Re: [CDR] Digest for CarbonDioxideRemoval@googlegroups.com - 12 updates in 8 topics
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Laura Wasserson
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On Thu, 24 Aug 2023 17:51:42 +0200, CarbonDiox...@googlegroups.com wrote:
- Bringing risk-adjusted returns to carbon - 1 Update
- [EXT] Re: [CDR] Carbon Engineering and 'the moral hazard' - 4 Updates
- Numbers on Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement inputs & effectiveness? - 1 Update
- What If Country Commitments for CO2 Removal Were Based on Responsibility for Historical Emissions? - 1 Update
- Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction treaty and Marine-Based Carbon Dioxide Removal - 1 Update
- Phytoplankton Response to Increased Nickel in the Context of Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement - 2 Updates
- Carbon dioxide reduction by photosynthesis undetectable even during phytoplankton blooms in two lakes - 1 Update
- Digest for CarbonDiox...@googlegroups.com - 1 update in 1 topic - 1 Update
Geoengineering News <geoengine...@gmail.com>: Aug 24 03:25PM +0500
https://illuminem.com/illuminemvoices/bringing-riskadjusted-returns-to-carbon
<https://illuminem.com/illuminemvoices/bringing-riskadjusted-returns-to-carbon?utm_content=261526027&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&hss_channel=tw-1296368577545736194>
*By Sebastien Cross*
*Aug 22 2023 *
Harry Markowitz, the Nobel prize winning economist, sadly passed away
recently having revolutionised investing. He introduced the idea of
risk-adjusted returns to financial theory, enabling investors to build
diversified portfolios. It remains best practice.
The Voluntary Carbon Market (VCM) is in a pre-Markowitz state akin to the
1930s or 1940s. It lacks a formalised concept of risk and remains stuck in
a basic commodity paradigm, i.e. that a credit must equal an exact tonne of
carbon dioxide equivalent. But as we’ve been arguing, carbon isn’t just
another commodity market.
Recent industry initiatives, namely the Voluntary Carbon Markets Initiative
and Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market, have brought an
improved framework for the demand and supply side of the market.
Both are essential building blocks for a market-based approach, but neither
tackles this key issue of how to make a credible claim that accounts for
the risk inherent in the carbon returns of a credit.
Unlike in financial markets, where historic returns can be observed, the
VCM faces the challenge of not being able to fully measure the carbon
achieved by a given credit. Factors such as additionality and baselines are
constructed using a ‘counterfactual’, or an alternative scenario that
cannot be observed. Consequently, while investors can see how their
investments perform versus their target over time, the carbon return on a
credit can only be estimated against the one tonne it aims to achieve.
This is problematic when users of carbon credits try to make accounting
style claims in a balance sheet format; matching an asset, the carbon
credits retired, to a liability, an emission. Indeed, the credibility of
claims is one of the leading causes of reputational concerns across the VCM
today. The introduction of ratings-linked discount rates, similar to
default rates used in bond markets, poses a solution.
It involves attaching an estimated return to a credit for each ratings
notch that can be used to construct an improved accounting outcome: i.e. X%
discount to the assumed one tonne subject to whether the credit is rated
AAA through to D.
This approach would not seek to re-accredit carbon projects by providing
just another point estimate, i.e. this credit is 0.8tCO₂e rather than
1tCO₂e. Instead, it would build on the accreditation process, which must
deliver a whole unit by design, by providing carbon credit users a way to
take a risk-adjusted approach to making claims.
At present, our carbon ratings imply a subjective level of risk based on
our holistic assessment of the drivers of carbon efficacy. While the same
is true of financial markets ratings, the risk of default can be derived
for different ratings buckets based on historical default performance data.
In order to minimise the risk of making claims backed by carbon credits,
users need to be able to build diversified portfolios. This brings us back
to Markowitz’s risk-adjusted return, and why it’s such an important part of
the puzzle for carbon markets. The risks of a credit not achieving a tonne
may not be precisely quantifiable, but they can be classified.
Examples of this include sector type. For instance, forestry projects
differentially face a spectrum of similar natural risks such as the
exposure of different types of forest to pests or diseases. Likewise
geography. Projects in the same country face similar political risks and
projects in close proximity are exposed to similar natural or
anthropological risks, such as wildfires.
In the same way that modern portfolio theory enables users to maximise
risk-adjusted returns by diversifying their risk, classifying the risk to a
credit’s carbon returns and what drives this risk would enable the creation
of a diversified portfolio of credits.
While this looks like a huge challenge, the upside is worth it. Providing
the market with discount rates and a risk classification system will
facilitate the construction of the diversified portfolios needed to make
robust claims. It will unlock the next stage of growth in the carbon market.
*This article is also published on BeZero Carbon
<https://bezerocarbon.com/insights/bringing-risk-adjusted-returns-to-carbon-what-the-vcm-can-learn-from-harry-markowitz/>.
illuminem Voices is a democratic space presenting the thoughts and opinions
of leading Sustainability & Energy writers, their opinions do not
necessarily represent those of illuminem.*
*Source: ILLUMINEM VOICES*
David Hawkins <dahaw...@gmail.com>: Aug 23 12:13PM -0400
This is the challenge we have to overcome whether OXY builds a DAC plant or
not.
Klaus is correct that the OXY CEO's comments amount to an admission that
continued use of fossil fuels without accompanying return of associated CO2
to the lithosphere is incompatible with climate protection. That moves the
argument to the question of how much CDR (and thus how much continued FF
production) is feasible and cost-effective. This is a better ground for us
to wage the fight. Only after most emission reduction and fuel replacement
actions have been implemented will it be more cost-effective to deploy
durable CDR broadly. And there are real physical limits to lower cost
geologic storage reservoirs and transport to them that mean only a fraction
of today's FF use can rely on durable CDR to compensate for emissions.
David
On Wed, Aug 23, 2023 at 10:53 AM Sarnoff, Joshua <JSAR...@depaul.edu>
wrote:
Michael Hayes <electro...@gmail.com>: Aug 23 01:37PM -0700
The UNFCCC is crafting a global C credit system, and that early effort is
already biased against engineered CDR methods in favor of natural CDR
methods.
Moves by the FF industry to buy up patents, regardless if they will/can
actually use them, can likely strengthen the UN C credit views further
against the overall engineering-based CDR field.
Control of the global C credit industry, by the FF industry, can likely
happen as capturing the global C credit market via patent control will be
worth far more than buying the patents even if no globally respected C
credit scheme emerges. Keith et al. surely understands the market control
that patents provide.
(Have the key patents ever been challenged in court?)
Beyond what the FF folks will do next, I'm wondering what the newly minted
millionaires at Climeworks will be dedicating their new wealth to. Will
Kieth spend his on cash pushing through acceptance of highly controversial
methods like SAI? I'll wager $10 that he does.
Jasper Sky <jasp...@gmail.com>: Aug 23 07:31PM -0700
Let's do some numbers, and see whether DAC is a credible offset solution to
an oil company's emissions. I'll posit that it would only be credible if it
offset the entirety of the company's life-cycle emissions associated with
producing barrels of crude oil. What would it cost to do that?
Unfortunately, the amounts of money and energy that would be required to
fully offset an oil & gas corporation’s total CO2 emissions using DAC are
so large that IMO it is implausible fossil fuels firms have any intention
of fully offsetting their emissions using this technology. It just doesn’t
work in business terms. This is easy to show through straightforward
calculations. One barrel of oil weighs ca. 136 kg and sells for ca. USD $80
at present. Estimates suggest
<https://mcas-proxyweb.mcas.ms/certificate-checker?login=false&originalUrl=http%3A%2F%2Foci.carnegieendowment.org.mcas.ms%2F%3FMcasTsid%3D15600%23total-emissions&McasCSRF=251a45eeb3b2cce709facf77918ce9c6abeaba17ec8409db2c8c5d4ed86fbc57> that
the total lifecycle emissions for a barrel of crude oil can range from
approximately 415 kilograms to over 700 kilograms of carbon dioxide
equivalent (CO2eq) per barrel. Let’s go with a lowball estimate (415 kg).
This would mean that one barrel of oil generates 0.415 tons CO2eq
emissions. IEA suggests that
<https://mcas-proxyweb.mcas.ms/certificate-checker?login=false&originalUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.iea.org.mcas.ms%2Freports%2Fdirect-air-capture-2022%2Fexecutive-summary%3FMcasTsid%3D15600&McasCSRF=251a45eeb3b2cce709facf77918ce9c6abeaba17ec8409db2c8c5d4ed86fbc57> although
DAC costs several hundred dollars per ton CO2 today, it could drop to $100
per ton in future. If oil companies were responsible for fully offsetting
the emissions generated by the product they market, then given the lowball
estimate of 0.415 tons CO2eq emissions per barrel of crude oil and an
optimistically low DAC price of $100 per ton of CO2, oil companies would
have to spend $41.50 per barrel to offset their emissions. This is similar
to today’s total production price per barrel at the average oil well (the
production price varies greatly depending on the site, as this chart of
breakeven prices
<https://mcas-proxyweb.mcas.ms/certificate-checker?login=false&originalUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.statista.com.mcas.ms%2Fstatistics%2F748207%2Fbreakeven-prices-for-us-oil-producers-by-oilfield%2F%3FMcasTsid%3D15600&McasCSRF=251a45eeb3b2cce709facf77918ce9c6abeaba17ec8409db2c8c5d4ed86fbc57> shows.)
In effect, DAC would double the production price per barrel to above $80
per barrel. Given an $80 per barrel sales price (approximately the world
crude oil price at time of writing), oil companies would be left with zero
or negative net revenues and no business model.
If however life-cycle CO2 emissions per barrel of crude oil were more
realistically assumed to be 500 kg or 700 kg (= 0.5 or 0.7 tons), then the
price per barrel to offset CO2 emissions using DAC would be $50 or $70
assuming a DAC price of $100 per ton. If we assume an average production
price per barrel of $45, the total cost of production (including DAC CO2
offset) would rise to $95 to $115. An average barrel of oil would have to
sell in that range of prices just to achieve break-even (zero profit).
Even at a DAC price of just $50 per ton (lower than anyone anticipates even
when DAC becomes a fully mature technology), the CO2 offset price per
barrel would be $25 or $35 respectively, and the total break-even cost of a
barrel (including DAC CO2 offset) would be $70 to $85 given an average
breakeven production cost of $45.
Given these numbers, with 81% of the average barrel of oil
<https://mcas-proxyweb.mcas.ms/certificate-checker?login=false&originalUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fpetroleumservicecompany.com.mcas.ms%2Fblog%2Fthe-actual-barrel-the-great-misunderstanding-of-oil-transportation%2F%3FMcasTsid%3D15600%23%3A~%3Atext%3D46%2525%2520of%2520the%2520total%2520barrel%2Cmay%2520fuel%2520your%2520vehicle%2520with.&McasCSRF=251a45eeb3b2cce709facf77918ce9c6abeaba17ec8409db2c8c5d4ed86fbc57> going
to transportation: gasoline (46%), diesel fuel (26%), and jet fuel (9%) in
USA, and EVs increasingly providing a ready alternative in road transport
applications, it’s hard to see how oil production burdened by fully
DAC-offset CO2 emissions can offer a viable business model for oil
companies, other than perhaps for non-transportation products such as
high-value specialty lubricants and petrochemicals, which constitute less
than 20% of the companies’ current volume of business (even these will
increasingly have to compete with bio-derived or synthetic hydrocarbons
made using renewable energy inputs).
The foregoing calculations are easy to do, and oil & gas company analysts
have surely done them. This suggests that if DAC is put forward by oil &
gas companies as a proposed solution that will allow them to maintain and
even expand operations, even as they continue to put out statements of
intent to ramp up their oil production volume over many years to come, they
are not being honest. In this light, Oxy’s acquisition of Carbon
Engineering can be seen as a PR move, rather than as a bona fide attempt to
solve the corporation’s climate impact problem.
Dan Miller <d...@rodagroup.com>: Aug 24 01:26AM -0400
To keep it simple, a $100/ton-CO2 DAC cost (or carbon tax) would add about $1 to the cost of a gallon of gasoline. This would not leave O&G companies with “no business model” but would make their products less competitive, which is the point of a carbon tax at least. The burning of fossil fuels cause about 8 million death per year and that does not include climate damage. So it’s a good thing to phase out fossil fuels even if you offset the CO2 emissions with CDR. Requiring FF companies to offset their products’ emissions with CDR slows climate change and helps speed the phase out of fossil fuels by making the price of FF products more closely match their costs to society (though their actual costs to society are still much higher). Even if we pass a policy to require FF companies to offset their emissions, we still need policies to phase out FF on a fast timeline. The bottom line is we need to phase out FF quickly and still do ~50 Gt-CO2/year of CDR to bring CO2 levels back down to a safe level. The last time CO2 was *todays* level, sea levels were about 75 feet higher than now.
Also, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to propose solutions that assume we will not take any serious climate action and that we will continue with business as usual with fossil fuels. If that is the case, then we will fail for sure and we will go above 2ºC and will cross several major tipping points and the existence of civil society itself will be threatened. Either we will take action to stop climate change or we won’t. But we should not assume things will be OK if we don’t take serious action but we do this one particular thing (there are a big choice of those things). We should not fool ourselves into thinking we are taking serious action now and we need to let policymakers know that we know that they haven’t done anything serious yet. Subsidizing renewables is a good thing, but it has not reduced FF use and will not in a timely manner.
Dan
On Aug 23, 2023, at 10:31 PM, Jasper Sky <jasp...@gmail.com> wrote:
Let's do some numbers, and see whether DAC is a credible offset solution to an oil company's emissions. I'll posit that it would only be credible if it offset the entirety of the company's life-cycle emissions associated with producing barrels of crude oil. What would it cost to do that?
Unfortunately, the amounts of money and energy that would be required to fully offset an oil & gas corporation’s total CO2 emissions using DAC are so large that IMO it is implausible fossil fuels firms have any intention of fully offsetting their emissions using this technology. It just doesn’t work in business terms. This is easy to show through straightforward calculations. One barrel of oil weighs ca. 136 kg and sells for ca. USD $80 at present. Estimates suggest <https://mcas-proxyweb.mcas.ms/certificate-checker?login=false&originalUrl=http%3A%2F%2Foci.carnegieendowment.org.mcas.ms%2F%3FMcasTsid%3D15600%23total-emissions&McasCSRF=251a45eeb3b2cce709facf77918ce9c6abeaba17ec8409db2c8c5d4ed86fbc57> that the total lifecycle emissions for a barrel of crude oil can range from approximately 415 kilograms to over 700 kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2eq) per barrel. Let’s go with a lowball estimate (415 kg). This would mean that one barrel of oil generates 0.415 tons CO2eq emissions. IEA suggests that <https://mcas-proxyweb.mcas.ms/certificate-checker?login=false&originalUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.iea.org.mcas.ms%2Freports%2Fdirect-air-capture-2022%2Fexecutive-summary%3FMcasTsid%3D15600&McasCSRF=251a45eeb3b2cce709facf77918ce9c6abeaba17ec8409db2c8c5d4ed86fbc57> although DAC costs several hundred dollars per ton CO2 today, it could drop to $100 per ton in future. If oil companies were responsible for fully offsetting the emissions generated by the product they market, then given the lowball estimate of 0.415 tons CO2eq emissions per barrel of crude oil and an optimistically low DAC price of $100 per ton of CO2, oil companies would have to spend $41.50 per barrel to offset their emissions. This is similar to today’s total production price per barrel at the average oil well (the production price varies greatly depending on the site, as this chart of breakeven prices <https://mcas-proxyweb.mcas.ms/certificate-checker?login=false&originalUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.statista.com.mcas.ms%2Fstatistics%2F748207%2Fbreakeven-prices-for-us-oil-producers-by-oilfield%2F%3FMcasTsid%3D15600&McasCSRF=251a45eeb3b2cce709facf77918ce9c6abeaba17ec8409db2c8c5d4ed86fbc57> shows.) In effect, DAC would double the production price per barrel to above $80 per barrel. Given an $80 per barrel sales price (approximately the world crude oil price at time of writing), oil companies would be left with zero or negative net revenues and no business model.
If however life-cycle CO2 emissions per barrel of crude oil were more realistically assumed to be 500 kg or 700 kg (= 0.5 or 0.7 tons), then the price per barrel to offset CO2 emissions using DAC would be $50 or $70 assuming a DAC price of $100 per ton. If we assume an average production price per barrel of $45, the total cost of production (including DAC CO2 offset) would rise to $95 to $115. An average barrel of oil would have to sell in that range of prices just to achieve break-even (zero profit).
Even at a DAC price of just $50 per ton (lower than anyone anticipates even when DAC becomes a fully mature technology), the CO2 offset price per barrel would be $25 or $35 respectively, and the total break-even cost of a barrel (including DAC CO2 offset) would be $70 to $85 given an average breakeven production cost of $45.
Given these numbers, with 81% of the average barrel of oil <https://mcas-proxyweb.mcas.ms/certificate-checker?login=false&originalUrl=https%3A%2F%2Fpetroleumservicecompany.com.mcas.ms%2Fblog%2Fthe-actual-barrel-the-great-misunderstanding-of-oil-transportation%2F%3FMcasTsid%3D15600%23%3A~%3Atext%3D46%2525%2520of%2520the%2520total%2520barrel%2Cmay%2520fuel%2520your%2520vehicle%2520with.&McasCSRF=251a45eeb3b2cce709facf77918ce9c6abeaba17ec8409db2c8c5d4ed86fbc57> going to transportation: gasoline (46%), diesel fuel (26%), and jet fuel (9%) in USA, and EVs increasingly providing a ready alternative in road transport applications, it’s hard to see how oil production burdened by fully DAC-offset CO2 emissions can offer a viable business model for oil companies, other than perhaps for non-transportation products such as high-value specialty lubricants and petrochemicals, which constitute less than 20% of the companies’ current volume of business (even these will increasingly have to compete with bio-derived or synthetic hydrocarbons made using renewable energy inputs).
The foregoing calculations are easy to do, and oil & gas company analysts have surely done them. This suggests that if DAC is put forward by oil & gas companies as a proposed solution that will allow them to maintain and even expand operations, even as they continue to put out statements of intent to ramp up their oil production volume over many years to come, they are not being honest. In this light, Oxy’s acquisition of Carbon Engineering can be seen as a PR move, rather than as a bona fide attempt to solve the corporation’s climate impact problem.
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Jasper Sky <jasp...@gmail.com>: Aug 23 08:27PM -0700
Dear all,
I'm an economist working on a survey of CDR methods for a multilateral
development bank. My brief is to figure out which, if any, CDR and CCS/CCUS
methods the bank should get interested in backing. I'm not a physical
chemist and I'm a noob to EW and OAE, so I need a little help (in plain
English rather than in impenetrable chem-anorak jargon) to get a sense of
these various methods' real-world plausibility. We need cheap and hugely
scalable carbon drawdown solutions. I'd be very grateful for numbers,
input, and links to the best not-too-jargony scientific review articles (or
better: well-written science-journalism pieces) that can help a noob
understand this stuff.
I'm particularly interested in *ocean-based CDR*. It seems to me that if
some form of ocean-based CDR can be made to work at reasonable efficiency
in terms of tons of material input and kWh per ton of energy input per ton
of CO2 sequestered, then that would be a silver bullet, because the ocean
is huge, innit?
One question I have is in relation to *OAE*. I'm imagining a nearly
unpopulated mountainous coastal region, e.g. in northwest Namibia or
Iceland, where the land is made of basalt or olivine or peridotite or
serpentine. If I want to achieve 1,000,000 tons of CO2 drawdown there in
some reasonably brief period of time, e.g. a year, what do I have to do?
- How many tons of e.g. basalt do I have to quarry and comminute (crush and
grind) to a fine powder to achieve 100 tons of CO2 drawdown via OAE?
- How finely should I comminute the basalt? What's the optimal grain size?
- The optimal size is presumably "as small as possible, without wasting
energy," and so it will be a function of the electrical energy input
required to operate the crushers and grinders to get any particular
particle size, on the one hand, and the CO2 sequestration effectiveness per
gram of material, on the other hand. Right? So, what's the optimal grain
size, and how many kWh per ton of basalt (or olivine, or whatever) should I
expect to expend on comminution operations?
- Once I have finely ground basalt powder -- what do I do with it? If I'm
at or near the coast, I'm envisioning loading the powder onto a u-shaped
conveyor belt and sending it onto a barge anchored no more than a couple of
hundred meters away. The barge then gets towed out to sea and... what? The
basalt powder simply gets dumped in one place, perhaps over a fast-moving
marine current?
- Why have I seen articles suggesting that ground olivine should be
distributed onto beaches (as distinct from out in the open ocean)? What's
the advantage of that? Also, here's an article saying it won't really work
in practice anyway
<https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1750583609000656>.
Comments?
- I've read (okay: skimmed) some stuff that in dense chem-anorak jargon,
nearly impenetrable to an economist, seemed to suggest that spreading
ultramafic rock dust in seawater may not work to sequester carbon after all
<https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fclim.2022.831587/full> (or
works only 1/5 as well as had bee hoped). Comments?
- It seems that pressing large amounts of CO2 down wells into basalt
formations also may not work as well as had been hoped (by the likes of
ClimeWorks), either, because the rock gets supersaturated
<https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0009254123000487#:~:text=Experiments%20examining%20dissolution%20of%20basalt,basalt%20alteration%20and%20carbonation%20processes.>...
Comments?
- If simply dumping ultramafic rock flour at sea won't actually work, is
there something else that I could do with that rock flour that *would* work
to sequester carbon? Like, draw seawater into a solar-powered seawater
desalination plant, mix the desalinated water into the rock dust in a big
tube with some parabolic mirrors aimed at it to heat it up, and *then* pump
it out to sea? Or something?
Not to put too fine a point on it, but I'm looking for a silver bullet.
There's no shortage of basalt out there. If processing, say, a couple
thousand billion tons of basalt into rock dust and then doing some simple
procedure on it could absorb a thousand billion tons of CO2, then I want to
know about it.
I recognize that a huge energy input will be required -- from vast solar
fields set on top of hundreds of coastal basalt province locations in
remote areas in places like Namibia, Iceland, Mauritania, or Australia,
perhaps. What I'm thinking is that once a plausible set of very commonly
available, cheap material inputs has been identified and a processing
method that sufficiently speeds the carbonate formation reaction has been
designed and tested to make the process fit-for-purpose as a carbon
sequestration method, then it's just a matter of scaling the thing. Then we
go find a couple of hundred sites where there are big coastal basalt
formations in remote, unpopulated regions, set up huge fields of very cheap
solar PV panels, all financed by low-interest concessional loans and a
carbon market mechanism, and away we go. Silver bullet.
Let me know - either based on empirical results, or first-principle theory
- what the design of that OAE or EW silver bullet looks like. Please
provide numbers -- I may be a mere economist, not a physical chemist, but I
did study applied maths and physics as an undergrad, so I'm numerate. I
really only believe stories that come with hard numbers, tbh.
Kind thanks, dear chem-anoraks!
Geoengineering News <geoengine...@gmail.com>: Aug 24 04:14AM +0500
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/16/11/4350
*Author*
Asbjørn Torvanger <https://sciprofiles.com/profile/2873376>
<please_login>
CICERO Center for International Climate Research, Gaustadalléen 21, 0349
Oslo, Norway
*Energies* 2023, *16*(11),4350; https://doi.org/10.3390/en16114350
Received: 30 March 2023 / Revised: 14 May 2023 / Accepted: 22 May 2023
/ Published:
26 May 2023
Abstract
This study explored the consequences of allocating commitments to remove CO2 to
countries according to their responsibility for human-made climate change
based on historical (cumulative) CO2 emissions from fossil fuel use and
industry. The ‘carbon debt’ to be restored through CO2 removal was
calculated as the remaining carbon budget for warming by 2 °C minus
emissions until 2100. The study included the remaining carbon budget from
the recent literature and scenarios for greenhouse gas emissions. This
experiment showed that industrialized countries would need to take on the
biggest share of CO2 removal if the calculation of historical emissions
starts with the industrial era. If accounting instead starts with the
global negotiations on climate policy in 1990, however, developing
countries would have to take on the largest commitment for CO2 removal.
Given this scheme and with the aim of settling the carbon debt over two
decades with equal annual efforts, the eight countries with the largest
shares of historical emissions would have to take on annual CO2 removal
efforts from 1 to 12 Gt CO2. These CO2 removal commitments would imply
substantial efforts for many countries but nevertheless depend on the
choice of a fairness principle and calculation method to render this
operational.
Keywords:
CO2 removal <https://www.mdpi.com/search?q=CO2+removal>; fairness
<https://www.mdpi.com/search?q=fairness>; historical emissions
<https://www.mdpi.com/search?q=historical+emissions>; carbon debt
<https://www.mdpi.com/search?q=carbon+debt>
*Source: MDPI*
Wil Burns <w...@feronia.org>: Aug 23 10:16PM
In conjunction with my colleague, Romany Webb from the Columbia University Sabin Center for Climate Law, I published a brief piece today on the Illuminem site that discusses the potential role of the new Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction treaty in regulating emerging marine-based carbon dioxide removal approaches. We contemplate subsequently publishing a much longer report on the topic. wil
https://illuminem.com/illuminemvoices/the-biodiversity-beyond-national-jurisdiction-treaty-and-its-implications-for-marinebased-carbon-dioxide-removal
[cid:image0...@01D9D5DD.3A7783A0] <http://twitter.com/>
WIL BURNS
Co-Director, Institute for Carbon Removal Law & Policy
American University
Visiting Professor, Environmental Policy & Culture Program, Northwestern University
Email: willia...@northwestern.edu<mailto:willia...@northwestern.edu>
Mobile: 312.550.3079
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Geoengineering News <geoengine...@gmail.com>: Aug 23 11:38PM +0500
https://bg.copernicus.org/preprints/bg-2023-130/
*Authors*
Xiaoke Xin <xx...@geomar.de>, Giulia Faucher, and Ulf Riebesell
How to cite. Xin, X., Faucher, G., and Riebesell, U.: Phytoplankton
Response to Increased Nickel in the Context of Ocean Alkalinity
Enhancement, Biogeosciences Discuss. [preprint],
https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-2023-130, in review, 2023.
*Received: 07 Aug 2023 – Discussion started: 21 Aug 2023*
Abstract. Ocean alkalinity enhancement (OAE) is considered one of the most
promising approaches to actively remove carbon dioxide (CO2) from the
atmosphere by accelerating the natural process of rock weathering. This
approach involves introducing alkaline substances sourced from natural
mineral deposits such as olivine, basalt, and carbonates or obtained from
industrial waste products such as steel slags, into seawater and dispersing
them over coastal areas. Some of these natural and industrial substances
contain trace metals, which would be released into the oceans along with
the alkalinity enhancement. The trace metals could serve as micronutrients
for marine organisms at low concentrations, but could potentially become
toxic at high concentrations, adversely affecting marine biota. To
comprehensively assess the feasibility of OAE, it is crucial to understand
how the phytoplankton, which forms the base of marine food webs, responds
to ocean alkalinization and associated trace metal perturbations. In this
study, we investigated the toxicity of nickel on three representative
phytoplankton species across a range of Ni concentrations (from 0 to 100
µmol L-1 with 12 µmol L-1 synthetic organic ligand). The results showed
that the growth of the tested species was impacted differently. The low
growth inhibition and high IC50 (concentration to inhibit growth rate by 50
%) revealed that both the coccolithophore *Emiliania huxleyi* and the
dinoflagellate *Amphidinium carterae* were mildly impacted by the increase
in Ni concentrations while the rapid response to exposure of Ni, high
growth rate inhibition, and low IC50 of *Thalassiosira weissflogii* indicate
low tolerance to Ni in this species. In conclusion, the variability in
phytoplankton sensitivity to Ni suggests that for OAE applications with
Ni-rich materials caution is required and critical toxic thresholds for Ni
must be avoided.
*Source: European Geosciences Union*
Michael Hayes <electro...@gmail.com>: Aug 23 03:02PM -0700
Thanks to these authors, it is now believable that smelter slag likely
should not be used for OAE. I would have never believed such nonsense would
ever be seriously considered before reading this paper, as slag is loaded
with a wide spectrum of toxins¹.
I'll speculate that a coastal smelter operation likely has connections to a
local mariculture operation which is having water pH problems and wants to
claim a C credit for using the slag as a CDR. If so, my hat is off to the
authors for their study, it is limited yet just how much work has to go
into cautioning against biological insanity.
1)
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0957582021000483#:~:text=on%20eco%2Dsystem.-,Chromium%20(Cr)%2C%20lead%20(Pb)%2C%20mercury%20(,(CH)%2C%202013)
.
On Wed, Aug 23, 2023, 11:39 AM Geoengineering News <
Michael Hayes <electro...@gmail.com>: Aug 23 02:02PM -0700
Bhaskar, et al.,
I have a lakebed with a deep layer of black ooze that is largely C that was
deposited by the microbial mix and C from small surface feeder streams.
Most boreal forest lakes will have a thick layer of black C rich lakebed
ooze. It's commonly called 'manure'.
[...] While the magnitude of carbon storage is not comparable to those in
peatland, vegetation and soil, lake organic carbon sinks from closed basins
are significant to long-term terrestrial carbon budget and contain
information of climate change and human impact from the whole basins. [...]
Li, Y., Zhang, X., Xu, L. *et al.* Changes of lake organic carbon sinks
from closed basins since the Last Glacial Maximum and quantitative
evaluation of human impacts. *Carbon Balance Manage* 16, 28 (2021).
https://doi.org/10.1186/s13021-021-00191-6
https://cbmjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13021-021-00191-6#:~:text=While%20the%20magnitude%20of%20carbon,impact%20from%20the%20whole%20basins
.
Laura Wasserson <la...@climitigation.org>: Aug 23 08:52AM -0700
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For non-urgent matters, I will attend to your email as soon as I return. I
apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and appreciate your
understanding.
Best,
Laura
On Wed, 23 Aug 2023 17:51:57 +0200, CarbonDiox...@googlegroups.com
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Laura Wasserson <la...@climitigation.org>: Aug 23 08:51AM -0700
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If your matter is urgent and requires immediate attention please contact
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For non-urgent matters, I will attend to your email as soon as I return. I
apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and appreciate your
understanding.
Best,
Laura
On Wed, 23 Aug 2023 17:51:14 +0200, CarbonDiox...@googlegroups.com
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[EXT] Re: [CDR] Carbon Engineering and 'the moral hazard'
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Anton Alferness <an...@paradigmclimate.com>: Aug 23 07:58AM -0700
Perhaps.
Or maybe I'm delusional about my belief that people can and do change.
Back to top <http://#digest_top>
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Laura Wasserson <la...@climitigation.org>: Aug 23 07:54AM -0700
Thank you for reaching out. I am out of the office until August 28, with
limited access to email.
If your matter is urgent and requires immediate attention please contact
fl...@climitigation.org or er...@climitigation.org.
For non-urgent matters, I will attend to your email as soon as I return. I
apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and appreciate your
understanding.
Best,
Laura
On Wed, 23 Aug 2023 16:53:49 +0200, CarbonDiox...@googlegroups.com
wrote:
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- Carbon Engineering and 'the moral hazard' <http://#group_thread_0> - 13
Updates
- Improved net carbon budgets in the US Midwest through direct measured
impacts of enhanced weathering <http://#group_thread_1> - 2 Updates
- Carbon dioxide reduction by photosynthesis undetectable even during
phytoplankton blooms in two lakes <http://#group_thread_2> - 1 Update
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implications for ocean afforestation <http://#group_thread_3> - 2 Updates
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Carbon Engineering and 'the moral hazard'
<
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Gregory Slater <ten...@gmail.com>: Aug 22 01:21PM -0700
All,
Maybe I am just bad at searching the site, but I haven't found much
discussion of the recently announced sale of David Keith's 'Carbon
Engineering' to Occidental Petroleum for ~$1.1 billion. This announcement
came only days after Biden announced hi intent to ask for ~$1.2 billion in
aid for two CDR demo plants in Texas and Louisiana. I suppose I should be
just grateful as hell that you can sell a pocket CDR test facility for a
billion dollars, but I don't trust Occidental's motives in doing this. If
selling a CDR company to big oil at this stage doesn't involve the specter
of 'moral hazard', then there's no such thing as a moral hazard (which is
constantly laid on SAI). Occidental is incentivized to put as much CO2 in
the atmosphere as possible so they can make even more money pulling it all
out. Gore even had a shocking quote from the Occidental CEO in his recent
TED talk (who knows if it was a deepfake).
Did I miss the lively debate over this sale? Send me a link please.
Thank you,
Greg Slater
Seth Miller <setha...@gmail.com>: Aug 22 03:33PM -0600
Greg, you didn’t miss anything.
I think the lessons here are that:
Oxy is 100% serious about going bit into DAC, using government funded
carbon credits in order to extend their existing oil business
This makes everyone in the CDR community so uncomfortable that they aren’t
celebrating this out loud
Peter Eisenberger wrestled with the uncomfortable part in another thread,
which everyone should totally read, but I’ll quote below with formatting
cleaned up slightly:
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
Even as shown in europe for the developed world stopping to use fossil
fuels is not feasible
That any industrial revolution has a long transition period - parts of the
world are still using wood
The energy industry is the only industry that has the experience and
capability to make the transition in the time needed
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
Oxy’s decision to pay $1.1 billion for a company with no revenue, and whose
technology is still several years away from generating revenue, is bold. It
would be unthinkably risky if it did not also offer some hope of extending
Oxy's existing oil business. Oxy generates about $20B in profits each year,
so even if there is a small chance this purchase of forestalling regulation
or obsolescence, they should make the bet.
If nothing else, Oxy seems to be able to think rationally. Oxy has said
they are planning to build 100 metago/yr-ish scale DAC facilities globally
by 2035. I think the smart money right now is that they intend to follow
through. This is obviously contingent on global markets for carbon credits,
and Oxy can decide to reverse its investments later. But also, their
ambitions are entirely achievable. See Peter’s (4) above in particular.
Is 100 megaton-scale DAC plants bad? I think that yes, the US’s climate
credit policy gives some payout to people who don’t give a damn about
climate. I also can’t think of an incentive plan that doesn’t have some
perverse side effects, and yet we still incentivize and invest. It is very
early in 2023 to be saying that we know that this particular set of
incentives are bad, or good. Climate is a long game. It seems wrong to
judge an investment by its outcome today.
Oxy, being the cold-blooded, rational capitalists they are, is making a bet
that might not pay out, but will pay off well if it does. Maybe that last
bit is the lesson here. Yes, there is risk to the climate movement that the
bet in DAC will go totally sideways. But we are in a crisis. Our future
livelihood is threatened. In that context, isn’t it worth taking risk?
I think ambivalence and caution are justified, but it’s worthwhile to put
out an audible “yay!” here.
Seth
-------
Seth Miller, Ph.D.
www.linkedin.com/in/sethmiller2
Check my blog at: perspicacity.xyz
Peter Flynn <pcf...@ualberta.ca>: Aug 22 03:51PM -0600
The statement “this makes everyone in the CDR community so uncomfortable
that they aren’t celebrating…” is an overstatement.
Fossil fuels have conveyed staggering benefits to humanity, with late
recognition of a serious and terrible consequence not due to the use of
energy but rather to the end byproduct of that energy. If the byproduct
were to be fully dealt with, then at least one member of the CDR community,
me, is comfortable with ongoing use. I can envision a future in which
legacy emissions are captured and paid for by DAC primarily funded by those
societies that historically created the emissions, and in which ongoing
emissions are captured and paid for by DAC paid for by the user of the
fuel. If a fossil fuel is economic in the future with full offset….ok by
me. There is much suspicion of all energy producers, warranted in my
opinion way more for some than others. We are moving to sufficiently
accurate measurement and verification to know whether incremental emissions
are truly offset. I think our future is better assured if we focus on
results and not villains.
Peter
Peter Flynn, P. Eng., Ph. D.
Emeritus Professor and Poole Chair in Management for Engineers
Department of Mechanical Engineering
University of Alberta
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
1 928 451 4455
peter...@ualberta.ca
*From:* carbondiox...@googlegroups.com <
carbondiox...@googlegroups.com> *On Behalf Of *Seth Miller
*Sent:* Tuesday, August 22, 2023 3:33 PM
*To:* Gregory Slater <ten...@gmail.com>
*Cc:* Carbon Dioxide Removal <CarbonDiox...@googlegroups.com>
*Subject:* Re: [CDR] Carbon Engineering and 'the moral hazard'
Greg, you didn’t miss anything.
I think the lessons here are that:
1. Oxy is 100% serious about going bit into DAC, using government funded
carbon credits in order to extend their existing oil business
2. This makes everyone in the CDR community so uncomfortable that they
aren’t celebrating this out loud
Peter Eisenberger wrestled with the uncomfortable part in another thread,
which everyone should totally read, but I’ll quote below with formatting
cleaned up slightly:
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. 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
Oxy’s decision to pay $1.1 billion for a company with no revenue, and whose
technology is still several years away from generating revenue, is bold. It
would be unthinkably risky if it did not also offer some hope of extending
Oxy's existing oil business. Oxy generates about $20B in profits each year,
so even if there is a small chance this purchase of forestalling regulation
or obsolescence, they should make the bet.
If nothing else, Oxy seems to be able to think rationally. Oxy has said
they are planning to build 100 metago/yr-ish scale DAC facilities globally
by 2035. I think the smart money right now is that they intend to follow
through. This is obviously contingent on global markets for carbon credits,
and Oxy can decide to reverse its investments later. But also, their
ambitions are entirely achievable. See Peter’s (4) above in particular.
Is 100 megaton-scale DAC plants bad? I think that yes, the US’s climate
credit policy gives some payout to people who don’t give a damn about
climate. I also can’t think of an incentive plan that doesn’t have some
perverse side effects, and yet we still incentivize and invest. It is very
early in 2023 to be saying that we know that this particular set of
incentives are bad, or good. Climate is a long game. It seems wrong to
judge an investment by its outcome today.
Oxy, being the cold-blooded, rational capitalists they are, is making a bet
that might not pay out, but will pay off well if it does. Maybe that last
bit is the lesson here. Yes, there is risk to the climate movement that the
bet in DAC will go totally sideways. But we are in a crisis. Our future
livelihood is threatened. In that context, isn’t it worth taking risk?
I think ambivalence and caution are justified, but it’s worthwhile to put
out an audible “yay!” here.
Seth
-------
Seth Miller, Ph.D.
www.linkedin.com/in/sethmiller2
Check my blog at: perspicacity.xyz
On Aug 22, 2023, at 2:21 PM, Gregory Slater <ten...@gmail.com> wrote:
All,
Maybe I am just bad at searching the site, but I haven't found much
discussion of the recently announced sale of David Keith's 'Carbon
Engineering' to Occidental Petroleum for ~$1.1 billion. This announcement
came only days after Biden announced hi intent to ask for ~$1.2 billion in
aid for two CDR demo plants in Texas and Louisiana. I suppose I should be
just grateful as hell that you can sell a pocket CDR test facility for a
billion dollars, but I don't trust Occidental's motives in doing this. If
selling a CDR company to big oil at this stage doesn't involve the specter
of 'moral hazard', then there's no such thing as a moral hazard (which is
constantly laid on SAI). Occidental is incentivized to put as much CO2 in
the atmosphere as possible so they can make even more money pulling it all
out. Gore even had a shocking quote from the Occidental CEO in his recent
TED talk (who knows if it was a deepfake).
Did I miss the lively debate over this sale? Send me a link please.
Thank you,
Greg Slater
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