes of itself. We will electrify limestone kilns, however so long as we’re turning limestone into lime, we’re going to get the CO2 as a part of the cut price.
In my evaluation, I labored out the cost-adders over primary unabated cement and concrete for varied options. The place electrified warmth or an answer like Chic System’s electrochemical course of is used to decompose limestone, capturing the pretty pure CO2 waste stream is less expensive. The place cement vegetation coincidentally sit subsequent to good geological sequestration websites, eliminating the CO2 will likely be low-cost. The place that mixture may be made to work, it could be cheaper to try this than the options.
However nonetheless, I solely given CCS about half a century of relevance within the resolution area.
One of many greatest levers for cement emissions, engineered timber, may be very attention-grabbing in discussions of CCS. Engineering timber is principally plywood. It may be made into structural beams, partitions and flooring, changing strengthened concrete. As a result of it’s stronger, one ton of engineered timber replaces 4.8 tons of strengthened concrete. As a result of it’s lighter, foundations require so much much less strengthened concrete.
It’s already a lot decrease carbon emissions full lifecycle, from forest to constructing, than strengthened concrete, 200 to 300 kg of CO2e per ton of engineered timber. These lifecycle emissions are from extraction, delivery and milling with fossil gas powered machines and fossil gas era of electrical energy. These emissions are going away.
And engineered timber is fabricated from wooden. Each ton of wooden has breathed in a few ton of atmospheric carbon dioxide and breathed out the entire oxygen. The carbon is sequestered. Placing it right into a constructing sequesters it for 60 to 100 years. When the constructing is demolished, helpful beams and panels may be reused. The remaining can have the carbon sequestered completely by one in every of a number of approaches, from thermolysis to create biocrude and biochar which may be unfold in forests to return vitamins, to sinking it within the ocean’s depths.
At current we harvest within the low billions of tons of timber, turning quite a lot of it into single use paper merchandise and quite a lot of it into warmth for varied causes. Diverting these wasteful choices into a lot increased advantage engineered timber implies that monumental tons of it might be made out there from present forestry packages. And forestry can simply be sustainable.
The organic pathway for engineered timber has two carbon advantages. The primary is that it avoids the entire CO2 from strengthened concrete, a giant win. As a result of one ton of it displaces 4.8 tons of engineered concrete, that’s quite a lot of averted CO2. However then it’s a sequestration pathway for atmospheric CO2 as properly.
Bushes develop themselves if we allow them to. So do vegetation. Nature naturally sequesters CO2. The glomalin protein on mycelium roots in undisturbed soil pushes carbon atoms successfully into long run soil seize. If we cease disturbing the soil, and we are going to by low-tillage farming and rewilding, the CO2 will likely be drawn down.
Enhancing pure carbon sinks is vastly cheaper and simpler than carbon seize and sequestration. It simply doesn’t profit the fossil gas business. That’s why the nations pushing CCS onerous are those that extract, course of, refine, distribute and promote quite a lot of fossil fuels from their lands and beneath their waters.
Nations that don’t have massive fossil gas reserves — most of them — are sensibly following methods centered on nature-based options. They gained’t assist us get to zero by 2050, however neither will mechanical or industrial CCS, and the nature-based options will tackle the issues of the subsequent hundred years and the centuries after that.
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