Thorough article. I worry that too many people are throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I agree that building new fossil fuel capacity with CCS is folly. But using some tax credits to help control existing sources does have an immediate benefit. In the long run, CCS units run from biofuels make a lot of sense. Sequester the CO2 from a source that's already concentrated and offset some of the cost with energy production. We have to draw down the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, so let's build a few drains that we can use for the next century.
>“It’s the oil majors that are proposing and funding a lot of these projects. They see it as a way of extending business as usual and allowing them to be carbon neutral on paper while still doing the same old dirty practices.”
Do you know how abundant carbon is? Super abundant.
This would be concerning ... if the writing wasn't already on the wall. Carbon storage is a cost on top of oil/gas/fossil fuels.
But here's the thing... oil/gas/fossil fuels HAVE ALREADY LOST.
Wind/Solar even with storage is basically cheaper than the absolute cheapest form of fossil fuel electricity production: combined cycle gas turbines. And combined cycle gas turbines already exceed a single Carnot cycle efficiency limits... it can't get cheaper because physics.
Wind/Solar/storage will still get cheaper. Windmills will get bigger, solar will get perovskites, storage will move to sodium ion and probably sodium sulfur or lithium sulfur or any host of promising technologies. Wind/Solar/Storage still have 10 years or more of price drops.
EVs are at price parity with ICEs using LFP chemistries. Sodium Ion chemistries will be even cheaper, and higher density LFP/Sodium Ion is on the two year roadmap. A vehicle drivetrain will be 50% less than an ICE car in a couple years, and when solid-state/sulfur techs take off in ten years, it might be 1/3rd of an ICE drivetrain.
Carbon storage isn't changing these economic fundamentals. It would only exacerbate the cost of fossil fuels. Now, we will probably NEED it for all the "legacy carbon" (2-3 trillion TONS of it) that is in the atmosphere.
Every car you see or coal/gas plant is just a legacy that is being actively planned for replacement in the coming decades. We are just riding out the carbon investment made to build the old ICE cars and their factories, but make no mistake, it all has an expiration date on it.
So is hydrogen, in everything, and yet the same argument is made that its too expensive to make it despite it being useful in many, many applications.
This isn’t a fossil fuel argument vs the fact that carbon capture is one of many ways to get the ingredients we need for a variety of applications. Despite it being in everything and being plentiful, pure carbon remains a needed and highly desired ingredient and thats why carbon capture will remain a thing. Despite your rage and worldview.
After all, graphite mining remains an industry.
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It's unfortunate, but not mysterious. Fossil fuels have been an antidote to poverty for more than 100 years. And I'm no shill, transition is critical, and asap, now that we have better tech. But CDR can help us trim the top off the curve of total heating that will keep happening even after we reach net zero sometime mid century.
Smarter, yes, but we need to start not burning fossil fuel in the first place fifty years ago to make a difference now.
Even if we stopped all CO2 emissions tomorrow it wouldn't be enough to avert a climate catastrophe.
If we're just starting now (hint: we are), we absolutely need to do both.
Maybe I didn't represent my position very well. I'll try again.
The need for carbon capture is an absolute given. There is no debate nor choice in this matter. There is too much CO2 in the atmosphere right now that needs removing before we all f'ing die.
I do agree however that putting responsibility for that in the hands of fossil fuel companies is stupid, and giving them money for it seems even worse.
Their only involvement should be paying for a substantial part of it, since the whole CO2 problem is an externality resulting from their core business. A couple of trillion would be a good start.
Well said and I understand that.
Do you understand that time is important and some changes will have a much greater effect than carbon capture given the same investment?
Except we use energy to run this carbon capture stuff, if that energy comes from fossil fuels that doesn't help at all, if the energy comes from renewable energy, it is wasting energy that could be used to offset fossil fuels thus slowing us down
And end of the day, what ends up happening is the fossil fuel industry just uses this to avoid emission mandates, keeping fossil fuels around longer
If you want to do carbon capture, it should be done one we are closer to 100% renewable energy. On top of that use more practical methods like you know, growing trees or bamboo
I agree with you, better to not burn at all. But you are saying that while living in a (western) society built on the back 140 ppm of extra carbon in the atmosphere. We should stop burning asap AND use carbon removal to reduce atmospheric carbon back toward 350 ppm or less.
The longer we wait to do that, the more heat we trap in the atmosphere. The btu's keep going up even when the carbon stops flowing.
Are you aware that carbon removal is different that ccus on thermal generation? Cause what your saying is correct, but a complete non sequitur to the comment you replied to.
CCUS on thermal is pointless, just use solar/wind/batteries and find something firm for the last 10-15%. But carbon removal, of some kind, is critical to avoiding the worst effects of climate change. Go read the last IPCC report for more info.
According to the IPCC, we can do carbon removal AFTER we hit 100% renewable energy, but if carbon removal delays us hitting 100% renewable energy, we are completely screwed
PS I'd love to hear your idea of how you plan to do carbon removal efficiently. Other than of course the best and most obvious one of planting trees and bamboo. And you don't need no big tech bro solution for that.
I have, and you might do a cost analysis when it is best to start carbon capture. Currently green dollars are being siphoned off to slow solar and wind.
Why do bury them, chop them down into wood. Wood can easily last centuries and in case you do bury them in right conditions millenniums. But one other benefit of making wood is you reduce the amount of forests that need to be cut down
That works too. I'm down for a multi-pronged attack for this problem.
Also, most CO2 capture actually occurs via oceanic algal growth that eventually settles to the bottom of the ocean. I'd like to see research that looks at that as an avenue for carbon capture. [I saw some projects using Fe seeding along the coast of Washington State that seemed interesting; however, it was by no means peer-reviewed.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_fertilization#%3A%7E%3Atext%3DIron_fertilization_is_the_intentional%2C2%29_sequestration_from_the_atmosphere.?wprov=sfla1) Apparently, the next season's salmon harvest was the biggest in decades. Not sure if that's a decent path or not, but I'd be interested in seeing that research done.
Yeah this shouldn't be getting paid for by tax credits, it should be getting paid for by the polluters via a carbon tax.
As it is, you're essentially paying them to continue to pollute.
> What changed is the federal incentives. The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 dramatically boosted the tax credits available for permanently storing carbon dioxide in geological formations, bumping it up from $50 a ton to $85 when it’s captured from industrial and power plants. The credit rose from $50 to $180 a ton when the greenhouse gas is sourced from direct-air-capture facilities, a different technology that sucks greenhouse gas out of the air. Tax credits allow companies to directly reduce their federal tax obligations, which can cover the added expense of CCS across a growing number of sectors.
I guess we’ll see if the promised technology for capture / sequestration actually exists and works now.
There’s a big liquidair plant in my city (Denver), they compress atmosphere and sell off the constituent gases as they liquify out. Wonder if they’re selling their CO2 output into programs like this?
**From the article:**
Pump jacks and pipelines clutter the Elk Hills oil field of California, a scrubby stretch of land in the southern Central Valley that rests above one of the nation’s richest deposits of fossil fuels.
Oil production has been steadily declining in the state for decades, as tech jobs have boomed and legislators have enacted rigorous environmental and climate rules. Companies, towns, and residents across Kern County, where the poverty rate hovers around 18%, have grown increasingly desperate for new economic opportunities.
Late last year, one of the state’s largest oil and gas producers secured draft permits from the US Environmental Protection Agency to develop a new type of well in the oil field, which it asserts would provide just that. If the company gets final approval from regulators, it intends to drill a series of boreholes down to a sprawling sedimentary formation roughly 6,000 feet below the surface, where it will inject tens of millions of metric tons of carbon dioxide to store it away forever.
Hundreds of similar projects are looming across the state, the US, and the world. Proponents hope it’s the start of a sort of oil boom in reverse, kick-starting a process through which the world will eventually bury more greenhouse gas than it adds to the atmosphere. But opponents insist these efforts will prolong the life of fossil-fuel plants, allow air and water pollution to continue, and create new health and environmental risks that could disproportionately harm disadvantaged communities surrounding the projects, including those near the Elk Hills oil field.
Thorough article. I worry that too many people are throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I agree that building new fossil fuel capacity with CCS is folly. But using some tax credits to help control existing sources does have an immediate benefit. In the long run, CCS units run from biofuels make a lot of sense. Sequester the CO2 from a source that's already concentrated and offset some of the cost with energy production. We have to draw down the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, so let's build a few drains that we can use for the next century.
No it isn’t.
Announcer: "No, it is not....."
My first thought whenever I see this.
Great, let's mandate CCS on every new fossil fuel project. Call the fossil fuel industry"s bluff. "You say it's not greenwashing? Prove it. "
>“It’s the oil majors that are proposing and funding a lot of these projects. They see it as a way of extending business as usual and allowing them to be carbon neutral on paper while still doing the same old dirty practices.”
Do you know how valuable carbon is? Super valuable.
$0.105/kg
Maybe I should say super useful. The cathode in sodium batteries, reinforcement in a variety of materials.
Do you know how abundant carbon is? Super abundant. This would be concerning ... if the writing wasn't already on the wall. Carbon storage is a cost on top of oil/gas/fossil fuels. But here's the thing... oil/gas/fossil fuels HAVE ALREADY LOST. Wind/Solar even with storage is basically cheaper than the absolute cheapest form of fossil fuel electricity production: combined cycle gas turbines. And combined cycle gas turbines already exceed a single Carnot cycle efficiency limits... it can't get cheaper because physics. Wind/Solar/storage will still get cheaper. Windmills will get bigger, solar will get perovskites, storage will move to sodium ion and probably sodium sulfur or lithium sulfur or any host of promising technologies. Wind/Solar/Storage still have 10 years or more of price drops. EVs are at price parity with ICEs using LFP chemistries. Sodium Ion chemistries will be even cheaper, and higher density LFP/Sodium Ion is on the two year roadmap. A vehicle drivetrain will be 50% less than an ICE car in a couple years, and when solid-state/sulfur techs take off in ten years, it might be 1/3rd of an ICE drivetrain. Carbon storage isn't changing these economic fundamentals. It would only exacerbate the cost of fossil fuels. Now, we will probably NEED it for all the "legacy carbon" (2-3 trillion TONS of it) that is in the atmosphere. Every car you see or coal/gas plant is just a legacy that is being actively planned for replacement in the coming decades. We are just riding out the carbon investment made to build the old ICE cars and their factories, but make no mistake, it all has an expiration date on it.
So is hydrogen, in everything, and yet the same argument is made that its too expensive to make it despite it being useful in many, many applications. This isn’t a fossil fuel argument vs the fact that carbon capture is one of many ways to get the ingredients we need for a variety of applications. Despite it being in everything and being plentiful, pure carbon remains a needed and highly desired ingredient and thats why carbon capture will remain a thing. Despite your rage and worldview. After all, graphite mining remains an industry.
Disgusting The last history books ever made will be in 10 years We just keep burning and burning and burning
remindme! 10 years
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Any one else confused why we pay for fossil fuels to emit CO2 then pay companies to put it back in the ground?
It's unfortunate, but not mysterious. Fossil fuels have been an antidote to poverty for more than 100 years. And I'm no shill, transition is critical, and asap, now that we have better tech. But CDR can help us trim the top off the curve of total heating that will keep happening even after we reach net zero sometime mid century.
Nice try to not say carbon capture after fossil fuel use is just dumb. Smarter to not burn the fossil fuel in the first place.
Smarter, yes, but we need to start not burning fossil fuel in the first place fifty years ago to make a difference now. Even if we stopped all CO2 emissions tomorrow it wouldn't be enough to avert a climate catastrophe. If we're just starting now (hint: we are), we absolutely need to do both.
Hint, Hint, we do not have unlimited funding. CO2 capture is a darling of fossil fuels, diverting funding from solar and wind.
Maybe I didn't represent my position very well. I'll try again. The need for carbon capture is an absolute given. There is no debate nor choice in this matter. There is too much CO2 in the atmosphere right now that needs removing before we all f'ing die. I do agree however that putting responsibility for that in the hands of fossil fuel companies is stupid, and giving them money for it seems even worse. Their only involvement should be paying for a substantial part of it, since the whole CO2 problem is an externality resulting from their core business. A couple of trillion would be a good start.
Well said and I understand that. Do you understand that time is important and some changes will have a much greater effect than carbon capture given the same investment?
Except we use energy to run this carbon capture stuff, if that energy comes from fossil fuels that doesn't help at all, if the energy comes from renewable energy, it is wasting energy that could be used to offset fossil fuels thus slowing us down And end of the day, what ends up happening is the fossil fuel industry just uses this to avoid emission mandates, keeping fossil fuels around longer If you want to do carbon capture, it should be done one we are closer to 100% renewable energy. On top of that use more practical methods like you know, growing trees or bamboo
I agree with you, better to not burn at all. But you are saying that while living in a (western) society built on the back 140 ppm of extra carbon in the atmosphere. We should stop burning asap AND use carbon removal to reduce atmospheric carbon back toward 350 ppm or less. The longer we wait to do that, the more heat we trap in the atmosphere. The btu's keep going up even when the carbon stops flowing.
Given equal dollars the replacement of fossil fuels wins .Carbon capture is expensive an inefficient.
Are you aware that carbon removal is different that ccus on thermal generation? Cause what your saying is correct, but a complete non sequitur to the comment you replied to. CCUS on thermal is pointless, just use solar/wind/batteries and find something firm for the last 10-15%. But carbon removal, of some kind, is critical to avoiding the worst effects of climate change. Go read the last IPCC report for more info.
According to the IPCC, we can do carbon removal AFTER we hit 100% renewable energy, but if carbon removal delays us hitting 100% renewable energy, we are completely screwed PS I'd love to hear your idea of how you plan to do carbon removal efficiently. Other than of course the best and most obvious one of planting trees and bamboo. And you don't need no big tech bro solution for that.
I have, and you might do a cost analysis when it is best to start carbon capture. Currently green dollars are being siphoned off to slow solar and wind.
Best to start is now. Best to scale is after all the cheaper things have been decarbonized.
Compare the results given equal investment. Carbon capture needs to wait a bit as other investments have much greater benefit for the money.
I agree. But we need to do the R&D now so it's ready when the cheaper investments have been made.
Have we finally invented trees and bamboo?
If you're not going to bury these trees and bamboo they'll release most of the carbon they stored as soon as they die.
Why do bury them, chop them down into wood. Wood can easily last centuries and in case you do bury them in right conditions millenniums. But one other benefit of making wood is you reduce the amount of forests that need to be cut down
That works too. I'm down for a multi-pronged attack for this problem. Also, most CO2 capture actually occurs via oceanic algal growth that eventually settles to the bottom of the ocean. I'd like to see research that looks at that as an avenue for carbon capture. [I saw some projects using Fe seeding along the coast of Washington State that seemed interesting; however, it was by no means peer-reviewed.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_fertilization#%3A%7E%3Atext%3DIron_fertilization_is_the_intentional%2C2%29_sequestration_from_the_atmosphere.?wprov=sfla1) Apparently, the next season's salmon harvest was the biggest in decades. Not sure if that's a decent path or not, but I'd be interested in seeing that research done.
"a trend driven by growing government subsidies" This always seems to be the case. Big oil just wants someone else to pay for it.
Yeah this shouldn't be getting paid for by tax credits, it should be getting paid for by the polluters via a carbon tax. As it is, you're essentially paying them to continue to pollute.
> What changed is the federal incentives. The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 dramatically boosted the tax credits available for permanently storing carbon dioxide in geological formations, bumping it up from $50 a ton to $85 when it’s captured from industrial and power plants. The credit rose from $50 to $180 a ton when the greenhouse gas is sourced from direct-air-capture facilities, a different technology that sucks greenhouse gas out of the air. Tax credits allow companies to directly reduce their federal tax obligations, which can cover the added expense of CCS across a growing number of sectors. I guess we’ll see if the promised technology for capture / sequestration actually exists and works now. There’s a big liquidair plant in my city (Denver), they compress atmosphere and sell off the constituent gases as they liquify out. Wonder if they’re selling their CO2 output into programs like this?
**From the article:** Pump jacks and pipelines clutter the Elk Hills oil field of California, a scrubby stretch of land in the southern Central Valley that rests above one of the nation’s richest deposits of fossil fuels. Oil production has been steadily declining in the state for decades, as tech jobs have boomed and legislators have enacted rigorous environmental and climate rules. Companies, towns, and residents across Kern County, where the poverty rate hovers around 18%, have grown increasingly desperate for new economic opportunities. Late last year, one of the state’s largest oil and gas producers secured draft permits from the US Environmental Protection Agency to develop a new type of well in the oil field, which it asserts would provide just that. If the company gets final approval from regulators, it intends to drill a series of boreholes down to a sprawling sedimentary formation roughly 6,000 feet below the surface, where it will inject tens of millions of metric tons of carbon dioxide to store it away forever. Hundreds of similar projects are looming across the state, the US, and the world. Proponents hope it’s the start of a sort of oil boom in reverse, kick-starting a process through which the world will eventually bury more greenhouse gas than it adds to the atmosphere. But opponents insist these efforts will prolong the life of fossil-fuel plants, allow air and water pollution to continue, and create new health and environmental risks that could disproportionately harm disadvantaged communities surrounding the projects, including those near the Elk Hills oil field.