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Earth United States

US To Fund a $1.2 Billion Effort To Vacuum Greenhouse Gases From the Sky (nytimes.com) 111

Posted by msmash from the moving-forward dept.
The Biden administration will spend $1.2 billion to help build the nation's first two commercial-scale plants to vacuum carbon dioxide pollution from the atmosphere, a nascent technology that some scientists say could be a breakthrough in the fight against global warming, but that others fear is an extravagant boondoggle. From a report: Jennifer Granholm, the energy secretary, announced Friday that her agency would fund two pilot projects that would deploy the disputed technology, known as direct air capture. Occidental Petroleum will build one of the plants in Kleberg County, Texas, and Battelle, a nonprofit research organization, will build the other in Calcasieu Parish on the Louisiana coast. The federal government and the companies will equally split the cost of building the facilities.

"These projects are going to help us prove out the potential of these next-generation technologies so that we can add them to our climate crisis fighting arsenal, and one of those technologies includes direct air capture, which is essentially giant vacuums that can suck decades of old carbon pollution straight out of the sky," Ms. Granholm said on a telephone call with reporters on Thursday. The 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law included $3.5 billion to fund the construction of four commercial-scale direct air capture plants. Friday's announcement covered the first two. Oil and gas companies lobbied for the direct air capture money to be included in the law, arguing that the world could continue to burn fossil fuels if it had a way to clean up their planet-warming pollution.
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US To Fund a $1.2 Billion Effort To Vacuum Greenhouse Gases From the Sky More

US To Fund a $1.2 Billion Effort To Vacuum Greenhouse Gases From the Sky

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  • I have a crazy idea (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Friday August 11, 2023 @03:28PM (#63760028)

    Hear me out, it just might work.

    How about not putting them there in the first place? Like, say, filtering them out where they get produced?

    • That's just crazy talk.

      • Nah, it's not at all. I mean sure, it'll put 1.6 tons of carbon into the air in order to run the machinery to remove 1.0 tons of carbon from the air, but they'll make up for it in volume, so we're all good.

    • It does seem like they would get more bang for their buck if they worked on pulling the CO2 straight out of the exhaust from fossil fuel using power plants where concentrations are MUCH higher and any effort would be better rewarded

      Of course, then they would also be able to directly assess the cost of CO2 scrubbing to the use of the fossil fuels, making them one of the more expensive energy sources

      hmmmm

      • That was supposed to be the benefit to electric cars and fossil fuel plants (on the way to solar, etc.) A plant can have better scrubbers, presumably even accounting for lossage of transmission lines, over cars, even modern ones.

        Anyone run those numbers?

      • That was supposed to be the idea of "clean coal". Keep running your coal fired power plants, remove the CO2 from the exhaust. Several failed trials and billions of dollars later, it has become clear it doesn't work.

        The first and biggest problem is that fossil fuels can't compete on price anymore. Even without CO2 removal, wind and solar are now cheaper. Adding CO2 removal makes it even more expensive and less able to compete.

        Another problem is that it's not a path to net zero. You can remove maybe 90%

        • While I am a fan of both Solar and Wind power generation, I think that we need to include nuclear power in the mix.

          This is primarily due to the large footprint of solar and wind power (along with the larges costs of support infrastructure like power lines) as compared to nuclear power generation. [nei.org]

          It seems like the tide is turning on public opinion, I just shudder every time I hear about 'clean natural gas', which seems to be taking the place of 'clean coal' in the fossil fuel industry propaganda playbook

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by q_e_t ( 5104099 )
            Per marginal MWh, even including grid costs, renewables are still cheaper. The cost of intermittency isn't easy to price, but that is part of why strike prices for nuclear are higher. I don't imagine that most countries are going to go above around 20% nuclear due to cost, though, as it's likely we can deal with some of the issues with intermittency with over capacity for less than building more than 20% nuclear. Yes, there's a still a residual possibility of energy shortfalls but if you asked people how mu

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by sfcat ( 872532 )

              This isn't true. What is reported by the press when they say for instance "solar is cheaper than coal" is something called 'capacity cost'. Capacity cost is what it costs to build a powerplant. It doesn't take into account how much power is actually made nor the cost of fuel or maintenance. Think of this as the cost of hardware in IT. The actual cost we all pay (including the utility) is called 'utilization cost'. Think of this as the 'Total Cost of Ownership'. So this takes the total power made and divide

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by q_e_t ( 5104099 )
                I see you picked on one of the more expensive renewables in your reply and not wind. Levelised cost comparisons are about generation not capacity. You need to explain why your (unreferenced) figures fly in the face of every study I've read for well over a decade - extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. There are also figures for CO2 emissions which put wind (offshore and onshore) slightly above nuclear but below gas and coal. Again, your extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I c

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by q_e_t ( 5104099 )
        Yes, it makes much more sense. There can even be chemical processes that benefit from high CO2 concentrations, but colocation is complex. In theory, you can make synthetic fuel from it, although at a premium cost.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by q_e_t ( 5104099 )
          Trying to reduce the production of it at all makes more sense still, although there is a limit to how quickly transitions can proceed without economic pain.

    • How about not putting them there in the first place? Like, say, filtering them out where they get produced?

      Yes, if you do want to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, it makes sense to remove it at the source, where you have high concentration of carbon dioxide, rather than from the atmosphere, where it is dlluted to 400 parts per million.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by waspleg ( 316038 )

      I'm sure Xi Jingping and Modi are all ears.

    • You are describing the era before clean emissions standards. Olden emissions was large in "soot". Black smoggy clouds of carbon-based ashen particles that were heavy and settled to the ground within minutes, leaving a sticky tar-like coating that built up like plaque over industrialized cities. When it rained, and you wore a white shirt, any runoff from rooftops would pick up all the soot and leave dribbles of soot on your white shirt.

      Then clean emissions standards can into force, which means you have to

    • Like, say, filtering them out where they get produced?

      LOL. Remove the fuel from fuel before it is burned. That will work well.

      I do not think you understand the full carbon cycle kind sir.

      • Taking hydrocarbons, burning them in oxygen and creating CO2 and H2O? Yeah, I got that part down.

        Now, taking that CO2 and stopping it from entering the atmosphere would be the next logical step.

  • This is how taxes should work. Instead of forcing everyone to pay a blanket tax, they should be itemized for a specific purpose. Flights should be taxed to clean the emissions that they output. Plastic package distributors should be taxed to pay for the recycling that is required. It will give people an incentive to limit these types of things.

    If you blanket charge everyone without a clear purpose, then you get even more waste, abuse and fraud because the output is not as easily measurable.

    The federal gover

    • Apply taxes based on the real cost of things and not filling a giant slush fund for politicians to buy votes and stuff their own pockets?

      You'll never get elected talking crazy like that.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by narcc ( 412956 )

        Neither one of you seem to understand the first thing about taxes.

        • Yeah, true, I don't understand why I've had to pay millions in taxes over the last few years yet I don't get any more services than when I was a student and didn't even file.

          Oh no, wait, I mean I need to pay my fair share!

          Or no wait, you've got me all confused now. What is it I don't understand?

          Please help, genius that you are since you just tossed out your usually fact free, context free, bull shit full ad hominem instead of saying anything real to back up your stupid noise.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by quall ( 1441799 )

          Because?? I don't think you understand the fundamentals of conversation.

    • Correctly identifying the costs of polluting industries, thereby making them less competitive to non-polluting products would be the proper Capitalist way to deal with it. However the fossil fuel and plastics industries have spent a lot of money on their politicians and it is unlikely that they will walk away from that investment

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Shaitan ( 22585 )

      "This is how taxes should work. Instead of forcing everyone to pay a blanket tax, they should be itemized for a specific purpose. Flights should be taxed to clean the emissions that they output. Plastic package distributors should be taxed to pay for the recycling that is required. It will give people an incentive to limit these types of things."

      Consumption taxes are generally taxes on the poor while leaving the wealthy with virtually no taxes in relative terms.

      While I agree that government spending should

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by quall ( 1441799 )

        I see your point, but fining based on revenue has the same problem. 1/4 of google's weekly revenue took a lot more effort and time than someone flipping burgers. The punitive value is not the same because the work involved to earn those dollars had required far more risk, skill and effort. People who risk it all and then get fined 1/4 of what they made is presenting a far higher punitive value because you can't calculate that based on how much you've made.

    • Flights benefit people and society. Why tax that? The flight isn't the benefit directly. What business people do is the benefit.

      I am reminded of taxing the hell out of "cadillac" health plans. Why? The need is to lower costs for it, so go ahead and tax something, anything, except medicine itself!

      • Eliminating, or redirecting costs is a big part of the MBA playbook, but at some point it becomes counter productive as everybody attempts to shift costs to somebody else

        Fossil fuels are at the heart of the carbon problem, so directly taxing them for the costs of CO2 based warming would be the most direct answer, as those costs would then be distributed though the supply chain.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by quall ( 1441799 )

        Flights benefit specific people or business entities, except when used for government duties.

        Why should a poor person working at McDonalds pay for the flights of those who can afford them? Why should I pay the government for the flights that Walmart makes to ship products? Walmart purchases should pay for that, and I should only contribute if I shop at Walmart.

    • >Flights should be taxed to clean the emissions that they output.
      >[etc.]

      Specifically, this is a "Pigouvian tax", named (not surprisingly) for Pigou, the economist who proposed it just over 100 years ago.

      hawk, displaced economics professor

  • Somebody saw spaceballs.

  • Even worse than saying NIF is going to produce electricity. How about getting a scientist to run DOE?

  • Negative co2 savings (Score:4, Informative)

    by iAmWaySmarterThanYou ( 10095012 ) on Friday August 11, 2023 @03:39PM (#63760074)

    Sooooo.... there's the co2 cost to build these things, the cost to maintain them, and the power required to run them is another co2 cost.

    To build a giant magical vacuum cleaner to suck co2 out of their air and turn it into uh stuff which will be place in uh some place safe.

    This is textbook government pork for campaign fund bullshit.

    Look under the cover and guaranteed someone in each state got some campaign donations.

    • There's probably a stipulation in there that the plants *must* be powered by burning corn-based ethanol.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by garyisabusyguy ( 732330 )

      Well, plants manage to grow in a CO2 negative manner, at some point humans will figure it out as well.

      Frankly, it IS government's job to do things that Capitalists (who always need a profit margin) are unwilling to do themselves.

      Simply calling those jobs 'pork' resembles the bullshit tactics of politicians like William Proxmire, who was keen on savaging any program that did not involve paying Wisconsin dairymen to produce excess cheese that now fills warehouses across the country

      • Useful productive outcomes, yes. Building 2 bullshit structures that will take more co2 to build and maintain then they'll ever pull out of the air? No.

        Pork.

        Oink.

        • Another pile of steaming sage advice from the resident spoof account

          IPretty funny stuff there, have you considered working for The Onion

          • Oh look more fact free spew from one of our resident fact free ad hominem spewing morons.

            This is my only login. I'm not spoofing anyone. You aren't either but you sure look like a spoof of someone with a brain.

            If you had anything worth saying to dispute what I said you'd say it. But you never do. You're too stupid to actually make a point.

            • Sure:
              >>Useful productive outcomes, yes. Building 2 bullshit structures that will take more co2 to build and maintain then they'll ever pull out of the air? No.

              Almost anything that humans make has a co2 cost to it.

              For example the concrete used to build a nuclear power plant generates a lot of co2, as does the steel processing, etc..

              However, in the long run, the nuclear power plant will generate the same or greater power as a fossil fuel plant, while producing less co2 than the fossil fuel plant (which

              • You can play it however you want. Your opinion is irrelevant.

                I'll stick with the people who are actually involved and might know what they're talking about.

                The first two lines of the NYT article which you didn't read,

                "U.S. to Fund a $1.2 Billion Effort to Vacuum Greenhouse Gases From the Sky
                Many scientists are skeptical of the technology, and environmentalists have criticized the approach."

                So gosh must be that the NYT is either shilling for the oil industry or is a satirical parody of itself because a supe

        • Useful productive outcomes, yes. Building 2 bullshit structures that will take more co2 to build and maintain then they'll ever pull out of the air? No.

          Citation please? And I mean for your specific claim.

          I don't doubt that politicians can SNAFU projects like this, even to the point of massive failure. But that's no reason to believe that massive failure must happen. Many ambitious projects that relied on government funding have gone on to achieve great success.

          • Ask the scientists and environmentalists for details.

            Straight from the article:

            "U.S. to Fund a $1.2 Billion Effort to Vacuum Greenhouse Gases From the Sky
            Many scientists are skeptical of the technology, and environmentalists have criticized the approach."

            • Appeal to Authority Fallacy

              Appeal to authority fallacy refers to the use of an expert's opinion to back up an argument. Instead of justifying one's claim, a person cites an authority figure who is not qualified to make reliable claims about the topic at hand.

              • So all those scientists and environmentalists who are deep in the field are not qualified.

                But you are.

                Lmao!!!!

                You win. There's nothing dumber than what you just said. Please stop. My stomach hurts and my throat is raw and I'm having trouble breathing from laughing so hard at you.

      • Re:Negative co2 savings (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Impy the Impiuos Imp ( 442658 ) on Friday August 11, 2023 @04:45PM (#63760324) Journal

        Capitalists do things that advance society. This is the benefit of it. To understand, look around at countries without it, or corruption so it struggles.

        That phone you're thumbing angrily into is the benefit. So if there are downsides, you are also the cause.

        You have been trained to hate on the capitalist, and ignore those trades are all two way, to mutual benefit. The mutual benefit deals with the downside, just as it did the upside (money exchanged for a dancing bear phone.)

        You were ordered to hate the capitalist for running away with the money, but you ran away with the phone, which didn't used to exist, and fiber optic, and food in your belly, and Star Wars sheets, and...

        It's the production for that exchange that causes the problem, and so can alleviate it.

        And my usual admonition, don't overdo carbon removal, as history shows an ice age can come on in as little as a year or two, as all you need is one summer without snow melting. And that really will kill billions, and fast.

        Why not plant poplars, a fast growing tree, cut then down, and throw them in landfills?

        Why not allow yard waste ino landfills, and non-aereating, non-biodegrading landfills as a partial measure. A few years back, I was listening to NPR, and a lady was talking to her daughter about what they could be doing for the environment to help global warming.

        They were so proud to be composting.

        Well, composting is the opposite of what you wanna do, rot stuff and release its carbon back into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. You might as well burn it in a power plant and at least get the energy.

        Composting is left over 1970s innumeracy that we were running out of landfill space, too much garbage!

        It's also an interesting case study in meme drift, where some new quasi-ethical rule appears, and people forget the original reason for it, and treat it as holy writ in and of itself. Shifts in religion come along, and it's still valid.

        • >>Capitalists do things that advance society. This is the benefit of it. To understand, look around at countries without it, or corruption so it struggles.

          Capitalists do things to gain a profit

          They are not so good at doing basic research that does not return a revenue stream, that is why government programs like NIST are used for basic research

          >>You have been trained to hate on the capitalist, and ignore those trades are all two way, to mutual benefit.

          No, I am a realist and I do not expect peopl

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by q_e_t ( 5104099 )
            There are plenty of things we could make out of wood and thus sequester and I'm sure a building all the cases of servers in data centres, wooden cars, clogs, and an extra thousand books on wooden shelves in wooden houses would be great the sheer scale of trees required to make a difference is boggling. We can't use up enough wood. Not that putting them in landfill works either as they will decay and release it all again.

          • One wouldn't use a junk tree like poplar to make things out of, of course. You would plant more but quality wood, which grows slower, ans thus extracts caarbon more slowly, but you'd get nice wood to make things from, and sitting in a house frame or a table is just as good at sequestration. Be sure to throw all the scraps into non-biodegrading landfills, along with yard waste, of course.

            As for capitalists, yes, what you say is true, the massive benefits to society are a side effect of their efforts. Ther

    • is that it looks like we're doing something while not making any changes that might get in the way of corporate profits.

      Even the Republicans have had to come up with a climate change plan (which is to plant trees.... which doesn't work since trees can only absorb so much CO2 before the increased heat and the droughts make them slow down their intake to conserve water through the little holes they breath through.... but hey at least they're trying).

      Stuff like this is like how we tell people we'll rec

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by q_e_t ( 5104099 )

      Sooooo.... there's the co2 cost to build these things, the cost to maintain them, and the power required to run them is another co2 cost.

      And if they take 1MtCO2 to build and operate but pull out 2MtCO2, is that better or worse than not building them? Yes, there might be pork, unfortunately, and it would be better without it.

    • Sooooo.... there's the co2 cost to build these things, the cost to maintain them, and the power required to run them is another co2 cost.

      To build a giant magical vacuum cleaner to suck co2 out of their air and turn it into uh stuff which will be place in uh some place safe.

      Will it work? Probably not.

      Is it worth $1.2B to see how well they can do at scale? Definitely.

  • Right... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by bradley13 ( 1118935 ) on Friday August 11, 2023 @03:46PM (#63760104) Homepage
    CO2 cost to construct the plants. CO2 cost to run them. Let's see an honest accounting, because I don't believe this is anything but pork.
  • Burning more fossil fuels to capture the CO2 we have pumped into the atmosphere seems a bit like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Once we have a magic source of energy, this may be a realistic idea.

  • Just sucks.

  • Megamaid! (Score:4, Funny)

    by LindleyF ( 9395567 ) on Friday August 11, 2023 @03:52PM (#63760140)
    Prepare ship for Metamorphosis! Ready, Kafka?

  • Who do I have to blow to get a contract to plant trees? They're talking about planting trees right? Or are they going to make some kind of oil powered co2 scrubbing plant that removes 100 tons of co2 an hour and only puts out 150 tons an hour in pollution????

  • Trees are good carbon capture devices and can produce lumber in the future.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by q_e_t ( 5104099 )
      But it's not possible to plant enough to fully offset emissions.
    • First off, carbon offsets are the some of the worst ideas going. Why? Because ppl/businesses regularly lie about it.
      Secondly, the entire western USA has lost phenomal amounts of sections of forests due to pine beetle. However, rather than cut the dying/dead trees down and replant, the democrats screamed to allow them to remain and have massive forest fires that they then claim was proof of climate change. Even Maui is a sad example of mismanagement going on.
      We need to clear cut in sections a number of o
  • Preserve coastline, sequester carbon, and get awesome fish and shellfish habitat. Am I missing anything here? I am a former senior Battelle employee and do not expect common sense solutions. Not enough billable hours to support the bureaucracy in Columbus.

  • What exactly is a 'decade' of carbon pollution? And how can we tell we're getting "old" ones, precisely?

    And pardon me for doubting, but the two plants are asserted to "remove 2 million metric tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere"...really?

    That would mean that those 2 testbed plants, alone, are going to sequester 10% more CO2 by mass than the ENTIRE US STEEL PRODUCTION for 2022 (1.7 million tons)?
    Color me skeptical.

  • With...hmmm, I don't know, cars maybe?
    Honest question

  • "Occidental Petroleum will build..." - Well, there's all you need to know about this project. I guess the oil industry has to replace the $trillions in govt subsidies with some other kind of subsidies. Who said socialism was dead in the USA?

  • I hear it's been 1-2-3-4-5 for a long time!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

  • and his "giant sucking sound" comes back!

  • Do they not exist anymore?
  • madness and ignorance has become the norm in the west so i purpose we study the life cycle of our planet and also where all that insane money comes from

  • Here comes another Solyndra or, more recently, Proterra. More government backed pump-n-dump stock schemes.

  • Even 1.2 trillion would be a fart in a windstorm

  • Instead of vaccuming from atmosphere, lets:
    1) cut energy usage by such things as more efficient buildings.
    2) cut emissions by replacing coal with nat gas/nuclear and then nat gas with nuclear power plants ASAP.
    3) vacuum THE OCEAN. This can be done nearly ENERGY FREE, and for that matter, COST FREE. The cold water from the oceans hold more than 26x the CO2 of the atmosphere. When it is heated up, the CO2 comes out. So, whatever cooling water is used for powerplants, esp. nuclear power, should be used to g

  • For a very long time the US Navy has bee developing a process that extracts CO2 and H2 from seawater to produce jet fuel, a process powered by a nuclear reactor on a large navy ship. The idea is to not have to bring fuel ships to the fleet so that the aircraft and smaller ships have fuel to burn. An aircraft carrier is an obvious choice for such a device as they are already nuclear powered and carry many aircraft.

    What could also benefit are ships that could be converted to nuclear power, such as frigates,

  • I cannot think that anything will ever work better than diatoms and algae at sequestering carbon dioxide. They are self powered, self replicating, nanotech devices that cost nothing to design and have a multi billion year track record of success at changing global gas levels.

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