If you read deep into ‘climate change’ like I do, you’ll constantly see articles about carbon capture, and how awesome it is. How it’s the wave of the future. About that
Removing Carbon From the Air Enters Its Awkward Teen Years
If you want to understand the potential of direct air capture, or DAC, all you have to do is see its end product: solid rock. The world’s first plant to pull carbon dioxide from the air and turn it into stone has been operating in Iceland for nearly two years, and the fruits of its labor were on display last week at Climeworks’ DAC Summit.
Sitting under glass and beneath a spotlight, a nondescript-looking gray cylinder of rock roughly the size of a water bottle containing carbon the company’s technology had removed from the air using massive machines was the centerpiece of the summit held in Zurich. It’s a wonder that could someday be in a museum, among the first few tons of carbon mechanically taken out of the atmosphere in the fight against climate change.
This is all that was done
There are now at least 18?direct air capture plants operating worldwide, according to the International Energy Agency, and more are coming online. That makes the rock on display at the summit a tiny piece of today’s $2 billion market for carbon removal, which includes everything from offsets to DAC. Depending on the rules that end up shaping the sector, direct air capture alone could be a nearly $1 trillion business in the next decade, according to projections from researchers at BloombergNEF.
As long as you taxpayers are willing to pony up lots of money…oh, heck, it doesn’t matter, government will give your money away regardless of what you think
Even if the concerns about high costs aren’t over, it’s still a remarkable moment in direct air capture’s history. The technology is leaving behind its training wheels and may be able to pass its driving test while remaining nowhere near ready to be an adult making meaningful contributions to cleaning up the atmosphere. The growing number of researchers, investors and policymakers willing to turn up at the party is a strong indicator, but there’s no guarantee direct air capture is ready for rapid growth.
But, they’re happy to take you money
Science has increasingly shown that to avert catastrophic levels of global warming, the world will need to cut carbon pollution dramatically while also developing the capacity to pull billions of tons of carbon dioxide — or gigatons — out of the atmosphere each year by 2050. Climeworks is the most advanced of the DAC hopefuls, and its vision is to become a megaton-scale company — that is, one capable of nabbing 1 million tons of CO2 — by the end of this decade.
The timing for getting this one up-and-coming company to a gigaton? Not until mid-century.
So, basically, a pipe dream. But, hey, I don’t blame them for trying to take advantage of the scam. There’s lots of money involved in the grift.
The DAC Summit highlighted some of the outside forces that could help the technology grow up fast. There are major corporate investments, such as the multiple multi-million dollar deals to buy carbon removal services using direct air capture. There are potentially billions of dollars in US government incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act, in addition to $3.5 billion in funding for so-called DAC hubs where fledging startups can run experiments and try to scale their technology.
Notice most money comes from government. If companies really saw the ability to make money they’d invest heavily.
Carbon Capture is just another exercise in pointlessness. Even if every CO2 molecule that humankind is responsible for, up to and including our exhales, could be captured and sequestered somehow, and hint: it can’t, not even close, the maximum reduction in atmospheric CO2 we could hope for is 12ppm.
The development, manufacture and distribution of the advanced technologies necessary to detect any possible resulting effect to global temperatures alone would bankrupt the planet. That’s assuming we had any money left over after boondoggles such as “carbon capture”.
Can CO2 affect global temperatures? Yes, but there is currently no way to accurately determine how much. That technology simply does not exist no matter how many guesses there are, that’s all they are, guesses.
Does humankind contribute to the CO2 in the atmosphere? Yes, about 3% of the total CO2 content or approximately 0.000012% of the current atmosphere.
What would happen if all human sources of CO2 were completely eliminated? No one knows but chances are really, really good that whatever does happen could not be ascertained, ever.
The math associating human caused CO2 with any rise in global average temperatures has never worked and never will.
Assuming that carbon capture works as advertized and is worth doing:
1. Shouldn’t the plants be attached to Chinese Coal power plants where there is plenty of carbon emissions instead of trying to suck it out of the air where the concentration is in parts per million? Bonus, then the carbon captured can be used as an additive in Chinese concrete.
2. Shouldn’t the plants be located at the origin points of carbon sequestration pipelines and then just not build the pipelines? Saving billions in construction costs and environmental devastation?
Seems like this plan is not thought through very well.
Why does carbon need to be captured?
Why does carbon need to be captured?
There are people who would like to get very wealthy willing carbon capture technologies and they can only do that in a regulatory environment that creates a demand for that product. Also, it works just as well if they don’t capture any carbon, but say that they do and even issue certificates to the buyers who are forced to buy the certificates because of the regulatory environment, created by elected officials who get a piece of the action.