Microsoft Signs Giant Carbon Removal Deal To Sponge Up CO2 Using Limestone (geekwire.com) 42
In a deal that could be worth $200 million, Microsoft announced that it is purchasing 315,000 metric tons of carbon removal over a multi-year period from climate tech startup Heirloom Carbon. It's one of the biggest deals of its kind, reports The Wall Street Journal (paywalled). GeekWire reports: San Francisco-based Heirloom is harnessing a geologic approach to catching and holding carbon dioxide. Limestone naturally binds to carbon, but Heirloom's technology dramatically speeds up the process, cutting it from years to days. The startup operates the only U.S. facility permanently capturing carbon. Even more important than the volume of carbon to be removed is the deal's ability to unlock additional funding and investments to grow Heirloom's business and the sector more broadly.
Microsoft previously invested in Heirloom through its $1 billion Climate Innovation Fund. The new deal represents a financially empowering "bankable agreement," said Heirloom CEO Shashank Samala. "Bankable agreements of this magnitude enable Heirloom to raise project finance for our rapid scale-up, fueling exponential growth like what we've seen in the renewable energy industry," Samala said in a statement. The guaranteed cash flow can facilitate financing needed to build Heirloom's next two commercial sites. The deal is also "an example of the impact of the Biden administration's 2021 infrastructure bill," notes the report. "[T]he purchase was tied to Heirloom being selected by the U.S. Department of Energy as one of the nation's direct air capture (DAC) hubs. It will receive $600 million of matching funding thanks to the designation."
Microsoft previously invested in Heirloom through its $1 billion Climate Innovation Fund. The new deal represents a financially empowering "bankable agreement," said Heirloom CEO Shashank Samala. "Bankable agreements of this magnitude enable Heirloom to raise project finance for our rapid scale-up, fueling exponential growth like what we've seen in the renewable energy industry," Samala said in a statement. The guaranteed cash flow can facilitate financing needed to build Heirloom's next two commercial sites. The deal is also "an example of the impact of the Biden administration's 2021 infrastructure bill," notes the report. "[T]he purchase was tied to Heirloom being selected by the U.S. Department of Energy as one of the nation's direct air capture (DAC) hubs. It will receive $600 million of matching funding thanks to the designation."
Re:Chasing the Wind... (Score:4, Insightful)
You're a climate change denier and a COVID vaccine denier.
Any other crazy conspiracies you were stupid enough to fall for, or is that the whole list? Maybe you have some concerns about 5G?
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Cleaning up 315,000 metric ton of it over multi-years is not going to affect anything at all.
You're right. We should not start anything. There's no such thing as scale up and any solution that doesn't materially fix the problem on day one should be ignored.
The OP is a climate change denier. You on the other hand are just stupid.
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The CO2 problem is real. but we have this idiotic cult to popsci that generate a lot of people with really horrible unworkable suicidal ideas.
But those people don't make the problem stop being a problem, it's still there, it's still warming up and causing disasters everywhere, even if it's not the "OMG WE WILL ALL DIE" that popsci cultists like to scream because they think saying some retarded lies help the matter.
Now, a pretty good right leaning position to take would be to demand everything to be made loc
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Re: Chasing the Wind... (Score:1)
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Wouldn't it make more sense to manufacture goods where the materials are sourced as far as possible? It takes just as much, if not more, energy/CO2 to transport raw materials as it does goods.
What kinda backwards traitor are you that you don't support globalization? Don't you get that we NEED to keep growing the economy at all costs, including the cost of our lives if necessary? Do you not understand that gains in economic efficiency and further concentrations of wealth are the only way to make this giant house of cards bigger still? Sheesh!
Seriously though, I think you're absolutely right. And totally aside from the fact that we may literally be killing ourselves in the long term just to suppor
Re: Chasing the Wind... (Score:2)
Another responsible argument is that coupling our economy to the whims of OPEC was always a disaster for national security. Some solar panels and wind turbines can reduce dependence and give these guys less leverage over us. But we probably like starting wars in the middle east, there are some very corrupt politicians on the right that make their friends a lot of money with oil wars.
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I totally agree, and would just like to add that initiatives like restoring forests needed to be launched a decade or more ago. The weather patterns arising from the way CO2 has dicked with the climate make it harder and harder to prevent wildfires in the forests we already have, much less grow new forests.
I mention this only because there are a lot of people who seem not to get the urgency here.
Is this infrastructure? (Score:3, Interesting)
I thought infrastructure meant things like roads, bridges, telephone/power poles, seaport maintenance, and so on.
Wordnik defines infrastructure as:
The basic facilities, services, and installations needed for the functioning of a community or society, such as transportation and communications systems, water and power lines, and public institutions including schools, post offices, and prisons.
Are we building a new type of infrastructure here? And shoveling all the money for this new type of infrastructure to a single private business?
Even if carbon capture is deemed necessary, it's still not part of the functioning of a community. As for example armies and navies are necessary, but not considered infrastructure per-se, they are not part of the functioning of a community.
Is this another example of the "infrastructure" bill not being about infrastructure?
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Hmm....
Oxford gives: "the basic physical and organizational structures and facilities (e.g. buildings, roads, power supplies) needed for the operation of a society or enterprise."
To me, infrastructure can cover everything from roads to factories to even housing.
More importantly, things like dams, dykes, and such can count as infrastructure. A carbon capture facility is ultimately a similar protective structure. By keeping global temperatures down, you prevent needing more dams and such.
More importantly, w
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Is this another example of the "infrastructure" bill not being about infrastructure?
Think of it as similar to MAGA Tommy Tuberville endangering the USA by refusing to allow military appointments because he demands an end to abortion.
Point is, all kinds of things get attached to bills, capeche?
Some that seem to be more intent on destroying the USA, than helping it.
Re: Is this infrastructure? (Score:2)
That's clever (Score:5, Interesting)
Their technology is described here [heirloomcarbon.com].
Background: There are two problems to CO2 sequestration, gathering it and storing it. Gathering CO2 from the atmosphere is hard, so most efforts focus on gathering it from point sources (e.g. power plants) instead.
Heirloom does a nifty trick. They cook limestone into Calcium Oxide. This releases CO2, and they capture it just like any other point source. They hand that CO2 over to someone else to pump it deep into the earth for storage. Then they use that CaO to capture atmospheric CO2. When it's "full", they repeat the process.
If the power for cooking off the CO2 is from wind or solar it seems reasonable. The big question is "Will what we pump underground stay there?" I suppose time will tell. I have vague concerns about it interacting with water, forming carbonic acid, and dissolving subsurface rocks, but surely people smarter than me have thought through that problem.
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Yes but here's how that could play out: fossil fuel producers will be required to capture an equivalent amount of CO2 (either by doing it, or paying some other company to do it, or by paying a tax). This will make wind/solar easily the cheaper option for ground transport and heating. Coal will die out and oil+capture will be used for air travel, plastics, lubricants, and old guys driving their vi
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... I have vague concerns about it interacting with water, forming carbonic acid, and dissolving subsurface rocks, but surely people smarter than me have thought through that problem.
I have vague concerns about it interacting with water, forming carbonic acid, and dissolving subsurface rocks, and I sincerely hope that people smarter than me have thought through that problem.
FTFY. You and I both know there's a significant chance that smarter people haven't even considered that problem, much less thought it through. In my mind there's no "surely" about it.
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It is totally pointless, we produce around 50 billion tons of CO2 per year. 50 GIGATONS... .... they are talking about all this to recapture (maybe) 315000 tons...
50 billion tons - 315000 tons = 50 billion tons.
The only thing we can really do at this point for real is to stop removing sulfur from the diesel fuel that ships burn to add aerosols to the atmosphere to reflect the Sun light, maybe we can build sodium engines to add more aerosols into the air. Sodium engines would burn sodium in water and woul
Money laundering by any other name (Score:1)
Ah, carbon credits. What a brilliant laundering vehicle. You can make up whatever results you want and get the appropriate parties to pay you the bribe out in the open, and get celebrated for it!
I'd say the biggest scam of our lifetimes, but sadly this doesn't even rate. It's been a weird couple decades.
And the CO2 balance is? (Score:5, Interesting)
I want to know the real carbon balance of this. They "bake" limestone, which takes energy. It doesn't help to say that might come from renewable sources, because any renewable energy could otherwise be fed into the grid, reducing the need for fossil fuels. Then the CO2 must be captured, transported, and stored. Finally, they have to force air through the resulting calcium oxide, to get it to bind with atmospheric CO2 in a reasonable amount of time.
So: Just how much CO2 do they generate, in order to capture, extract, transport and store 1 ton of CO2. Bet: you aren't going to get any sort of straight answer.
TFA says "...deal to sponge up CO2". I'm more thinking that this is a way to sponge up government subsidies (TFA mentions $600 million of subsidies).
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TFA says "...deal to sponge up CO2". I'm more thinking that this is a way to sponge up government subsidies (TFA mentions $600 million of subsidies).
Agreed. However, it is physically possible to do this in an eco-friendly way, using direct solar thermal with tracking reflectors. So it's not an inherently bad idea, they are probably just doing it wrong.
Or maybe they arent, but (seemingly) like you, I would bet they are.
FREE energy to bake limestone (Score:2)
Nuclear generates so much 'waste' heat, they have to shutdown if they can't get rid of it.
Nuclear power becomes twice as efficient if the 'waste' heat is not wasted but used for something like this.
Classic M$ fuckery (Score:1)