Summary of current price per kg of DAC and other CDR technologies....

[Gregory Slater]

Hello All,

Could someone point me to a good 'spreadsheet-like' summary of the current price per kg of CO2 removal for the various CDR technologies/methods?  Also interested in a 'time per kg' (removal timescale, including the time it takes to build out the infrastructure) for all CDR technologies.

Thanks for any help,

Greg Slater

[Chris Van Arsdale]

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/acacb3/pdf

... not that everyone agrees with those numbers.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Carbon Dioxide Removal" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to CarbonDioxideRem...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/CarbonDioxideRemoval/1f05b81a-4a2c-4914-a824-ba1f7764aff3n%40googlegroups.com.

[Peter Eisenberger]

Thanks for the reference. I looked at the DACCS evaluation and noted 

 the comment that it lacked any co benefits that would enhance its adoption.  

I wrote a paper in 2012  that showed that DACUS ( eg use and storage ) would provide such co benefits

turning it from a cost to a profitable equitable and sustainable approach to climate change protection

https://arxiv.org/abs/2012.14976

I do applaud their efforts because it is exactly what is needed so as to focus our efforts on the most 

promising approaches - time is a critical factor and we need a coordinated effort to scale the most promising 

approaches. We need to come together and carry out an independent assessment with the best experts  of the many approaches 

and provide the policy makers with a technical assessment that can guide their policy efforts. 

 

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/CarbonDioxideRemoval/CADzNRbYAprTv658Q3hHEa5jTdbzA_s3F7YKoHjhSZ6OH-f1haQ%40mail.gmail.com.

--

CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION: This email message and all attachments contain confidential and privileged information that are for the sole use of the intended recipients, which if appropriate applies under the terms of the non-disclosure agreement between the parties.

[Michael Hayes]

Peter, et al.,

The NOAA mCDR team is already doing a deep evaluation of mCDR methods. If anything, they are creating a template for non mCDR methods to follow.

Best regards

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/CarbonDioxideRemoval/CANx_M7Sx0Opks%2BZp5huBEui5RRkSMr1mB4pXdNc%3D8MBqBjMuug%40mail.gmail.com.

[Dan Miller]

I would suggest that current numbers for cost of CDR are not meaningful. These are numbers for kiloton per year capture vs. the needed gigaton per year (1,000,000X more). Learning curves should bring the cost down by about an order of magnitude or more.

And I don’t understand the discussion of “cost effectiveness” for CDR.  It’s bit like asking about the cost effectiveness of heart bypass surgery. Without it, you’re dead. How do you calculate the ROI?

The bottom line is that the cost of doing CDR at scale (I estimate it’s $2T/year for -40 Gt/y) is much less than the cost of *not* doing it.  So, from that point of view, it’s very cost effective.

And, no, there is not a tradeoff between CDR and emissions reduction using renewable energy. An emissions reduction only approach leads to >2ºC warming which is catastrophic. So CDR is required on top of the most aggressive emissions reduction we can muster.  Emissions reduction only also leads to an AMOC collapse around mid-century, so SRM is also required.

I notice that a lot of the negative discussion around CDR recently assumes we will not have any serious policy to fight climate change.  That is why they think a dollar spent on CDR is a dollar not spent on RE. They also worry that CDR will give FF companies more social license to continue their business. It’s like we are asking FF companies to "pretty please" reduce their business.  This makes sense since we currently have no serious policy in place to fight climate change and we continue to choose to fail, as Kevin Anderson puts it.  Well, I have news for everyone. If we continue to choose to fail, we will fail! 

But we can choose to succeed and put serious policies in place to quickly phase out fossil fuels, scale up CDR, and get going with SRM.  Notice that I didn’t mention RE there.  If we phase out FF, then RE will take its place. No need to subsidize it (which results in more RE than we need).

Once again, here is my suggested 20-point policy plan to fight climate change, in case we choose to succeed.

Dan

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/CarbonDioxideRemoval/CABjtO1cv%3DA-%2BdjNWPVJ2emJNiDdkvp9nna3StLhE%2BhwUe8FKzQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[Seth Miller]

It’s worth clarifying a common misconception on how learning curves work. Learning over time doesn’t impact the cost of a device or process overall, just the parts that are in control of the manufacturing facility.

For a CDR process, that means labor costs will drop, supply chains will streamline, plastic components will replace steel when possible, etc. But the price of the steel or concrete needed for a facility won’t change, because even at 40 GT/yr, the scale of the CDR industry won’t significantly increase the scale of those markets. Similarly, the price of energy will not change due to CDR alone (though the CDR market could shape the future of niche energy sources that match its load requirements and geography).

The learning curve has been hugely impactful and seemingly eternally consistent in fields where the product is processing, distribution is cheap, and companies are all focused on a few large problems — semiconductors, fiber optic communication, and solar energy all fit this model. The learning curve becomes less impactful as processing becomes stoichiometric, distribution/energy/materials are a large part of the cost, and the industry is trying to solve a lot of small problems — construction is a classic example here. Worse, there is a third category where products get more expensive as they scale because they are truly limited by scarcity (e,g., real estate).

CDR is probably in the first category today, but probably in the second category somewhere before a scale of GT/yr is reached, and possibly moving into the third thereafter. So yes, we should invest now to bring scale up and costs down, but we should not expect those gains to keep accruing at the same rate forever.

As long as we have confidence that the long term cost of CDR is substantially less than the social cost of carbon (SCC), we should feel good about our early stage CDR investments. As long as that condition is fulfilled, the debate is somewhat academic/philosophical anyway, as the net present value of cost improvements by 2050 or 2100 approaches zero no matter how far below the SCC you fall. Still, I hope we don’t promise the world that costs will be infinitesimal, because the public has right to be skeptical of such claims. There is no infinitely applicable law of learning. If something can’t go on forever, it usually doesn’t.

Best,

Seth

-------

Seth Miller, Ph.D.

www.linkedin.com/in/sethmiller2

Check my blog at: perspicacity.xyz

On Aug 19, 2023, at 8:56 PM, Dan Miller <d...@rodagroup.com> wrote:

I would suggest that current numbers for cost of CDR are not meaningful. These are numbers for kiloton per year capture vs. the needed gigaton per year (1,000,000X more). Learning curves should bring the cost down by about an order of magnitude or more.

And I don’t understand the discussion of “cost effectiveness” for CDR.  It’s bit like asking about the cost effectiveness of heart bypass surgery. Without it, you’re dead. How do you calculate the ROI?

The bottom line is that the cost of doing CDR at scale (I estimate it’s $2T/year for -40 Gt/y) is much less than the cost of *not* doing it.  So, from that point of view, it’s very cost effective.

And, no, there is not a tradeoff between CDR and emissions reduction using renewable energy. An emissions reduction only approach leads to >2ºC warming which is catastrophic. So CDR is required on top of the most aggressive emissions reduction we can muster.  Emissions reduction only also leads to an AMOC collapse around mid-century, so SRM is also required.

I notice that a lot of the negative discussion around CDR recently assumes we will not have any serious policy to fight climate change.  That is why they think a dollar spent on CDR is a dollar not spent on RE. They also worry that CDR will give FF companies more social license to continue their business. It’s like we are asking FF companies to "pretty please" reduce their business.  This makes sense since we currently have no serious policy in place to fight climate change and we continue to choose to fail, as Kevin Anderson puts it.  Well, I have news for everyone. If we continue to choose to fail, we will fail! 

But we can choose to succeed and put serious policies in place to quickly phase out fossil fuels, scale up CDR, and get going with SRM.  Notice that I didn’t mention RE there.  If we phase out FF, then RE will take its place. No need to subsidize it (which results in more RE than we need).

Once again, here is my suggested 20-point policy plan to fight climate change, in case we choose to succeed.

Dan

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/CarbonDioxideRemoval/B9A3C784-80BB-432C-BF68-4C66512FA892%40rodagroup.com.

[Gregory Slater]

Thanks very much to everyone who has offered resources and perspectives on this topic.  I have to read through these carefully.

Thanks,

Greg Slater

[Jim Baird]

“$2T/year for -40 Gt/y”

 

Per the attached for one and a half times this the warming, energy and carbon problems would be eliminated.

 

 

 

From: carbondiox...@googlegroups.com On Behalf Of Dan Miller
Sent: August 19, 2023 7:56 PM
To: Michael Hayes <electro...@gmail.com>
Cc: Peter Eisenberger <peter.ei...@gmail.com>; Chris Van Arsdale <cvana...@google.com>; Gregory Slater <ten...@gmail.com>; Carbon Dioxide Removal <CarbonDiox...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [CDR] Summary of current price per kg of DAC and other CDR technologies....

 

I would suggest that current numbers for cost of CDR are not meaningful. These are numbers for kiloton per year capture vs. the needed gigaton per year (1,000,000X more). Learning curves should bring the cost down by about an order of magnitude or more.

 

And I don’t understand the discussion of “cost effectiveness” for CDR.  It’s bit like asking about the cost effectiveness of heart bypass surgery. Without it, you’re dead. How do you calculate the ROI?

 

The bottom line is that the cost of doing CDR at scale (I estimate it’s $2T/year for -40 Gt/y) is much less than the cost of *not* doing it.  So, from that point of view, it’s very cost effective.

 

And, no, there is not a tradeoff between CDR and emissions reduction using renewable energy. An emissions reduction only approach leads to >2ºC warming which is catastrophic. So CDR is required on top of the most aggressive emissions reduction we can muster.  Emissions reduction only also leads to an AMOC collapse around mid-century, so SRM is also required.

 

I notice that a lot of the negative discussion around CDR recently assumes we will not have any serious policy to fight climate change.  That is why they think a dollar spent on CDR is a dollar not spent on RE. They also worry that CDR will give FF companies more social license to continue their business. It’s like we are asking FF companies to "pretty please" reduce their business.  This makes sense since we currently have no serious policy in place to fight climate change and we continue to choose to fail, as Kevin Anderson puts it.  Well, I have news for everyone. If we continue to choose to fail, we will fail! 

 

But we can choose to succeed and put serious policies in place to quickly phase out fossil fuels, scale up CDR, and get going with SRM.  Notice that I didn’t mention RE there.  If we phase out FF, then RE will take its place. No need to subsidize it (which results in more RE than we need).

 

Once again, here is my suggested 20-point policy plan to fight climate change, in case we choose to succeed.

 

Dan

 

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/CarbonDioxideRemoval/B9A3C784-80BB-432C-BF68-4C66512FA892%40rodagroup.com.

[Clive Elsworth]

Dan

 

Thanks for your 20-point plan. Questions and comments:

 

1. How can new fossil fuel infrastructure be banned in China or any country other than your own?

 

2. For fee and dividend to work it must essentially be global, which means either sufficiently strong border adjustment inducements, or going straight to a global carbon price, preferably also rising gradually. That would incentivise development of cost-effective, zero carbon power sources like nothing else.

 

3. I don’t see in your list a plan to ‘fast track’ the development of Generation 4 nuclear power, some of which is estimated to generate electricity cheaper than fossil fuels: $35/MWh baseload, $54/MWh peaked i.e. driven from heat storage. Some can also supply ~800^oC process heat for around $10/MWh. The capital cost is ~$2/Watt or probably less. Currently the First of a Kind reactor is expected to begin operating in the UK around 2030 (the MoltexFLEX reactor).

   

4. It’s great to see you listing funding for R&D into solar radiation management. We believe there is great scope for doing that in the troposphere by increasing the amount of haze and brightening clouds, mainly in the tropics and subtropics. Cooling the oceans where they are hottest would cool the rest of them, including the polar regions.

 

5. Do you have a cost estimate for plugging all methane leaks? Reuters estimates there are around 29 million abandoned oil/gas world internationally, and more than 3.2 million in the USA.

 

6. What about the main methane sources, which are wetlands and agriculture, with melting permafrost likely increasing to become significant, not to mention the threat of shallow seabed melting permafrost?

 

7. Are you open to the idea of enhancing the natural atmospheric methane sink? The putative description of part of this mechanism done by chlorine radicals from dust particles in the Oeste et al 2017 paper was recently measured and described here: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2303974120. Mimicking this mechanism would (subject to further testing and modelling) also remove other oxidable short-lived climate forcing agents, the main other ones being tropospheric ozone and black carbon aerosol. Research is ongoing into this, but we could sure use more funding.

 

Clive

 

 

From: carbondiox...@googlegroups.com <carbondiox...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Dan Miller
Sent: Sunday, August 20, 2023 3:56 AM
To: Michael Hayes <electro...@gmail.com>
Cc: Peter Eisenberger <peter.ei...@gmail.com>; Chris Van Arsdale <cvana...@google.com>; Gregory Slater <ten...@gmail.com>; Carbon Dioxide Removal <CarbonDiox...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [CDR] Summary of current price per kg of DAC and other CDR technologies....

 

I would suggest that current numbers for cost of CDR are not meaningful. These are numbers for kiloton per year capture vs. the needed gigaton per year (1,000,000X more). Learning curves should bring the cost down by about an order of magnitude or more.

 

And I don’t understand the discussion of “cost effectiveness” for CDR.  It’s bit like asking about the cost effectiveness of heart bypass surgery. Without it, you’re dead. How do you calculate the ROI?

 

The bottom line is that the cost of doing CDR at scale (I estimate it’s $2T/year for -40 Gt/y) is much less than the cost of *not* doing it.  So, from that point of view, it’s very cost effective.

 

And, no, there is not a tradeoff between CDR and emissions reduction using renewable energy. An emissions reduction only approach leads to >2ºC warming which is catastrophic. So CDR is required on top of the most aggressive emissions reduction we can muster.  Emissions reduction only also leads to an AMOC collapse around mid-century, so SRM is also required.

 

I notice that a lot of the negative discussion around CDR recently assumes we will not have any serious policy to fight climate change.  That is why they think a dollar spent on CDR is a dollar not spent on RE. They also worry that CDR will give FF companies more social license to continue their business. It’s like we are asking FF companies to "pretty please" reduce their business.  This makes sense since we currently have no serious policy in place to fight climate change and we continue to choose to fail, as Kevin Anderson puts it.  Well, I have news for everyone. If we continue to choose to fail, we will fail! 

 

But we can choose to succeed and put serious policies in place to quickly phase out fossil fuels, scale up CDR, and get going with SRM.  Notice that I didn’t mention RE there.  If we phase out FF, then RE will take its place. No need to subsidize it (which results in more RE than we need).

 

Once again, here is my suggested 20-point policy plan to fight climate change, in case we choose to succeed.

 

Dan

 

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/CarbonDioxideRemoval/B9A3C784-80BB-432C-BF68-4C66512FA892%40rodagroup.com.

[Bhaskar M V]

The most important point should be:

Grow fish in the open oceans.

If 10 GtC/yr or more of fish can be grown in Oceans, it will solve many problems.

Agriculture is close to this number. So the idea is to grow as much fish, as food and commercial crops.

Regards

Bhaskar

Director

Kadambari Consultants Pvt Ltd

Hyderabad. India

Ph. & WhatsApp : +91 92465 08213

https://www.linkedin.com/in/bhaskarmv/

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "NOAC Meetings" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to noac-meeting...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/noac-meetings/0acb01d9d337%2471b01f10%2455105d30%24%40EndorphinSoftware.co.uk.

[Peter Eisenberger]

Hi Dan 

If the climate solution costs money it  raises the issue of who pays which in turn delays adoption

Regarding CO2 as a pollutant that costs money  to remove is in my opinion the wrong framework for thinking how to address  

the climate threat. By having ambient CO2 provide the carbon and with hydrogen from water providing

the carbon and hydrogen that is currently provided by fossil hydrocarbons. Using existing processes

and infrastructure create a synthetic hydrocarbon economy with carbon neutral energy and carbon negative materials 

like carbon fiber and building materials *eg synthetic aggregate" . This provides 

a direct link economic growth and climate change protection and enhances the rate of adoption 

 https://arxiv.org/abs/2012.14976

I agree  all efforts should be made including notably emission reductions 

The great need for energy in the developing world to address the basic needs of their people means 

that any attempt to reduce energy production like preventing new fossil fuel infrastructure is and 

will be met with opposition which in turn prevents a global cooperation and coordination on CDR that

is needed to fight the threat of climate change. 

Peter    

[Tom Goreau]

14. is insufficient.

 

Just “putting aside 50% of land and oceans” will not preserve their biomass, biodiversity, ecosystem function, or climate services unless these are actively regenerated.

 

Regeneration of high biomass, high productivity, high biodiversity ecosystems is essential to restabilize CO2 at safe levels, and that won’t happen if we just continue to kill them through our mismanagement of land, water, air, and ice.

 

Active Geotherapy of entire ecosystems is needed, the methods to do so are established, but hardly used.

 

They will be needed whether or not a Geoengineering deus ex machina can be found to minimize climate overshoot.

 

If we don’t do so, it will happen naturally over millions of years after we are gone.

 

From: carbondiox...@googlegroups.com <carbondiox...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Dan Miller <d...@rodagroup.com>
Date: Saturday, August 19, 2023 at 10:57 PM
To: Michael Hayes <electro...@gmail.com>
Cc: Peter Eisenberger <peter.ei...@gmail.com>, Chris Van Arsdale <cvana...@google.com>, Gregory Slater <ten...@gmail.com>, Carbon Dioxide Removal <carbondiox...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [CDR] Summary of current price per kg of DAC and other CDR technologies....

I would suggest that current numbers for cost of CDR are not meaningful. These are numbers for kiloton per year capture vs. the needed gigaton per year (1,000,000X more). Learning curves should bring the cost down by about an order of magnitude or more.

 

And I don’t understand the discussion of “cost effectiveness” for CDR.  It’s bit like asking about the cost effectiveness of heart bypass surgery. Without it, you’re dead. How do you calculate the ROI?

 

The bottom line is that the cost of doing CDR at scale (I estimate it’s $2T/year for -40 Gt/y) is much less than the cost of *not* doing it.  So, from that point of view, it’s very cost effective.

 

And, no, there is not a tradeoff between CDR and emissions reduction using renewable energy. An emissions reduction only approach leads to >2ºC warming which is catastrophic. So CDR is required on top of the most aggressive emissions reduction we can muster.  Emissions reduction only also leads to an AMOC collapse around mid-century, so SRM is also required.

 

I notice that a lot of the negative discussion around CDR recently assumes we will not have any serious policy to fight climate change.  That is why they think a dollar spent on CDR is a dollar not spent on RE. They also worry that CDR will give FF companies more social license to continue their business. It’s like we are asking FF companies to "pretty please" reduce their business.  This makes sense since we currently have no serious policy in place to fight climate change and we continue to choose to fail, as Kevin Anderson puts it.  Well, I have news for everyone. If we continue to choose to fail, we will fail! 

 

But we can choose to succeed and put serious policies in place to quickly phase out fossil fuels, scale up CDR, and get going with SRM.  Notice that I didn’t mention RE there.  If we phase out FF, then RE will take its place. No need to subsidize it (which results in more RE than we need).

 

Once again, here is my suggested 20-point policy plan to fight climate change, in case we choose to succeed.

 

Dan

 

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/CarbonDioxideRemoval/B9A3C784-80BB-432C-BF68-4C66512FA892%40rodagroup.com.

[Bru Pearce]

Fully agree with that Tom.

 

Bru Pearce

 

E-mail   b...@envisionation.org  

Web www.envisionation.org  

Skype  brupearce  

Work  +44 20 8144 0431    Mobile  +44 7740 854713

Salcombe, Devon, UK

Information contained in this email and any files attached to it is confidential to the intended recipient and may be covered by legal professional privilege.  If you receive this email in error, please advise by return email before deleting it; you should not retain the email or disclose its contents to anyone.  Envisionation Ltd has taken reasonable precautions to minimise the risk of software viruses, but we recommend that any attachments are virus checked before they are opened.  Thank you for your cooperation.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/CarbonDioxideRemoval/BY3PR13MB4994F4FC6DA46F2ED8FA2E9DDD19A%40BY3PR13MB4994.namprd13.prod.outlook.com.

[Dan Miller]

I agree that #14 -- and my entire Global Climate Action Plan -- is insufficient to address all the planetary boundaries we are crossing.  My plan is focused on climate change, but biodiversity loss is looming in the same time scale as climate.  My point on #14 is the First Rule of Holes: When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.  Much more is needed to address biodiversity loss and it deserves its own 20-point plan.

I will add when I mentioned #14 to oceanographer Sylvia Earl, she said the figure for oceans should be 100%.  “100%!”, I said, “But that would mean no fishing anywhere!”.  She replied, “Yes, because if we don’t stop 100% now, we won’t have anything to fish in the future.” So, there’s that.

And addressing another comment, it is a global action plan.  We either address climate comprehensively or we don’t.  Climate change is a global problem and it requires global action to stop it.

Dan

On Aug 20, 2023, at 9:58 AM, Bru Pearce <b...@envisionation.org> wrote:

Fully agree with that Tom.

 

<image004.jpg>Bru Pearce

<image003.jpg>

[Dan Miller]

See my responses in blue.

On Aug 20, 2023, at 3:25 AM, Clive Elsworth <Cl...@EndorphinSoftware.co.uk> wrote:

Dan 

  

Thanks for your 20-point plan. Questions and comments:

  

1. How can new fossil fuel infrastructure be banned in China or any country other than your own? - It’s a *global* plan.

  

2. For fee and dividend to work it must essentially be global, which means either sufficiently strong border adjustment inducements, or going straight to a global carbon price, preferably also rising gradually. That would incentivise development of cost-effective, zero carbon power sources like nothing else. - yes, F&D should be global & can be via boarder adjustments. See my TEDx talk: https://youtu.be/0k2-SzlDGko 

 

3. I don’t see in your list a plan to ‘fast track’ the development of Generation 4 nuclear power, some of which is estimated to generate electricity cheaper than fossil fuels: $35/MWh baseload, $54/MWh peaked i.e. driven from heat storage. Some can also supply ~800^oC process heat for around $10/MWh. The capital cost is ~$2/Watt or probably less. Currently the First of a Kind reactor is expected to begin operating in the UK around 2030 (the MoltexFLEX reactor). - Nuclear is safe, but it is much more expensive than renewables and takes much longer to install.  By the time that Gen4/SMR are available, solar PV will cost $0.01/kWh and batteries will cost a fraction of what they do now (which is 10% of what they cost 10~15 years ago). See: https://www.rethinkx.com/energy 

    

4. It’s great to see you listing funding for R&D into solar radiation management. We believe there is great scope for doing that in the troposphere by increasing the amount of haze and brightening clouds, mainly in the tropics and subtropics. Cooling the oceans where they are hottest would cool the rest of them, including the polar regions. - With an AMOC collapse *expected* around mid-century, we are going to need to fast track SMR deployment!

  

5. Do you have a cost estimate for plugging all methane leaks? Reuters estimates there are around 29 million abandoned oil/gas world internationally, and more than 3.2 million in the USA. - I don’t have a cost estimate for plugging the leaks but I am quite sure the cost is much less than the cost of *not* plugging them!

 

6. What about the main methane sources, which are wetlands and agriculture, with melting permafrost likely increasing to become significant, not to mention the threat of shallow seabed melting permafrost? - That’s bad too and it is one of the reasons we need to deploy SMR soon!

 

7. Are you open to the idea of enhancing the natural atmospheric methane sink? The putative description of part of this mechanism done by chlorine radicals from dust particles in the Oeste et al 2017 paper was recently measured and described here: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2303974120. Mimicking this mechanism would (subject to further testing and modelling) also remove other oxidable short-lived climate forcing agents, the main other ones being tropospheric ozone and black carbon aerosol. Research is ongoing into this, but we could sure use more funding. - I haven’t looked into that specifically, but my brother runs a company that mimics the natural destruction of methane in order to eradicate methane from low-concentration sources: https://ambientcarbon.com 

  

Clive 

 

 

From: carbondiox...@googlegroups.com <carbondiox...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Dan Miller
Sent: Sunday, August 20, 2023 3:56 AM
To: Michael Hayes <electro...@gmail.com>
Cc: Peter Eisenberger <peter.ei...@gmail.com>; Chris Van Arsdale <cvana...@google.com>; Gregory Slater <ten...@gmail.com>; Carbon Dioxide Removal <CarbonDiox...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [CDR] Summary of current price per kg of DAC and other CDR technologies....

 

I would suggest that current numbers for cost of CDR are not meaningful. These are numbers for kiloton per year capture vs. the needed gigaton per year (1,000,000X more). Learning curves should bring the cost down by about an order of magnitude or more.

 

And I don’t understand the discussion of “cost effectiveness” for CDR.  It’s bit like asking about the cost effectiveness of heart bypass surgery. Without it, you’re dead. How do you calculate the ROI?

 

The bottom line is that the cost of doing CDR at scale (I estimate it’s $2T/year for -40 Gt/y) is much less than the cost of *not* doing it.  So, from that point of view, it’s very cost effective.

 

And, no, there is not a tradeoff between CDR and emissions reduction using renewable energy. An emissions reduction only approach leads to >2ºC warming which is catastrophic. So CDR is required on top of the most aggressive emissions reduction we can muster.  Emissions reduction only also leads to an AMOC collapse around mid-century, so SRM is also required.

 

I notice that a lot of the negative discussion around CDR recently assumes we will not have any serious policy to fight climate change.  That is why they think a dollar spent on CDR is a dollar not spent on RE. They also worry that CDR will give FF companies more social license to continue their business. It’s like we are asking FF companies to "pretty please" reduce their business.  This makes sense since we currently have no serious policy in place to fight climate change and we continue to choose to fail, as Kevin Anderson puts it.  Well, I have news for everyone. If we continue to choose to fail, we will fail! 

 

But we can choose to succeed and put serious policies in place to quickly phase out fossil fuels, scale up CDR, and get going with SRM.  Notice that I didn’t mention RE there.  If we phase out FF, then RE will take its place. No need to subsidize it (which results in more RE than we need).

 

Once again, here is my suggested 20-point policy plan to fight climate change, in case we choose to succeed.

 

Dan

 

[Robert Chris]

Dan

Do you have a view on Michaux's argument that the low EROI of renewables is such that there aren't enough metals in the ground to build a renewable energy infrastructure to replace fossil fuel, at least not with existing technologies?  And that recycling is not thermodynamically viable at scale.

Regards

Robert

[Amal Bhattarai]

Www.CDR.fyi tracks commercial “current” prices for the most popular methods; prices include the (astronomical) profit.  

What the prices “should” be is too early to calculate, because many CDR techniques have not yet been sufficiently developed or have not entered the “marketplace”….

[Clive Elsworth]

Dan

 

Thanks for the ambient carbon link, which mentions using Cl2 which splits in the presence of light. It produces HCl (and CO2 and H2O), and each Cl atom removes one methane molecule. (BTW we’ve known David Miller several years.)

 

What we have been proposing for the atmosphere is using a photocatalytic cycle, in which each chlorine atom gets recycled many times to remove many methane molecules – we estimate around 1000 with our latest proposed aerosol formulation.

 

Solar PV and renewables

I wonder what the embedded CO2 is in this cheap solar PV? China appears quite happy to install ever more coal power for any of its manufacturing.

 

RethinkX seems to think any location is suitable for renewables, which doesn’t seem credible to me for places that are not very windy or sunny. The cost of transmission then becomes a constraint. The mining of ever lower grade ores to satisfy renewables’ (and the associated grid’s) voracious appetite for resources per unit of energy generation capacity looks ecologically damaging to me, not to mention a health hazard to those who live nearby or work in the mines.

 

Moltex Energy foresee a future complementing renewables by peaking during the troughs. They have no fear of their power stations becoming stranded assets. They also don’t see the (for now) declining cost of lithium batteries threatening their GridReserve heat storage. Other storage types maybe. But heat storage in nitrate salt tanks is cheap, and they’ll just replace those with whatever becomes cheaper.

 

But whether a mix of energy sources, or renewables wins out it’s good news if energy becomes cheap all around the world, because that ought eventually to enable the politicians to enact carbon pricing to phase out fossil fuels. That is the important point here.

 

But let’s not hold our breaths, and not forget the need for immediate cooling of the oceans.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/CarbonDioxideRemoval/9CB1724A-A74F-487E-94CB-08FE34457AAE%40rodagroup.com.

[Michael Hayes]

Hi Folks,

1) The focus of this CDR list is to inform on the STEM, policy, and socioeconomics of the now many methods being proposed for CO2 management. There are general geoengineering chat groups available for wide ranging discussions across all imaginable STEM, policy and socioeconomic concerns and ideas, yet this CDR space is focused upon CO2 management.

2) Coupling SRM and CDR at the technical level would help. 

3) I would add a 21st goal:

Find synergies between SRM and CDR technologies that can help avoid known limiting factors at the STEM, policy, and socioeconomic levels.

4) In my opinion, the technically easiest, cheapest, and thus fastest way to initially fulfill that requirement might be sea ice engineering. 

Sea ice production will likely produce heat that can be useful for marine biotic CDR processing and/or drive abiotic mCDR methods. Why not build a combined SRM/CDR plan on that common technical ground? 

5) Importing any bulk material into the polar ice regions, into the marine environment in general, for SRM or CDR, is more problematic at the international policy, cost, and social acceptance levels than using technologies that need no imports. 

Why not build a combined SRM/CDR technical development policy on a 'no import' standard? Why fight unnecessary battles?

Best regards 

[pfieko]

Great question. I've been working on an analysis--from the perspective of restoring historically safe CO2 levels.

Cost-Effectiveness of Carbon-Dioxide Removal Methods: Costs determine scalability, and costs vary by a factor of 30,000

The costs of DAC, enhanced ocean alkalinity, bio-oil injection (Charm Industrial), BECCS, and biochar are all in the $100 / ton to $1000 per ton range, varying between theoretical and real implementations.
Solar and wind energy generation replace coal and natural gas use--and reduce future CO2 levels at $10 / ton CO2 avoided--which is 10 to 100 times more efficient than DAC, etc.

Ocean iron fertilization, according to the National Academies (NASEM 2021) report, could be done for about $.03 / ton removed. But doing that is labeled misbehavior--presumably because that could reduce CO2 40% to 280 ppm, in opposition to the 1992 UNFCCC goal of stabilization, that is, eliminating human caused climate intervention.

The plausibility of OIF at scale is seen in Mt. Pinatubo eruption data (also a draft report)

The Mt. Pinatubo Eruption Preceded Removal of 20 Gt of Atmospheric CO2 in One Year—Supporting the Feasibility of Climate Restoration through Ocean Fertilization

I hope that opens up some new thinking here.

I'll repost those papers when they're complete.

Peter

[Bruce Melton -- Austin, Texas]

Thanks Dan.

Below my signature is a review and interpretation of David Keith's 2018, $94 to $232 per ton CO2 removal. He presents two scenarios, where scenarios are assumed futures. The $0.03 kWh natural gas scenario at $94 per ton removal used the cheapest fracked gas at the time. Using a renewable energy scenario, Keith's costs are about 66 percent less than his published work.

I also want to make an important point about fossil fuel energy and climate science. The science does not say we must eliminate fossil fuel energy, it says we must reduce Earth's energy imbalance. It is the scenarios that say we must reduce or eliminate fossil fuel energy. Scenarios are "made up futures" and most science and particularly climate science cannot function without them. If a scenario does not include certain things, then the science that comes from that scenario is agnostic on those certain things. The IPCC's latest assessment report series chose to include 1,202 of the over 3,000 scenarios in climate science published in the last 6 to 7 years. None of these scenarios had a warming target of less than 1.5 C. None had futures where fossil fuel emissions were not limited or eliminated (except the BAU scenarios of course.) None had a focus on air capture of CO2 (or geoengineering).  None considered activation of tipping systems and time frames sooner than 2100.

And a thought experiment on scenarios: When we discovered disease from improper treatment (no treatment) of human sewage pollution was killing millions in the 19th century, we did not stop emitting human sewage.

I did a cursory 20-year scenario of air capture climate restoration a while back that I will not bore you with the details but, to remove 1,000 Gt CO2 from the atmosphere, and remove half of future emissions (because half are absorbed by Earth's systems), emissions elimination would only assist air capture restoration by about 20 percent. Importantly though as Dan suggested previously, we must scale air capture by a massive amount, some 10,000 times greater than Keith's 1 million ton per year hypothetical facility being built now, so that we can remove the 1,000 Gt excess CO2 from the sky and restore our climate. If we do not create this 10,000 times scaled infrastructure, we fail and our Earth systems emit far more feedback greenhouse gases than humankind's. To deal with future fossil fuel emissions (and from ag, forests and other land uses too), we must only scale the required restoration infrastructure by another 20 percent. This of course means that future emissions are little money relative to the 10,000 times scaling task ahead of us to prevent untenable natural feedback emissions.

Some good news? There are more than 200, 1 million ton per year facilities committed now because of the IRA's, IRS 45Q carbon capture incentive. If all of these facilities are built and function well, and the capture incentive continues, we only have to scale by 250 times. The cost at today's $180 a ton for IRS 45Q would then be $9 trillion per year for 20 years. Our global GDP was $100 trillion last year and as Dan mentioned, costs (and the incentive) will be much lower with scaling and process refinements (Like Global Thermostat's!)

Hot in Austin. Positive energy to Maui. Fingers crossed in California and Yellowknife. In Austin, we broke our all-time record of 10 consecutive 105 degree days this year; twice. It was 114 in my back yard Wednesday last and 110 downtown and all across Central Texas. We have had 60 days of 100+ this year and 44 days in a row above 100, wildly beating our last record of 27 days in a row. It is quite likely this unprecedented heat dome will extend at least through the end of the month as the 14-day forecasts show. There is a fearsome amount of death here: trees, perennials, birds and literally all forms of life. These extremes are simply way beyond the evolutionary boundaries of our normal climate from the 20th century where we had 10.5 days above 100 every year on average. The 2022, 5-year average number of 100+ days per year is 47. All the rivers flowing into our Highland Lakes have zero flow except the Llano with 2 CFS. We have not had a quarter of an inch of rain in 72 days.

Bonus! See the History of Carbon Dioxide Removal below. My favorite is that the first instance of air capture CO2 was with Guinness (beer!), that came from Carl Linde's Nobel Prize high pressure refrigeration process that saved the summer brewing industry in Bavaria in the 1870s and 80s. Then in 1892, Guinness asked Linde to develop a CO2 liquefication process to sell their excess CO2 from fermentation. Linde then used a double refrigeration process to create enough pressure to liquefy CO2... Beer might just be responsible for saving the world!

-MeltOn

Keith 2018... David Keith's paper evaluates the 1,000 ton per year Carbon Engineering DAC process in Squamish British Columbia, where he scaled the process using existing industrial components with known scaling factors to 1 million tons per year, and includes upstream and process emissions.

• The $94 to $232 per ton range reflects the low and high energy costs of the cheapest fracked gas at the time of $0.03 kWh to $0.06 kWh (verified through personal communication with Keith).
• Keith includes a 10% carbon penalty for the natural gas energy, in other words, his paper says it takes 10 percent more process to remove the carbon emitted from burning the natural gas to create the energy to run the process.
• Latest wind and solar costs, utility scale are now at $0.01 kWh (see links below).
• Keith includes 8% profit and a 7.5 to 12.5 percent capitol recovery factor.
• The process has a levelized efficiency of 90 percent considering upstream and fugitive emissions in the process and sequestration transportation and injection.
• 87 percent of total costs are energy related.
• At $0.01 kWh then, a 66 percent decrease from Keith's $0.03 kWh $94 per ton scenario, costs are $39 a ton.  Note: This is idealized as Keith's process requires some heat energy that canmnot be supplied by renewable reistance heat. Nevertheless, the renewable cost scenario is meaningful because likely the vast majority of DAC will be done by the fossil fuel industrial complex who has a direct production resource of natural gas energy at costs far below Keith's assumed $0.03 kWh.
• Process refinements reduce costs further.
• Scaling reduces costs further dependent upon the amount of scaling.

Keith et al., A Process for Capturing CO2 from the Atmosphere, Joule, August 15, 2018.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2542435118302253

Renewable 2021:
Morocco to England 10.5 Gw $0.013 kWh and $0.067 kWh wind
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2021/04/22/submarine-cable-to-connect-10-5-gw-wind-solar-complex-in-morocco-to-the-uk-grid/

Offshore Wind $0.0075 kWh
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2017/09/11/uk-cfd-auction-sees-renewables-set-record-low-strike-price/

Saudi Arabia 600 Mw Solar $0.0104 kWh
https://www.pv-magazine.com/2021/04/08/saudi-arabias-second-pv-tender-draws-world-record-low-bid-of-0104-kwh/

History of Carbon Dioxide Removal

Nobel Prize winner Carl Linde was the first to remove carbon dioxide from air. His technology was developed from his refrigeration discovery that itself was first used in the 1870s to help the brewing industry overcome limitations on summer season brewing and beer storage that was plagued by bacterial contamination. By 1890 Linde had sold 747 of his “ice machines.” In 1892 Guinness contracted with Linde to build a CO2 liquefaction plant to sell excess CO2 from fermentation. This set in motion the ultra-cold refrigeration technology that Linde later used in cryoseparation to distill the components of air into usable products that included, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide and argon. The cryoseparation technology first supercools air to a liquid, then evaporates the liquid in a tall column where the temperature rises upwards in the column, condensing individual components at different temperatures, much like water vapor condenses in clouds.
 

Image Caption: The WWII Gato-Balao Class submarines were the first US subs to use the potash process to remove CO2 from submarine air to keep our sailors safe from CO2 poisoning.

 

Early 20th Century Air Capture of CO2

In 1904 the recyclable lime-potash process was discovered to separate CO2 from air as a simple chemical reaction using extremely common potash and lime. In 1930 the first patent was issued for an ammonia-based process that used amines to remove CO2 from air. Notable applications were in submarines in World War II to keep our sailors safe form carbon dioxide poisoning. Also in World War II, the Habor-Bosch Process was developed to synthesize ammonia from hydrocarbons in Germany, mostly for explosives, as the Allies had cut off the German supplies of guano needed to generate the ammonia. This process became an extremely important process globally in synthesizing fertilizers. An important part of this process is removing CO2 to allow the formation of ammonia. This CO2 removal process advanced the state of amine technology for removal of CO2 from air. These three processes are mature today and represent some of the most important industrial processes known to humankind. Their components are widespread in industry making their implementation into a scaled atmospheric CO2 removal infrastructure a challenge of motivation and money, not technology.

NOTES:

Slide Summary:  Below are references to the three major, mature carbon dioxide removal technologies, their discoveries and invention and notable developments in these technologies: Cryoseparation, recyclable lime/potash, and amines.

Cryoseparation of air… Carl Linde was a Novel Prize Winner in 1913 for his refrigeration invention and advancements in science of distillation of the constituent components of air (cryoseparation). In 1897, Carl Linde gave up his professorship at the Technical University of Munich to found "Linde's Ice Machine Company." This company made possible one of the greatest developments of the human culture of all time – summer beer. Historically, summer beer was contaminated by different warm tolerant bacteria that fouled the beer. In Bavaria in Linde's early years, summer brewing of beer was strictly forbidden because of what would later be understood as bacterial contamination in warm weather. Linde's refrigerator made summer beer possible. Linde had sold 747 of his ice machines by 1890. In 1892 Guinness Brewing contracted with Linde to build a carbon dioxide liquefaction plant. In 1894 Linde began his famous work liquefying air and distilling it into its constituent components. 
In 1897 Linde was knighted as Ritter von Linde. In 1913 Linde was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his work in refrigeration and cryoseparation of air.

Potash/Potassium Carbonate… A US patent granted in 1904, described a process for absorbing CO2 in a hot solution of potassium carbonate and then stripping the solution by pressure reduction without additional heating (Behrens, 1904).

Potash/ Lye… Giammarco was the first to patent an activated potash solution in 1955, and there are now a number of such processes - Kohl and Riesenfeld mentions some - they are still widely applied.

Haber-Bosch process… This was an extremely important process developed just before WWI that allowed nitrogen production for use in explosives and fertilizers, with a key part of the process being the CO2 removal. It was a German invention because the Allies controlled all the guano deposits that were the nitrogen source. CO2 is a byproduct of the process and development of removal processes played an important role in advanced amine processes today.

 

WWII – Lime/Potash and Amines: Keeping our sailors safe from CO2 Poisoning… The history of CO2 removal in submarines begins in World War II… "Air monitoring was by colorimetric tubes, soda lime was used to remove carbon dioxide and oxygen candles provide a source of oxygen replenishment." With the advent of long submerse times with nuclear submarines , amines were used to scrub CO2 from submarine air.

Mazurek, Key developments in submarine air monitoring and purification, SAMAP Proceedings, October 2015.
https://www.sonistics.com/wp-content/uploads/SAMAP-15-Proceedings.pdf

Mention of soda ash and amines…
https://www.sonistics.com/wp-content/uploads/A-Brief-History-of-Submarine-Air-Quality.pdf

 

Amines… In 1930, Robert Bottoms was awarded a patent for removing CO2 from air with amines. The discovery of amines was first published in 1911 by Kazimierz Funk. Funk was inspired by Christiaan Eijkman work that showed eating brown rice reduced vulnerability to beri-beri, compared to those who at normal milled rice. (Beri-beri is a vitamin B deficiency that causes nerve and heart inflammation.) He was able to isolate the substance and because it contained an amine group he called it "vitamine". It was later to be known as vitamin B3 (niacin), though he thought that it would be thiamine (vitamin B1) and described it as "anti-beri-beri-factor". Amines have gone on to become one of the most important chemical groups in all of industry with processes that include: dyes, nylon, medicines, cooling systems, surfactants, cosmetics, agrochemicals, corrosion inhibitor, machining fluids, powder coatings, polyurethane, and epoxy coatings. Amines are a $32 billion industry in 2023.

(Thanks to Richard Darton, Emeritus Professor, University of Oxford, for information on the importance of potash in the early development of CO2 processes in industry.)

 

1903, Separation of CO2 from air -
Linde, Patent, Process of producing low temperatures, the liquefaction of gases, and the separation of the constituents of gaseous mixtures
https://patents.google.com/patent/US727650A/en

Carl von Linde,  Carl von Linde’s Breakthrough in the Refrigeration Process, SciHi blog, June 11, 2018
http://scihi.org/carl-von-linde/#:~:text=Von%20Linde%20discovered%20a%20refrigeration,1913%20Nobel%20Prize%20in%20Physics.
Linde Nobel Prize 1913 -
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/1913/ceremony-speech/
125 Years of Linde
https://www.linde-healthcare.nl/nl/images/chronicle_e%5B1%5D14_9855_tcm170-233340.pdf

 

1904, Potash/Lye -
Behrens 1904, Patent, Process for manufacturing carbonic acid…
https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/ff/69/f6/d02d8bc1768a99/US960788.pdf

 

1930, Amines -
Bottoms, Patent, Process for separating acidic gases (amines), 1930…
https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/21/dc/33/8f7f493bfaae75/US1783901.pdf

Bruce Melton PE
Director, Climate Change Now Initiative, 501c3
President, Melton Engineering Services Austin
8103 Kirkham Drive
Austin, Texas 78736
(512)799-7998
ClimateDiscovery.org
ClimateChangePhoto.org
MeltonEngineering.com
Face...@Bruce.Melton.395
Inst...@Bruce.C.Melton
The Band Climate Change
Twitter - BruceCMelton1

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/CarbonDioxideRemoval/B9A3C784-80BB-432C-BF68-4C66512FA892%40rodagroup.com.

[Dan Miller]

If Michaux was right, oil production would be rapidly declining now because of peak oil.

For every one ton of lithium we extract, we extract 50,000 tons of oil and 100,000 tons of coal.

As others have said, if we move from a fossil fuel to a renewable-based economy, we would reduce total mining by 500X.  It’s hard to comprehend the scale of fossil fuel mining.  Renewables are mined once, provide energy or energy storage for 20~30 years, then recycled.  Fossil fuels are mine it, use it once, start over.

Lithium is abundant, cooper is getting less so, but we will figure out how to find more or replace it. Same for the other components such as sand, iron, etc.

For example, it is often said that hydrogen electrolyzers can’t scale because there is literally not enough iridium in the world to build more than a small amount.  But companies like Ecolectro have figured out how to build electrolyzers without using rare metals.

What we can’t do is continue to emit CO2 and other GHGs into the atmosphere.  We are already passed that limit.

Dan

[Dan Miller]

See my responses below in blue.

Dan

On Aug 20, 2023, at 1:43 PM, Clive Elsworth <Cl...@EndorphinSoftware.co.uk> wrote:

Dan

 

Thanks for the ambient carbon link, which mentions using Cl2 which splits in the presence of light. It produces HCl (and CO2 and H2O), and each Cl atom removes one methane molecule. (BTW we’ve known David Miller several years.)

 

What we have been proposing for the atmosphere is using a photocatalytic cycle, in which each chlorine atom gets recycled many times to remove many methane molecules – we estimate around 1000 with our latest proposed aerosol formulation.

 

Solar PV and renewables

I wonder what the embedded CO2 is in this cheap solar PV? China appears quite happy to install ever more coal power for any of its manufacturing. - China is also installing far more renewable energy than the rest of the world.  Last year alone, they installed more wind energy than any other country has in total, except the US.  China is probably on a better path to renewables than the US, as the US per-capita use of fossil fuels in much higher than China’s. They (like everyone else) will eventually make all there renewable energy products using renewable energy.

 

RethinkX seems to think any location is suitable for renewables, which doesn’t seem credible to me for places that are not very windy or sunny. The cost of transmission then becomes a constraint. The mining of ever lower grade ores to satisfy renewables’ (and the associated grid’s) voracious appetite for resources per unit of energy generation capacity looks ecologically damaging to me, not to mention a health hazard to those who live nearby or work in the mines.  - Almost anywhere (except, perhaps, the poles) can run on 100% RE. Besides RethinkX, Mark Jacobson at Stanford has shown how RE can be used anywhere. There is lots of research on that (Mark recently published links to many papers on that).

 

Moltex Energy foresee a future complementing renewables by peaking during the troughs. They have no fear of their power stations becoming stranded assets. They also don’t see the (for now) declining cost of lithium batteries threatening their GridReserve heat storage. Other storage types maybe. But heat storage in nitrate salt tanks is cheap, and they’ll just replace those with whatever becomes cheaper. - there are lots of exciting developments underway in energy storage. I think lithium (and now sodium) batteries will keep coming down in price (90% reduction in the last decade) which will give others a run for their money.  Small things that can be made in very high volumes benefit from learning curves, as we are seeing now with batteries and solar PV.

 

But whether a mix of energy sources, or renewables wins out it’s good news if energy becomes cheap all around the world, because that ought eventually to enable the politicians to enact carbon pricing to phase out fossil fuels. That is the important point here. - Fee and Dividend carbon pricing is the second best way to get rid of fossil fuels. The best way is to phase them out over a short timeframe. When we found out that asbestos was kling people, we didn’t put a fee on it, we just banned it.  We can’t ban FF overnight, but we can over 10~20 years, depending on the application. Cars in 10 years, electricity in 15, everything else in 20.

<image001.jpg>

[Robert Chris]

Hi Dan

I'm definitely outside my comfort zone here.  I'm going to have invest a bit of time and intellectual energy in getting to grips with all this stuff.  My natural inclination is to resist suggestions that we have access to a bottomless pit of resources  My guess is that we will have to tailor our wants to match the available resources.  But that implies that we will have to forego some things because the resources will not be available in sufficient quantity or quality.

I really struggle to imagine a world in which there will be sufficient resources to enable all 8 billion and more to enjoy the same or better standard of living enjoyed by today's better off.  Unending material growth on a finite planet just doesn't compute for me.  I haven't yet considered plundering other planets' resources to keep our Earthbound dreams coming true.  But I also know that the devil is in the  detail.

I also wonder whether the full environmental and social costs of acquiring these future resources has been factored in or whether yet again, we're assuming that the cost of these raw materials is limited to the engineering cost of extracting them.

On a pedantic semantic note, am I alone in really being annoyed by the now very common practice of referring to reducing things by multiples of themselves?  If we reduce mining by 500X, wouldn't we end up with -499X as much mining as we now have, i.e. we'd be busy refilling all the pits?  What's so difficult about saying it'd be reduced to one five hundredth of its present amount or by 99.8%?  I put this in the same category as that awful expression about 'not disagreeing', which, when deconstructed, means absolutely nothing.  I know, this is my problem and somehow I need to deal with it! 😉

See comments in red below.  As a general observation, I'm very wary about the Promethean assumption that there's a technological fix for all our problems.

Regards

Robert

On 20/08/2023 22:36, Dan Miller wrote:

If Michaux was right, oil production would be rapidly declining now because of peak oil. Why couldn't it peak and stay ythere rather than declining?  There's a difference between the resource being exhausted and it being abandoned n favour of successor materials.

For every one ton of lithium we extract, we extract 50,000 tons of oil and 100,000 tons of coal.  So what?

As others have said, if we move from a fossil fuel to a renewable-based economy, we would reduce total mining by 500X.  It’s hard to comprehend the scale of fossil fuel mining.  Renewables are mined once, provide energy or energy storage for 20~30 years, then recycled.  Fossil fuels are mine it, use it once, start over.  I think the point that Michaux is making is that the physical infrasture required for renewable that provide the same amount of usable energy as fossil fuels currently do, requires more raw materials than will be available.  He also says that the amount of recycling is much l;ess than the rhetoric would have us believe.  I find your comment about about fossil fuels (if I'm correcting your typo correctly to the effect that you're saying that fossil fuels are single use resources) is misleading because what you should be comparing is the production infrastructure, the oil well, the coal mine, to the solar panel and wind turbine installations.

Lithium is abundant, cooper is getting less so, but we will figure out how to find more or replace it. Same for the other components such as sand, iron, etc.  Obviously if sufficient individual resources are no longer available we will have find more or replace them.  It is an article of faith that resource constraints will never hold back 'progress'.  It is probably wise not to approach these issues in a reductive manner.

For example, it is often said that hydrogen electrolyzers can’t scale because there is literally not enough iridium in the world to build more than a small amount.  But companies like Ecolectro have figured out how to build electrolyzers without using rare metals.  Great, but that doesn't mean that every shortage can be magicked away by innovation.  I'm not familiar with what Ecoelectro are doing but I'd need to be satisfied that they were factoring in all the costs, including the indirect environmental and social costs, of whatever their innovation enatils.

[Anderson, Paul]

I do  not find a link to a “20-point plan” that is being praised.   Please provide the link.

 

Paul

 

Doc / Dr TLUD / Paul S. Anderson, PhD

Email:  psan...@ilstu.edu       Skype:   paultlud     Mobile & WhatsApp: 309-531-4434

Website:    https://woodgas.com see Resources page for 2023 “Roadmap for Climate Intervention with Biochar” and 2020 white paper, 2) RoCC kilns, and 3) TLUD stove technology.                       

 

From: carbondiox...@googlegroups.com <carbondiox...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Dan Miller

Sent: Sunday, August 20, 2023 4:37 PM
To: Robert Chris <robert...@gmail.com>
Cc: Clive Elsworth <Cl...@EndorphinSoftware.co.uk>; Michael Hayes <electro...@gmail.com>; Peter Eisenberger <peter.ei...@gmail.com>; Chris Van Arsdale <cvana...@google.com>; Gregory Slater <ten...@gmail.com>; Carbon Dioxide Removal <CarbonDiox...@googlegroups.com>; via NOAC Meetings <noac-m...@googlegroups.com>; David S. Miller <da...@ambientcarbon.com>
Subject: Re: [CDR] 20 point plan

 

This message originated from outside of the Illinois State University email system. Learn why this is important

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Carbon Dioxide Removal" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to CarbonDioxideRem...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/CarbonDioxideRemoval/F571B570-DA9C-4CF0-9676-1DD3FE3D0993%40rodagroup.com.

[Dan Miller]

Here you go…

On Aug 20, 2023, at 7:58 PM, Admin <peterc...@shaw.ca> wrote:

This 20 point plan is for sure the best I have come across

The emergency is more than dire - getting worse fast 

Earth Energy Imbalance increased 50% past 10 years (WMO)  Rate of imbalance doubled.

All 3 GHGs are at record high and increasing at record rates 

July year-on-year atmospheric CO2 increases was a big record at 3.29 ppm. Record annual CO2 is 2016 big El Nino 3.03 ppm (NOAA Mauna Loa)

Atmospheric CO2 highest 4 million years NOAA  (if not 15 million)

CO2 increase rate unprecedented, 4–5 times faster than during ​the last 56 million years (IPCC AR6, WG1, 5-676)

Atmospheric methane explosive increase from 2020- by wetland methane feedback emissions

At present global methane emissions are highest ever. Mostly big wetland increase, and increasing.  Some permafrost and some methane from Kara Sea hydrate 

Methane Mauna Loa 1925 ppb (confirmed) Same Rapid increase rate today. Highest confirmed methane East Trout Lake (N. Canada) 1950 ppb

Euan Nesbit July 23 'Atmospheric Methane: Comparison Between Methane's Record in 2006–2022 and During Glacial Termination’ Terrifying. What we feared when AMEG started up

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2023GB007875

July record month warming 1.42°C GISS  (much higher by Berkeley Earth)

Land only 1.73°C

Hottest in 125,000 years

N. Hemisphere was 1.69°C

SST increasing at record rate, to this day. Marine heat waves 48% of ocean surface (NOAA). Phytoplankon mass crashes under marine heat waves

Land carbon sink efficiency declined 15% past 10 years Ocean sink by 5% (Global Carbon Project)

Ocean pH 8.06     Off Japan,  Japan Met, 31 Jan 2023. Acification rate fastest 300 million years

Ocean oxygen decline 2% since 1950s (IUCN Dec 2019)

So- Push this 20 point plan 

Best regards

Peter C

On Aug 20, 2023, at 1:51 PM, Sara Via <sv...@umd.edu> wrote:

Hi Clive and others,

I've been reading what you all have had to say over the past several weeks, and I have a few comments--

1.  I like the 20 point plan, since it recognizes we HAVE to stop burning fossil fuels (also wood) for power.  That's what got us into this fix in the first place, so while I recognize we are stalled on this essential job, that doesn't make it less than essential.  As some of you have said today in emails, we are stalled at reducing emissions because the fossil fuel companies appear to own most politicians (all the Republicans and some Democrats in the US) and they have assumed way too much power during the COPs.  Also many people (again, at least in US) don't want to change anything (diet, their gas cooktop, how much they drive), which slows things down.  We have not yet reached the social tipping point at which enough people DEMAND change of the politicians.  However, I do not think that is very far off.  Even with their problems, however, the UN IPCC should be in charge because they are TRYING to give all countries a say and to invoke our "better angels" (rather than allow us to marinate in our own self interest all the time).  I believe Oswald suggested an international panel like the IMF, with regulations, to replace the UN.  I think such a panel would be instantly bought by the fossil fuel companies and they have certainly done a great job at making sure they are subject to few regulations.  We need some democratizing force to remind us that we are all in this together.  In general, human societies in the Western capitalist tradition appear to run on self interest and the belief that the Earth's resources are there for us to use.  If we can't get over that, we will be among 99% of all species ever to have lived on Earth to go extinct.  The Earth doesn't need us.

2.  I have been reading a lot of the work from the Rocky Mountain Institute, particularly their "peaking" series, in which they analyze how the learning rate for wind and solar has dramatically sped up deployment by dropping the price (https://rmi.org/peaking-the-series/). Those papers have been a real education for me.   In fact, RMI is pretty convinced that globally, we have reached peak fossil fuels (though not in some countries like China and India).  They are not alone in this viewpoint, or in the opinion that the rapid fall in the price of wind and solar will soon cause fossil fuels to be more expensive than renewable energy.   They also have a hilarious table in one of the reports outlining how for every energy/tech transition, the incumbents ridiculed the inventors or proponents of the new. We hear that all the time now about renewables, electrification etc.  Incentives from the miraculous Inflation Reduction Act here in the States with its $367 billion for climate solutions is also really helping speed the deployment of wind, solar, batteries.

3.  Clive, I think your concern that we won't have enough minerals for the renewables we need is a bit overblown.  

a. Yes, there are problems with mining and communities are being hurt by this, particularly in countries like DRC that care nothing about child labor.  BUT, consider the environmental and human damage done by coal mining - both in the UK and the US (probably everywhere else too). Ditto, oil drilling, particularly offshore, and drilling/fracking to obtain methane.  The impacts of all those on health and the environmental destruction they've caused in the US are shocking.  Recycling used panels and wind turbine blades is coming along, and I don't see how Dr. Michaux can say recycling is thermodynamically impossible.  See below, but I wasn't able to find his argument about that in any written form.

b.  More on Michaux -- I don't think that a YouTube interview is the best way to transmit scientific information so I looked him up to find what he's written about it.  I was unable to find any peer-reviewed articles about this.  Apparently some of his mining conclusions are in a report to be released from a company/organization named SEB, but the link was broken.  Then I saw his technical report about the same thing and scanned the summary.  He appears not to have factored in the key information that we don't need to replace ALL the energy in fossil fuels, because so much of the energy is lost as heat in power plants (up to 60% lost) and internal combustion engines (70-80% lost).  When we have clean renewable electricity, there's no loss from burning or changing states (as in hydrogen, which is why EVs are 2.5x more efficient than fuel cell cars). Also, Michaux's data are from 2018, and it is a totally different world now wrt wind, solar, batteries and recycling. Call me an "arrogant academic ass" (it's been done before), but I don't put the same faith in technical reports etc that I do in peer-reviewed papers.  I'll trust Mark Jacobson (professor at Stanford and champion of wind,water and solar) for info about renewables WAY before I'll trust Michaux, with his outdated data and non-peer reviewed papers. You might want to check out Jacobson's book, No Miracles Needed, for a ton of details about renewables, or just look up his papers.

c.  Things are changing remarkably fast.  Every day I read about new ideas and inventions for new types of batteries, making green concrete and steel, floating solar panels in reservoirs or installing them over irrigation canals, better ways to farm under solar panels, or how to induce big box stores and warehouses to install solar panels on their gigantic roofs and use the power for themselves and/or sell it for community solar.  There is plenty of room for solar and wind without putting it all on farmland, which has been a big misconception. And on and on. Most of this has happened since 2018.

d.   "Virtual Power Plants" are already being used to save the grid during peak times, and they will dramatically reduce the need to build out a huge utility-scale system of storage batteries for use with renewables.  A VPP is a control system that can take power from EVs, solar panels on commercial & residential buildings and various storage batteries, and reduce demand during peaks by communicating with water heaters, building controls etc.  For this, people and companies get paid.  Sounds like the wave of the future to me, and I like seeing creative ideas surface to replace the old obvious stuff like expecting every utility to need banks of permanent energy storage.  Check out https://rmi.org/clean-energy-101-virtual-power-plants/, and https://www.brattle.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Real-Reliability-The-Value-of-Virtual-Power_5.3.2023.pdf.  This is huge. 

4.  Concerning Franz' idea about turning methane into hydrogen and soot -- that is NOT an emissions-free strategy, since lots of methane will leak out (or be flamed) during fracking or natural gas drilling, then there's also leakage during transport, storage and probably even during the process.  Finally, I suspect that people pursuing this strategy would use methane to power the pyrolysis, just like methane is used for the power required for "blue" hydrogen.

Sorry, I'm out of time for this, but I wanted to get a few of my ideas out there.

Thanks for inviting me to join the group, Clive.

Sara

<image001.jpg>

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "NOAC Meetings" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to noac-meeting...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/noac-meetings/0c9b01d9d38d%24d0a230c0%2471e69240%24%40EndorphinSoftware.co.uk.

--

Dr. Sara Via

Professor and Climate Extension Specialist

Dept. of Entomology &

University of Maryland Extension

UMD, College Park

sv...@umd.edu

www.climatecorner.org

Descriptions & videos of my 2020-22 Climate Action

webinars at www.climatecorner.org.

Sign up for my newsletter and visit my YouTube channel.

You CAN make a difference!

Interested in Natural Climate Solutions?  Read my report (2021):

"Increasing Soil Health and Sequestering Carbon in Agricultural Soils."  

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "NOAC Meetings" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to noac-meeting...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/noac-meetings/CAD6bw2aAGBcVcw-wheDi%3Dk6QP1W5FkbN9s2MxZ41m6uCe2DFoA%40mail.gmail.com.

[Dan Miller]

Thanks for liking the plan.  I first wrote it because I hadn’t come across a comprehensive policy plan, only plans to push one idea or another. But after I wrote it, I realized I wasn’t that smart and all these policies are fairly obvious, yet we aren’t doing them at all. So I pondered that for awhile and came up withe following “Barriers to Climate Action” which I think is a far more daunting list:

[Dan Miller]

I think you are misunderstanding what I am saying.  I am not suggesting we can live the same lives we did before and happily go on making more and more stuff.  I’m thinking more about a WW2 style of focusing a sizable amount of our resources to fight the enemy: climate change.  In WW2, people sacrificed to provide resources to the war effort. But I don’t think that CDR takes away from renewables, though it might take away from 1000s of other things we make that we don’t need. Some examples I gave are cruise ships, Marvel movies, and golf carts, but those are only examples.

My point is that if we choose to go all-in to fight climate change we can do things that won’t happen under the current approach of subsidizing renewables (but subsidizing fossil fuels much more!) and then crossing our fingers and hoping for the best.

It still will be difficult and we may face societal collapse before we get the infrastructure in place. We likely will need to start SRM soon to fight off an AMOC collapse (expected in 20~30 years!) that I describe as the mother of all near-term tipping points.

But my other point is that digging up fossil fuels is a more difficult task than making renewables.  All the easy oil has already been accessed yet we continue to spend more and more to find more, including tar sands which is really nasty and expensive to convert to oil. So we can find more cooper, lithium, etc. That will not stop us.

But we waited too long to take action so bad things are happening already and worse is on the way.  But if don’t act, things will get much worse than bad, with a collapse of society/civilization sooner than most people think is possible.

If you haven’t seen it, I suggest you watch Paul Gildings 2012 TED talk, The Earth is Full: https://www.ted.com/talks/paul_gilding_the_earth_is_full?language=en 

It’s our job to prove Paul wrong.  So far he is correct and we are ignoring his message.

I’ll also leave you with a quote from climate scientist Kevin Anderson.

Dan

[Oeste]

To my opinions at least two additions are necessary to the action plan

• Change your headline as like as: Reduce atmospheric greenhouse gases & cool the Earth. It is necessary to reduce also methane and other volatile organic carbons next to CO2. Therefore add also the atmospheric methane and CO2 depletion methods by photosensitive aerosols and the methods of cloud brightening by cloud condensation nuclei aerosols
  
• Expand your headline as like as: Phase-out fossile fuels (FF) for all processes which produce greenhouse gas as for instance combustion processes. Why to expand this headline? Because fossil fuels may transformed into green energy precursors like hydrogen without any greenhouse gas generation and probably with less energy consumption than by electrolysis. Because this part of fossile fuel use should not banned. Hence you need some FF infrastructure. Mention: If you ban also this use of FF also the side products of this green FF branch: soot and bitumen which are necessary for road pavement and tyre preduction must generated from concrete and natural rubber. Well-known is the need of much energy for cement calcination and the large need of agricultural land surface for rubber plant plantations.
  

Franz Oeste
gM-Ingenieurbüro

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/CarbonDioxideRemoval/B9A3C784-80BB-432C-BF68-4C66512FA892%40rodagroup.com.

[Jim Baird]

This is techno pessimism to the extreme.

 

Global warming is an excess of energy that Thermodynamic Geoengineering breaks up into manageable and beneficial tranches.

 

Per the attached, the primary materials required to implement this solution, Magnesium, Calcium and Lithium exist in the oceans in multiples of at least 50,000 compared to the reserves on the land. And the oceans contain a 700,000 year supply of Chromium which is required for the metal oxide catalysts  that can dynamically split water molecules and capture hydroxyl anions with existing electrolyzer designs and there is twice that available from the land.  

 

Talk about checking out the mouth of the gift horse?

 

It seems to me you’d rather shoot it?

 

From: carbondiox...@googlegroups.com On Behalf Of Dan Miller
Sent: August 20, 2023 7:40 PM
To: Robert Chris <robert...@gmail.com>
Cc: Clive Elsworth <Cl...@EndorphinSoftware.co.uk>; Michael Hayes <electro...@gmail.com>; Peter Eisenberger <peter.ei...@gmail.com>; Chris Van Arsdale <cvana...@google.com>; Gregory Slater <ten...@gmail.com>; Carbon Dioxide Removal <CarbonDiox...@googlegroups.com>; via NOAC Meetings <noac-m...@googlegroups.com>; David S. Miller <da...@ambientcarbon.com>
Subject: Re: [CDR] 20 point plan

 

I think you are misunderstanding what I am saying.  I am not suggesting we can live the same lives we did before and happily go on making more and more stuff.  I’m thinking more about a WW2 style of focusing a sizable amount of our resources to fight the enemy: climate change.  In WW2, people sacrificed to provide resources to the war effort. But I don’t think that CDR takes away from renewables, though it might take away from 1000s of other things we make that we don’t need. Some examples I gave are cruise ships, Marvel movies, and golf carts, but those are only examples.

 

My point is that if we choose to go all-in to fight climate change we can do things that won’t happen under the current approach of subsidizing renewables (but subsidizing fossil fuels much more!) and then crossing our fingers and hoping for the best.

 

It still will be difficult and we may face societal collapse before we get the infrastructure in place. We likely will need to start SRM soon to fight off an AMOC collapse (expected in 20~30 years!) that I describe as the mother of all near-term tipping points.

 

But my other point is that digging up fossil fuels is a more difficult task than making renewables.  All the easy oil has already been accessed yet we continue to spend more and more to find more, including tar sands which is really nasty and expensive to convert to oil. So we can find more cooper, lithium, etc. That will not stop us.

 

But we waited too long to take action so bad things are happening already and worse is on the way.  But if don’t act, things will get much worse than bad, with a collapse of society/civilization sooner than most people think is possible.

 

If you haven’t seen it, I suggest you watch Paul Gildings 2012 TED talk, The Earth is Full: https://www.ted.com/talks/paul_gilding_the_earth_is_full?language=en 

 

It’s our job to prove Paul wrong.  So far he is correct and we are ignoring his message.

 

I’ll also leave you with a quote from climate scientist Kevin Anderson.

 

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Carbon Dioxide Removal" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to CarbonDioxideRem...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/CarbonDioxideRemoval/780E63AA-932F-4E6C-A508-138E3E46C69D%40rodagroup.com.

[Roger Arnold]

> If Michaux was right, oil production would be rapidly declining now because of peak oil.

Michaux's thesis is quite a bit more nuanced than that, Dan. He's a very qualified mining engineer, and he's quite familiar with crustal abundances and resource pyramids. His arguments have more to do with EROI and the cost of mining infrastructure than with resource depletion. I'm not even sure it makes sense to discuss his work in terms of whether or not he's "right". His work is predicated on a set of assumptions, and he's pretty good about spelling out what those assumptions are. He relies on data and numerical analysis to project as best he can what is or isn't feasible, consistent with those assumptions. He arrives at the conclusion that a "business as usual" economy based on 100% renewable energy plus storage will not and cannot fly. 

One can certainly challenge the assumptions that underlie Michaux's conclusions. In fact, I picture Michaux standing before a class of prospective mining and materials engineering students at ANU and announcing "Here's your assignment class. I've shown that the common assumptions on which our governments have been basing their energy and climate policies are hopelessly at odds with the results they're supposed to achieve. Something will have to change. In two weeks, you will turn in papers detailing what changes to assumptions and goals you think will be needed to allow for a realist solution. Quantitative justification for changes must be given; no hand-waving allowed. Collaborative efforts are permitted and encouraged. Have fun."

[Michael Hayes]

Hello, Roger

How is this directly related to CDR?

Best Regards

On Mon, Aug 21, 2023, 11:30 PM Roger Arnold <silver...@gmail.com> wrote:

> If Michaux was right, oil production would be rapidly declining now because of peak oil.

Michaux's thesis is quite a bit more nuanced than that, Dan. He's a very qualified mining engineer, and he's quite familiar with crustal abundances and resource pyramids. His arguments have more to do with EROI and the cost of mining infrastructure than with resource depletion. I'm not even sure it makes sense to discuss his work in terms of whether or not he's "right". His work is predicated on a set of assumptions, and he's pretty good about spelling out what those assumptions are. He relies on data and numerical analysis to project as best he can what is or isn't feasible, consistent with those assumptions. He arrives at the conclusion that a "business as usual" economy based on 100% renewable energy plus storage will not and cannot fly. 

One can certainly challenge the assumptions that underlie Michaux's conclusions. In fact, I picture Michaux standing before a class of prospective mining and materials engineering students at ANU and announcing "Here's your assignment class. I've shown that the common assumptions on which our governments have been basing their energy and climate policies are hopelessly at odds with the results they're supposed to achieve. Something will have to change. In two weeks, you will turn in papers detailing what changes to assumptions and goals you think will be needed to allow for a realist solution. Quantitative justification for changes must be given; no hand-waving allowed. Collaborative efforts are permitted and encouraged. Have fun."

On Sunday, August 20, 2023 at 2:37:31 PM UTC-7 dan wrote:

If Michaux was right, oil production would be rapidly declining now because of peak oil.

For every one ton of lithium we extract, we extract 50,000 tons of oil and 100,000 tons of coal.

As others have said, if we move from a fossil fuel to a renewable-based economy, we would reduce total mining by 500X.  It’s hard to comprehend the scale of fossil fuel mining.  Renewables are mined once, provide energy or energy storage for 20~30 years, then recycled.  Fossil fuels are mine it, use it once, start over.

Lithium is abundant, cooper is getting less so, but we will figure out how to find more or replace it. Same for the other components such as sand, iron, etc.

For example, it is often said that hydrogen electrolyzers can’t scale because there is literally not enough iridium in the world to build more than a small amount.  But companies like Ecolectro have figured out how to build electrolyzers without using rare metals.

What we can’t do is continue to emit CO2 and other GHGs into the atmosphere.  We are already passed that limit.

Dan

On Aug 20, 2023, at 11:40 AM, Robert Chris <robert...@gmail.com> wrote:

Dan

Do you have a view on Michaux's argument that the low EROI of renewables is such that there aren't enough metals in the ground to build a renewable energy infrastructure to replace fossil fuel, at least not with existing technologies?  And that recycling is not thermodynamically viable at scale.

Regards

Robert

On 20/08/2023 16:13, Dan Miller wrote:

Nuclear is safe, but it is much more expensive than renewables and takes much longer to install.  By the time that Gen4/SMR are available, solar PV will cost $0.01/kWh and batteries will cost a fraction of what they do now (which is 10% of what they cost 10~15 years ago). See: https://www.rethinkx.com/energy 

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Carbon Dioxide Removal" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to CarbonDioxideRem...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/CarbonDioxideRemoval/f05341e8-ddbd-4e24-9589-4845729f010fn%40googlegroups.com.

[Roger Arnold]

The relationship is indirect, but it's definitely there. There's a strong thread of opposition to CDR -- much less SRM or anything that smacks of "geoengineering" -- within the climate activist community. It's the "emissions reduction is the One True Path" school of thought. Anything more than building more wind and solar and energy storage facilities is seen as an unnecessary diversion of resources. Michaux's work shows, rather conclusively in my opinion, that that view is untenable. 

[Dan Galpern]

Hi Peter,

Did you really mean, by your last full sentence, to cite the need for global cooperation on CDR as an ultimate reason to oppose limitations on fossil fuels? 

Such a position seems to me like moral-hazard on steroids, and right out of the big oil playbook, so I've been wondering. To get there it seems you may have equated energy production with fossil fuel production, and I'm sure you do not mean that. So, can you clarify? 

Thanks much,

Dan

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/CarbonDioxideRemoval/CANx_M7RE3gTP%2B_QFaq47Cks5UKJYFmSLtys4HBroyZ2%2B2iouYQ%40mail.gmail.com.

[Gregory Slater]

I'd like thank everyone who offered sources for this topic.  I am trying to create a document of my own based on them.

Thanks,

Greg Slater

[Peter Eisenberger]

Hi Dan 

No of course not. If it was feasible to stop using fossil fuel energy today I would be all for it.   

My point was 

1 One cannot ask or get the developing world to stop using fossil fuels or make their energy costs higher 

   while their people do not have their basic needs met

2  Even as shown in europe for the developed world stopping to use fossil fuels is not feasible 

3 That any industrial revolution has a long transition period - parts of the world are still using wood 

4 the energy industry is the only industry that has the experience and capability to make the transition in the time needed 

5 that acknowledging the above rather than arguing for stopping fossil fuel now and villainizing the energy industry 

is needed to reach a global accord and coordination needed to make the transition away from fossil fuels and a natural resource based 

economy to a Renewable Energy and Materials Economy happen as quickly as possible  

Hope that clarifies things 

Peter 

[Dan Miller]

Hi Peter:

I think it depends how serious we are at fighting climate change.  Right now we aren’t serious so having solutions that can pay for themselves is helpful.

But if we get serious, then it is like fighting WW2 and it won’t require solutions that pay for themselves (do nuclear weapons pay for themselves?).

I do think solutions that pay for themselves now are very useful because it helps develop the technology that we will need to scale quickly when we finally get serious.

And, of course, attempts to limit FF production have and will be met with resistance.  But fortunately, renewable energy is generally cheaper than FF now and will continue to drop in cost. So, again, if we get serious, we can do these things.

Of course, the fact that given what we know now and what we see now, and the world still isn't serious about climate action, doesn’t bode well for our future.

Dan

<image001.jpg>

[Jim Baird]

The winning driver for climate mitigation is lowest cost, which can Thermodynamic Geoengineering can provide.