Carbon capture more costly than switching to renewables, researchers find
Carbon capture more costly than switching to renewables, researchers find
For most countries around the world, sourcing energy entirely from wind, solar, geothermal, and hydropower by 2050 would reduce their energy needs and costs, improve air quality, and help slow climate change, according to a study in Environmental Science & Technology.
Carbon capture is a boondoggle, just like “the hydrogen economy”.
Hydrogen at least has it's uses in stuff like planes.
- Adding trees help in local health and biodiversity
- Wood can replace concrete in building projects
https://www.dezeen.com/2019/03/19/mjostarne-worlds-tallest-timber-tower-voll-arkitekter-norway/
No shit, carbon capture barely even exists
The only reason we're even talking about it is because it would let us have it cake and eat it. It may even be possible some day, but it definitely isn't the most efficient option
It would be too good to be true. Because there is too much Carbon in the air and it would be good if we actually could somehow get it out of the air again. But maybe that is 2120s technology. It would be amazing if the human species were be able to create the problem, realize the problem, counteract to the problem and solve the problem all in one century. But it will take several centuries of uncontrolled climate change before humans will be able to control it in any significant way - if it is not already to late.
Wait until you look up the discovery and destruction of the natural salt cycle of the world.
Why does cost even mean anything when talking about keeping our planet livable?
Do both.
Because talking about carbon capture let's emitting companies not do anything to reduce emissions and tell themselves and the public "ah, we're just gonna do carbon capture in the future". It's the same with hydrogen btw., there won't be enough of it for our current use of fossils, we know it, but we still tell ourselves "ah, we'll just switch to green H2 as soon as it's available" instead of working to reduce emissions and implement new processes.
Renewable energy being the cheapest energy really, really helps
Carbon capture being expensive is unfortunate. It would be nice if we could cheaply use fossil fuels and keep the carbon out of the biosphere, but we can't, so we should just use renewable energy, and big countries can also use nuclear until we run out of fissile material
use fossil fuels and keep the carbon out of the biosphere
Put big balloons on the exhausts.
use nuclear
Yeah nuclear would be really great too for the time being.
if only we had an abundance big tall leafy structures that have naturally evolved to capture carbon.
So even that is a misnomer tree only capture it temporarily when they die and rot or worse catch fire they release it again. You would have to grow the tree real big then chop it down then bury it really deep to get that carbon out of the cycle.
Expensive or not, we're well past the point where it's optional. Even if 100% of new carbon emissions stopped today, let alone by 2050, we'd need to continue developing carbon capture technologies to take out what we've already put in the atmosphere. Not every part of the fixing process needs to be profitable.
Expensive or not, the cheapest option is renewables. Coal plants in Australia have closed down, unable to compete with solar and wind. We now export our coal to China
I agree with what you're saying, but developing the technology right now is quite counterproductive. The stopping of carbon emissions needs to happen first, and it needs to happen quickly. Every bit of energy spent on carbon capture projects would be better spent implementing renewable processes.
Furthermore, the technology currently functions as an accountability sink for heavy polluters. It allows them to hand-waive away the entire problem of emissions since there is this "panacea" just around the corner, thus slowing down actual meaningful climate action.
Carbon capture needs to be discredited as a solution until its purpose stops being the continuation of the status quo.
I’m confused about this idea that cdr isn’t possible today.
Yes... but that doesn't make the oil billionaires more billions
Efficient and cheap carbon capture already exists – it's called trees
But you need to cut those trees down and place them somewhere they won't rot
Sink them to the bottom of the deep ocean, but trees famously float
Leave them in deserts where the dryness will suppress rot, but damage the desert habitat
Dump them in peat bogs, but there aren't enough
Perhaps it would be best to cook them to charcoal, it releases some carbon into the atmosphere, but it would leave some solid, inedible to anything carbon that can be dumped in any old mine, but that's expensive
Also if you dump the whole trees in whatever way, you also dump whatever nutrients are in it
Yeah, just get a good ecosystem going and every now and then, collect extra decaying matter and dump it in deep landfills to further reduce carbon escape. Hopefully the pit will be deep enough to stop the decay and prevent instant (in geological terms) biogas formation.
Ok, I guess that is not very viable. Just go with normal forests then. But that won't match the predicted numbers because predictions didn't consider reduction of net Carbon -ive of the forests as they came closer to equilibrium.
We need way more trees than we previously thought, way sooner than we previously thought. Now, even more since the average temps have already increased, further changing the forest efficiency.
Governments should enforcement carbon credits for polluters, then we can see it as a carbon tax instead of a greenwashing advertisement, but until then:
Go to your local representative and ask what they are doing to offset emissions of road upkeep, busses & overall infrastructural fossil dependency!
Our previous progressive government lost its next election over a price on carbon
It's too easy for right wing politics to cast it as "your electricity prices will go up; fuel will get more expensive; you won't be able to afford to use your gas heater in winter"
It's a difficult policy to get, you need a party brave enough to implement it in their first weeks in power so people see it doesn't hurt by the next election
There's a really easy solution to this problem: Evenly redistribute the carbon tax income to all citizens. That way, prices might increase, but it you manage to have a low carbon footprint, you will end up net positive.
Although it's virtually impossible to track on a personal level, so making people actually notice that net gain might prove difficult.
This is theoretically what we do in Germany, but the government kind of forgot about the paying out part.
We are so behind the point where policies like this are enough.
Always has been and always will be, due to a little thing called entropy.
The Waterschap may decide to lower the water level. When that happens, the wooden poles are exposed to air. When wood comes in contact with oxygen, it will start to rot. The decay of the wooden foundation is why houses in Amsterdam built on wooden piles can lean to one side.
https://whatsupwithamsterdam.com/amsterdam-houses-crooked/
Wood rot only occurs if the water level is too low. Some of these poles have lasted 500 years.
And it just doesn't fucking work.
Please tell me how plants aren’t carbon sinks
They grow, build themselves out of carbon from the air. Live for a while (300 years for my local trees). Die, rot, release the carbon into the air; or they burn and release the carbon into the air
At best you replace forests we have destroyed and pull the same amount of CO2 out of the air as destroying those forests put in a hundred or more years ago. The main cause of carbon in the air is burning fossil fuels, so it won't help much.
If you're growing trees somewhere they could grow without special help (extra water, fertilizer) you're definitely growing trees humans removed in the past
You can do it by cutting down the forests you've grown, and regrow them over and over again and storing or processing the wood so it never rots