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United States Earth

The US Has Big, New Plans To Pull CO2 Out of the Air (theverge.com) 156

Despite the efforts of delegates at this month's climate summit in Glasgow, the world is still careening toward potentially catastrophic levels of global warming. Now, some countries and corporations are turning to new technologies to pull carbon out of the air. From a report: Today, the US Department of Energy (DOE) announced a bold new plan to make those technologies, called carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies, cost-effective and scalable with the launch of a new "Carbon Negative Shot" initiative. Through this initiative, the agency seeks to bring the cost of CDR down dramatically this decade -- to less than $100 a ton -- so that it can be deployed at a big enough scale to remove "gigatons," or billions of tons, of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

That is a hell of a lot of CO2 pollution. Sequestering one gigaton of carbon dioxide would amount to removing the pollution of about 250 million vehicles -- the US's entire light-duty fleet -- in one year, according to the DOE. With CDR technologies still in pretty early stages of development, there are significant hurdles to overcome before the DOE can do so. CDR is a suite of strategies aimed at drawing down CO2 to keep it from trapping heat in the atmosphere. Nature can do some of that for us -- trees and plants pull CO2 out of the air. There's also "direct air capture" technology that mimics that process using carbon-sucking machines, but it has yet to be deployed at a large scale.

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The US Has Big, New Plans To Pull CO2 Out of the Air

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  • Imagine its the year 3,000.

    Regular person - "I think its time to turn off these sequestration devices."
    Politician - "Think of the jobs!"
    Regular person - "But sir, the glaciers have reached the outer limits of Chicago."
    Politician - "How will we fuel our jets if we aren't capturing CO2 and making jet fuel with it? No change is good change!"
    Regular person - |facepalm|

    --
    Be happy for this moment. This moment is your life. - Omar Khayyam

    • Imagine its the year 3,000.

      Regular person - "I think its time to turn off these sequestration devices." Politician - "Think of the jobs!" Regular person - "But sir, the glaciers have reached the outer limits of Chicago." Politician - "How will we fuel our jets if we aren't capturing CO2 and making jet fuel with it? No change is good change!" Regular person - |facepalm|

      Alternative Politician remark- "How are we going to stem off future incarnations of Global Warming without the Iceberg Maginot line?

  • Having a big climate conference and discussing greenhouse gas reduction/removal as the only solution, is like having a Covid-19 conference and discussing nothing but hand washing.

    I am endlessly frustrated by the blinkered fixation on emissions reduction, to the exclusion of any other strategy.

    • What other solution do you want them to consider?

      • Planting trees. Trees sequester carbon from the air.

        • Planting trees. Trees sequester carbon from the air.

          There is nowhere near enough land available for tree planting to make a difference.

          • Planting trees. Trees sequester carbon from the air.

            There is nowhere near enough land available for tree planting to make a difference.

            There used to be 6 Trillion trees. There are currently about 3Trillion trees (with the number apparently growing already). If we became more efficient in agriculture, for example by using more vegetable matter directly and fewer animals, and then used most of the land that the other three trillion trees used to grow on then we could get a noticable increase. Around 35 billion trees a year (according to a discussion had recently on Slashdot) would make a noteworthy difference. That's around 1% of the miss

      • by drnb ( 2434720 )

        What other solution do you want them to consider?

        Only solutions that embrace marxism :-)

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Having a big climate conference and discussing greenhouse gas reduction/removal as the only solution, is like having a Covid-19 conference and discussing nothing but hand washing.

      I am endlessly frustrated by the blinkered fixation on emissions reduction, to the exclusion of any other strategy.

      Your frustration comes form your incompetence. Because that are the only things that can still work in time.

      • I have always been a burn a candle at both ends sort of person. At one time they tried to say just replacing 1 lightbulb with a high efficiency one would do it. They lied. They did not account for population growth and industrialization of 3rd world populations. Burning a candle at both ends helps adjust for those unforseens. Mere reductions was too little too late as far back as the 80s given the massive growth since then. Perhaps if crypto mining did not consume more energy than Switzerland, my HE lightb
        • by Jeremi ( 14640 )

          At one time they tried to say just replacing 1 lightbulb with a high efficiency one would do it. They lied.

          They most certainly did not say "that would do it". You're lying.

        • What cracks me up is we are in a crises supposedly. And yet the previous article is about bezos lobbing thousands of satellites up into orbit, on top of Musk's and on top of what we plan to do with space tourism. Those tens of thousands of launches are not carbon free. Each one probably generates about as much CO2 as keeping a mid-sized city heated for a month. Here is a thought if we really are in a crises, no space launches that are not absolutely necessary as a start towards CO2 reduction. How about no m
      • Having a big climate conference and discussing greenhouse gas reduction/removal as the only solution, is like having a Covid-19 conference and discussing nothing but hand washing.

        I am endlessly frustrated by the blinkered fixation on emissions reduction, to the exclusion of any other strategy.

        Your frustration comes form your incompetence. Because that are the only things that can still work in time.

        The problem is that emissions reduction won't do the job, and no one who's studied the problem seriously claims that it can. The Paris Agreement was based on assumptions that we would not only reduce emissions but that we'd begin to pull CO2 out of the atmosphere. Both are needed to keep warming below 2C.

        My opinion is that we're going to end up needing to do all of dramatically slashing emissions, implementing removal/sequestration, and geo-engineering to combat temperature rises if we're going to avoid l

        • by gweihir ( 88907 )

          I agree that drastic, decisive measures over decades would be needed. We do not have the leadership or the supporting population that can make decisions like that and stick with them because far too few people are actually capable of understanding what is going on. For a comparably minor gain, the human race was willing to throw it all away.

    • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      I am endlessly frustrated by the blinkered fixation on emissions reduction, to the exclusion of any other strategy.

      Um, what? You're complaining about being too focused on emissions reduction and *also* complaining about being too focused on sequestration?

  • Typically US. All this will do is delay measures that actually help.

    • I dunno, where do you think we'd be now without decades of US government investment in solar panels? People are mad because it ended up being China mostly capitalizing on manufacturing them, so in that sense we dropped the ball on execution. But globally, it's still a massive, HUGE success.
      • And who knows, maybe they cut their lifespan in half being around the manufacturing of it. Seriusly, whats the environmental impact nesr the manufacturing site? I bet its bad in the country that dumped thousands of dead pigs in their rivers.
    • by HiThere ( 15173 )

      What measures do you think would actually help?

      Removing CO2 from the atmosphere is a necessary part of any solution. A more urgent part is cutting emissions. There are other parts that are clear to me, but often the problem is clear and feasible solutions aren't. For reducing emissions we can use solar panels, wind farms, and lots of batteries. (Batteries in the most general sense of the term. For example I'm including pumping water up-hill and compressed air.) But how do we handle melting permafrost?

      • by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Oh, it is a measure that would be critically needed. I just do not think the US is doing any more than announcing grand plans here. Plans alone do not a solution make.

        • by HiThere ( 15173 )

          A very valid point.

          OTOH, solar power has been ramping up, albeit too slowly. And storage is still a problem.

          • by gweihir ( 88907 )

            A very valid point.

            OTOH, solar power has been ramping up, albeit too slowly. And storage is still a problem.

            Oh, there are moves in the right direction. 35 years ago (when the Science was really solid) the speed would even have been adequate. Not today.

  • by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Friday November 05, 2021 @04:51PM (#61961341)

    I certainly hope they find a way to do this accomplish this monumental task because with current our technology it will require about 2.7 million direct air capture sites to pull a single gigaton of CO2 out of the air. Humans are currently emitting 35GT of CO2 per year, so I would describe our situation as "entirely fucked" and nobody can seemed to be bothered to do a damn thing to reduce how much they pollute. Meanwhile politicians can seem to find a spine to implement and CO2/GHG emission tax and the public can't even be bothered to vote for... anything.

    We're screwed and everyone is indifferent with excuses that simply aren't going to matter. The laws of nature just don't care about excuses or intentions. We're screwed and 95% of people are just twiddling their thumbs.

    • OH well.

      By the time it gets really bad on earth...I'll have been well into my dirt nap and not really caring.

  • ...generating the energy to run the machine that pulls CO2 out of the air?

  • First: how are we doing on big projects in the US, lately? Don't we announce a moonshot about every 10 years? Mars? Some space-bullshit conveniently projected to be delivered...just past the horizon of the current president.

    Second: what - precisely - has the Dept of Energy done for the last 44 years?
    Created in 1977, they've accomplished basically fuckall since then. National energy policy? Building nuclear power? Coordinating national energy infrastructure? Maybe hardening our energy systems against

    • by drnb ( 2434720 )

      First: how are we doing on big projects in the US, lately?

      Pretty good, one administration got vaccine development down to 9 months from 5 years.

      • Vaccine development is not the same scale or type of work as a real infrastructure (i.e., building something).
        • by drnb ( 2434720 )

          Vaccine development is not the same scale or type of work as a real infrastructure (i.e., building something).

          Actually there are quite similar bottlenecks, often regulator and legal, financial risks as well.

      • by HiThere ( 15173 )

        The first vaccine to be developed for use in the US was first because it declined to do the paperwork required to get the government money. So I don't think you can credit the government with that response.

        • by drnb ( 2434720 )

          The first vaccine to be developed for use in the US was first because it declined to do the paperwork required to get the government money. So I don't think you can credit the government with that response.

          Its primarily first because the regulatory path had been expedited. Regardless of who funded the research, the regulator path remained a huge barrier.

          And money absolutely factored in given that there were guaranteed orders prior to approval. That removed a manufacturing barrier.

    • by jmccue ( 834797 )

      Second: what - precisely - has the Dept of Energy done for the last 44 years?

      Do I really need to tel you or is this a Joke :) Dept of Energy is the office that implements all the Ideas the lobbyist bribe^H^H^H^H^H suggest to Congress

  • I guarantee you that nobody pushing a climate change agenda is going to care about this because fixing it isn't their goal. When third-world countries tell the US that it is to blame and not only that the US go into hock to deal with it locally but also demand a crapton of (taxpayer) money be given to them to help combat it in their country, I call B.S.

  • Rednecks will roll their coal [wikipedia.org] in reverse? :-)

  • A scheme to capture carbon dioxide and sequester it underground will only work if the government pays for it, and government is not good at long-term large-scale projects.

    If someone can pull carbon dioxide out of the air and use solar power to turn it into jet fuel, and the jet fuel can then be sold at a profit... that would happen for sure. Doubly so if government adds tax rules that promote the renewable fuel by penalizing fuel made by extracting additional petroleum from the ground.

  • by TheMESMERIC ( 766636 ) on Friday November 05, 2021 @07:18PM (#61961675)

    Carbon Capture & Storage. [youtube.com]

    Very educational.

  • by An Ominous Cow Erred ( 28892 ) on Saturday November 06, 2021 @12:59AM (#61962265)

    OK, so let's say they magically get it to $100/ton of CO2 removal, and the removed CO2 actually stays in the ground and doesn't gradually leak out. Let's say it works perfectly.

    That's still a shitty price in most instances. For instance, an ICE automobile used by the typical American releases 4.6 tons of CO2 per year. The average American car lasts for 8 years (I find this surprisingly short but that's what Consumer Reports says). This means that 4.6 * 8 == 36.8 $3680 is the cost differential just based on purchase price alone.

    But electric cars are also cheaper to run and maintain. Maintenance is hard to quantify, but let's just go by fuel. The US average for miles per $100 of gas is 950. A typical electric vehicle will get you an average of 4500 miles on $100 of electricity. Consumer reports the typical car in America drives 150,000 miles in its lifetime. Meaning $15789 in lifetime fuel cost for ICE, vs $3260 for an electric car, meaning $12529 in lifetime fuel savings. Add $3680 and you get $16209.

    So, assuming the electric car is running on 100% renewable energy, as long as the price premium of going electric is less than $16209 per car, it's cheaper to just go all-electric, instead of having ICE cars pump out CO2 and paying to scrub the CO2 back out of the atmosphere. Given that the price differential is already less than $12529, over the lifetime of the car, going electric is ALREADY cheaper than ICE without worrying about the fate of the CO2.

    This is a more difficult proposition for other applications, but the main point is that extracting CO2 and putting it back in the ground is almost always more expensive than just finding other ways to get our energy and not digging it up and burning it in the first place.

    Yes we do need to do CO2 sequestration someday, but for the time being our money is far better spent on not releasing CO2 in the first place. It's simply better economics. The only reason companies are pushing hard on sequestration is they think they will get a license to continue to pollute while not having to pay for their pollution. They expect taxpayers to pay for the sequestration. If you went and told everyone they had to pay $100 per ton of CO2 they release in order to put it back in the ground, they'd VERY quickly find ways to reduce their emissions.

    And really, the $100/ton figure is pretty much a pipe dream I suspect.

    • by iamacat ( 583406 )

      Saw any electric airplanes lately? Battery energy density is tiny compared to fossil fuels, not suitable for many applications. On the other hand, carbon capture can be located anywhere on the planet and take advantage of excess wind/solar energy when there is not enough demand for other uses. Or in the case of algae bloom sequestration, use natural elements and provide food and net carbon neutral fuel.

      • Saw any electric airplanes lately? Battery energy density is tiny compared to fossil fuels, not suitable for many applications.

        Sure, but in those cases generating fuel from renewable resources is also likely to be cheaper than burning fossil fuels then trying to recapture and sequester the CO2. Or maybe even burn fossil fuel in something like a fuel cell that is designed to capture the CO2 immediately. The added weight and complexity of such a system would be larger than a burn-and-release system, but less than a battery electric system. Since it does look like battery-electric airplanes may make sense for short commuter flights,

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      A lot of people don't realize this, but we need to actively remove a lot of CO2 from the atmosphere to reach 1.5C.

      If every country stuck to every promise made so far on net zero and emissions reductions, we would get to 1.9C.

      So 1.5C is dependent on us removing large volumes of CO2. Trees and re-wilding will be part of that, but we are going to need machines to do it on a massive scale.

      Whatever the cost is, it will be less than the cost of dealing with 1.9C.

      • Yes, we will need to do sequestration in the future, and we should continue R&D to improve it, but right now we can get more bang for our buck by eliminating as much CO2 emissions as possible. Once the low-hanging fruit is gone and sequestration becomes cheaper than curtailing emissions, THEN we begin mass rollout.

        Let's say we can afford $1 trillion to decarbonize.over the next 5 years. If we spend it on reducing emissions, there will be a lot less carbon in the atmosphere in 5 years than if we spent it

  • I have no idea how but... could we imagine releasing a gas in the upper level of the atmosphere that would react with CO2 and strip the carbon from CO2 to form a negatively charged molecule that would be captured by solar wind? There is surely a thousand reasons why this would not work but more interesting answers to my question would be: ways to make this work. Let's brainstorm on it.
  • OK, Iceland has the advantage of very green energy but it is already taking CO2 and binding it into underground granite. I think the actual company is Swiss or something and this will just be a small scale test but that could be the first country to go carbon negative!

  • Some liberal politicians want to give away money to their friends while doing nothing meaningful to actually slow climate change, because their other friends are in the fracking business

Hold on to the root.

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