Energy Planning and Decarbonization Technology | The Energy Collective
Andrew Lockley
Poster's note : none of this explains why there's any need for integration. Chucking olivine in the sea seems easier and cheaper than all.
3 Ways Carbon Removal can Help Unlock the Promise of an All-of-the-Above Energy Strategy
January 24, 2015
“We can’t have an energy strategy for the last century that traps us in the past. We need an energy strategy for the future – an all-of-the-above strategy for the 21st century that develops every source of American-made energy.”– President Barack Obama, March 15, 2012
An all-of-the-above energy strategy holds great potential to make our energy system more secure, inexpensive, and environmentally-friendly. Today’s approach to all-of-the-above, however, is missing a key piece: carbon dioxide removal (“CDR”). Here’s three reasons why CDR is critical for the success of an all-of-the-above energy strategy:
1. CDR helps unite renewable energy and fossil fuel proponents to advance carbon capture and storage (“CCS”) projects. Many renewable energy advocates view CCS as an expensive excuse to enable business-as-usual fossil fuel emissions. But biomass energy with CCS (bio-CCS) projects are essentially “renewable CCS” (previously viewed as an oxymoron), and could be critical for drawing down atmospheric carbon levels in the future. As a result, fossil CCS projects could provide a pathway to “renewable CCS” projects in the future. Because of the similarities in the carbon capture technology for fossil and bioenergy power plants, installing capture technology on fossil power plants today could help reduce technology and regulatory risk for bio-CCS projects in the future. What’s more, bio-CCS projects can share the infrastructure for transporting and storing CO2 with fossil CCS installations. Creating such a pathway to bio-CCS should be feasible through regulations that increase carbon prices and/or biomass co-firing mandates slowly over time, and could help unite renewable energy and CCS proponents to develop policies that enable the development of cost-effective CCS technology.
2. CDR bolsters the environmental case for nuclear power by enabling it to be carbon “negative”: Many environmental advocates say that low-carbon benefits of nuclear power are outweighed by the other environmental and safety concerns of nuclear projects. The development of advanced nuclear projects paired with direct air capture (“DAC”) devices, however, could tip the scales in nuclear’s favor. DAC systems that utilize the heat produced from nuclear power plants can benefit from this “free” source of energy to potentially sequester CO2 directly from the atmosphere cost-effectively. The ability for nuclear + DAC to provide competitively-priced, carbon-negative energy could help convince nuclear power’s skeptics to support further investigation into developing safe and environmentally-friendly advanced nuclear systems.
3. CDR helps enable a cost-effective transition to a decarbonized economy: Today, environmental advocates claim that prolonged use of fossil fuels is mutually exclusive with preventing climate change, and fossil fuel advocates bash renewables as not ready for “prime time” — i.e. unable to deliver the economic/development benefits of inexpensive fossil energy. To resolve this logjam, indirect methods of decarbonization — such as a portfolio of low-cost CDR solutions — could enable fossil companies both to meet steep emission reduction targets and provide low-cost fossil energy until direct decarbonization through renewable energy systems become more cost-competitive (especially in difficult to decarbonize areas such as long-haul trucking and aviation).
Of course, discussion about the potential for CDR to enable an all-of-the-above energy strategy is moot unless we invest in developing a portfolio of CDR approaches. But if we do make this investment in CDR, an all-of-the-above energy strategy that delivers a diversified, low-cost, and low-carbon energy system stands a greater chance of becoming a reality.
Noah Deich
Noah Deich is a professional in the carbon removal field with six years of clean energy and sustainability consulting experience. Noah currently works part-time as a consultant for the Virgin Earth Challenge, is pursuing his MBA from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, and writes a blog dedicated to carbon removal (carbonremoval.wordpress.com)
Stephen Salter
Paragraph 2 mentions 'carbon negative' nuclear energy. The carbon emissions from a complete, working nuclear power station are mainly people driving to work. But digging, crushing and processing uranium ore needs energy and releases carbon in inverse proportion to the ore grade. There were some amazingly high grade ores, some once even at the critical point for reaction, but these have been used. Analysis by van Leeuwen concludes that the carbon advantage of present nuclear technology over gas is about three but that the break-even point comes when the ore grade drops to around 100 ppm. This could happen within the life of plant planned now.
As we do not know how to do waste disposal we cannot estimate its carbon emissions. But just because we cannot calculate them does not mean that they are zero.
Stephen
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Mike MacCracken
Thus, to really stop the warming, CDR in its many forms has to be at least as large as 90% of CO2 emissions (from fossil fuels and biospheric losses). That is a lot of carbon to be taking out of the system by putting olivine into the ocean, biochar, etc. at current global emissions levels (that are still growing). The greater the mitigation (reduction in fossil fuel emissions), the more effective CDR can be—what would really be nice is CDR replacing the fossil fuel industry so ultimately it is as large. I’d suggest this is why it is really important to always be mentioning the importance of all the other ways, in addition to CDR, to be cutting emissions—that is really critical.
Mike
On 1/24/15, 10:19 AM, "Stephen Salter" <S.Sa...@ed.ac.uk> wrote:
Hi All
Paragraph 2 mentions 'carbon negative' nuclear energy. The carbon emissions from a complete, working nuclear power station are mainly people driving to work. But digging, crushing and processing uranium ore needs energy and releases carbon in inverse proportion to the ore grade. There were some amazingly high grade ores, some once even at the critical point for reaction, but these have been used. Analysis by van Leeuwen concludes that the carbon advantage of present nuclear technology over gas is about three but that the break-even point comes when the ore grade drops to around 100 ppm. This could happen within the life of plant planned now.
As we do not know how to do waste disposal we cannot estimate its carbon emissions. But just because we cannot calculate them does not mean that they are zero.
Stephen
Emeritus Professor of Engineering Design. School of Engineering. University of Edinburgh. Mayfield Road. Edinburgh EH9 3JL. Scotland S.Sa...@ed.ac.uk Tel +44 (0)131 650 5704 Cell 07795 203 195 WWW.see.ed.ac.uk/~shs <http://WWW.see.ed.ac.uk/~shs> YouTube Jamie Taylor Power for Change
On 24/01/2015 14:56, Andrew Lockley wrote:
Poster's note : none of this explains why there's any need for integration. Chucking olivine in the sea seems easier and cheaper than all.
http://theenergycollective.com/noahdeich/2183871/3-ways-carbon-removal-can-help-unlock-promise-all-above-energy-strategy
3 Ways Carbon Removal can Help Unlock the Promise of an All-of-the-Above Energy Strategy
January 24, 2015
“We can’t have an energy strategy for the last century that traps us in the past. We need an energy strategy for the future – an all-of-the-above strategy for the 21st century that develops every source of American-made energy.”– President Barack Obama, March 15, 2012
An all-of-the-above energy strategy holds great potential to make our energy system more secure, inexpensive, and environmentally-friendly. Today’s approach to all-of-the-above, however, is missing a key piece: carbon dioxide removal (“CDR”). Here’s three reasons why CDR is critical for the success of an all-of-the-above energy strategy:
1. CDR helps unite renewable energy and fossil fuel proponents to advance carbon capture and storage (“CCS”) projects. Many renewable energy advocates view CCS as an expensive excuse to enable business-as-usual fossil fuel emissions. But biomass energy with CCS (bio-CCS) projects are essentially “renewable CCS” (previously viewed as an oxymoron), and could be critical for drawing down atmospheric carbon levels in the future. As a result, fossil CCS projects could provide a pathway to “renewable CCS” projects in the future. Because of the similarities in the carbon capture technology for fossil and bioenergy power plants, installing capture technology on fossil power plants today could help reduce technology and regulatory risk for bio-CCS projects in the future. What’s more, bio-CCS projects can share the infrastructure for transporting and storing CO2 with fossil CCS installations. Creating such a pathway to bio-CCS should be feasible through regulations that increase carbon prices and/or biomass co-firing mandates slowly over time, and could help unite renewable energy and CCS proponents to develop policies that enable the development of cost-effective CCS technology.
2. CDR bolsters the environmental case for nuclear power by enabling it to be carbon “negative”: Many environmental advocates say that low-carbon benefits of nuclear power are outweighed by the other environmental and safety concerns of nuclear projects. The development of advanced nuclear projects paired with direct air capture (“DAC”) devices, however, could tip the scales in nuclear’s favor. DAC systems that utilize the heat produced from nuclear power plants can benefit from this “free” source of energy to potentially sequester CO2 directly from the atmosphere cost-effectively. The ability for nuclear + DAC to provide competitively-priced, carbon-negative energy could help convince nuclear power’s skeptics to support further investigation into developing safe and environmentally-friendly advanced nuclear systems.
3. CDR helps enable a cost-effective transition to a decarbonized economy: Today, environmental advocates claim that prolonged use of fossil fuels is mutually exclusive with preventing climate change, and fossil fuel advocates bash renewables as not ready for “prime time” — i.e. unable to deliver the economic/development benefits of inexpensive fossil energy. To resolve this logjam, indirect methods of decarbonization — such as a portfolio of low-cost CDR solutions — could enable fossil companies both to meet steep emission reduction targets and provide low-cost fossil energy until direct decarbonization through renewable energy systems become more cost-competitive (especially in difficult to decarbonize areas such as long-haul trucking and aviation).
Of course, discussion about the potential for CDR to enable an all-of-the-above energy strategy is moot unless we invest in developing a portfolio of CDR approaches. But if we do make this investment in CDR, an all-of-the-above energy strategy that delivers a diversified, low-cost, and low-carbon energy system stands a greater chance of becoming a reality.
Noah Deich
Noah Deich is a professional in the carbon removal field with six years of clean energy and sustainability consulting experience. Noah currently works part-time as a consultant for the Virgin Earth Challenge, is pursuing his MBA from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, and writes a blog dedicated to carbon removal (carbonremoval.wordpress.com <http://carbonremoval.wordpress.com> )
Greg Rau
From: Mike MacCracken <mmac...@comcast.net>
To: Geoengineering <Geoengi...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, January 24, 2015 9:06 AM
Subject: Re: [geo] Energy Planning and Decarbonization Technology | The Energy Collective
Ken Caldeira
Andrew Lockley
Someone needs to do a proper infrastructure study of olivine to more comprehensively rebut the "contraptionist" arguments of some in the CDR community.
Where are the mines?
How many railcars?
At what scale are the crushing machines?
Will we distribute to beaches with lorries, or shallow seas with ships (and let longshore drift do the work)?
What environmental monitoring spend is needed?
Can this be used for a coastal defence win win?
Etc.
A
Of course I support Andrew in this view, although chucking it into the sea is maybe a too simplistic view. My preference is to spread (coarse-grained, so little crushing energy spent) olivine on beaches, where the surf will crush them by grain collisions and by scraping them against each other. In a short while (in our experiments it took 10 days to see already a large effect, the water became opaque milky white from all the micron-sized slivers that were knocked off). A mixture of coarser and finer grit is more effective than a single grain size, as in society, the big ones crush the smaller ones. The surf is the biggest ballmill on earth, and it is free of charge! An extension of this method is to discharge them in shallow seas with strong bottom currents. There are many sea bottoms covered with pebbles, and there the same effects of crushing can be seen. To avoid misunderstanding, the sea will not become opaque white, slivers that form are washed away by the next wave. Within those ten day experiments, we observed that many slivers had already been transformed to brucite, (Mg(OH)2, known to carbonate very fast, and the pH of the water had already been raised considerably. And yes, of course, it will take a lot of olivine, which is fortunately the most abundant mineral on earth, Olaf Schuiling
--
Schuiling, R.D. (Olaf)
Of course I support Andrew in this view, although chucking it into the sea is maybe a too simplistic view. My preference is to spread (coarse-grained, so little crushing energy spent) olivine on beaches, where the surf will crush them by grain collisions and by scraping them against each other. In a short while (in our experiments it took 10 days to see already a large effect, the water became opaque milky white from all the micron-sized slivers that were knocked off). A mixture of coarser and finer grit is more effective than a single grain size, as in society, the big ones crush the smaller ones. The surf is the biggest ballmill on earth, and it is free of charge! An extension of this method is to discharge them in shallow seas with strong bottom currents. There are many sea bottoms covered with pebbles, and there the same effects of crushing can be seen. To avoid misunderstanding, the sea will not become opaque white, slivers that form are washed away by the next wave. Within those ten day experiments, we observed that many slivers had already been transformed to brucite, (Mg(OH)2, known to carbonate very fast, and the pH of the water had already been raised considerably. And yes, of course, it will take a lot of olivine, which is fortunately the most abundant mineral on earth, Olaf Schuiling
From: geoengi...@googlegroups.com [mailto:geoengi...@googlegroups.com]
On Behalf Of Andrew Lockley
Sent: zaterdag 24 januari 2015 15:56
To: geoengineering
Subject: [geo] Energy Planning and Decarbonization Technology | The Energy Collective
Poster's note : none of this explains why there's any need for integration. Chucking olivine in the sea seems easier and cheaper than all.
--
Schuiling, R.D. (Olaf)
I am afraid that you have a too optimistic view of the natural removal of CO2. There are large flows between biotic and abiotic flows, but these don’t remove CO2, but only shift it from the biosphere into soils and atmosphere, and from there back to where they came from. It is estimated that the CO2 emission by volcanoes (the only sizable NEW source) amounts to 300 million tons annually, which was always removed by the weathering of rocks (and a smaller amount by removal as organic carbon), which kept the CO2 concentration of the atmosphere more or less stable. Now we emit 30 Gt by burning the fossil fuels in a few hundred years, that have taken several hundred million years to form. It is probably true (no data) that the rate of natural weathering has increased a bit, because the pH of soil solutions will have gone down a bit by the increase of atmospheric CO2, but we have to make that process much more effective to reach a new balance, Olaf Schuiling
Mike MacCracken
And on the proposed removal industry, for $100 per ton of CO2, an awful lot could be done to replace fossil fuels with other sources of energy, or even better efficiency, a huge amount of which could be done for much less, if we’d try. So, nice that there is a CO2 removal approach as a backstop to what the cost of changing energy would be—basically, you are suggesting it should cost less than $100 per ton of CO2 to address the problem. With the new paper in Nature (lead author is a former intern that worked with me at the Climate Institute) that the social cost of CO2 is more than twice the cost of, then it makes huge economic sense to be addressing the problem. So, indeed, let’s get on with it—research plus actually dealing with the issue.
Mike
Noah Deich is a professional in the carbon removal field with six years of clean energy and sustainability consulting experience. Noah currently works part-time as a consultant for the Virgin Earth Challenge, is pursuing his MBA from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, and writes a blog dedicated to carbon removal (carbonremoval.wordpress.com <http://carbonremoval.wordpress.com <http://carbonremoval.wordpress.com/> > )
Greg Rau
From: Mike MacCracken <mmac...@comcast.net>
To: Greg Rau <gh...@sbcglobal.net>; Geoengineering <Geoengi...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, January 25, 2015 8:27 AM
Mike MacCracken
Mike
Noah Deich is a professional in the carbon removal field with six years of clean energy and sustainability consulting experience. Noah currently works part-time as a consultant for the Virgin Earth Challenge, is pursuing his MBA from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, and writes a blog dedicated to carbon removal (carbonremoval.wordpress.com <http://carbonremoval.wordpress.com <http://carbonremoval.wordpress.com/> <http://carbonremoval.wordpress.com/> > )
Greg Rau
From: Mike MacCracken <mmac...@comcast.net>
To: Greg Rau <gh...@sbcglobal.net>; Geoengineering <Geoengi...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, January 25, 2015 11:10 AM
Mike MacCracken
I would think the terrestrial biosphere time constant is a decade or two, but for the ocean, I’d suggest that it is much shorter. My understanding is that the time constant of the wind-stirred ocean mixed layer is a year or two—not a decade or two. Changing the net flux rate to the deep ocean would be pretty slow, but that net flux is pretty small.
And so, how would it work. Well, in terms of the net flux to the ocean, the CO2 is driven into the upper ocean by the gradient between the atmosphere and the upper ocean, so once one stabilizes the atmospheric concentration and the ocean mixed layer concentration catches, up, there will be no gradient to drive the flux.
Well, this is not quite correct as the net flux to the deep ocean would continue, so there could be a net flux from the atmosphere to the upper ocean to make up that difference. However, the ocean surface layer would also continue to warm as there is a lag in the thermal term—and so the warmer the mixed layer, the higher the CO2 partial pressure would be and this would tend to resist uptake of CO2.
In terms of gross fluxes, the carbon rich upwelling waters would end up giving off a bit more CO2 with CO2 stabilization as opposed to the situation were the CO2 higher, and the uptake in high latitudes where water is cold would not be going up because the atmosphere-upper ocean gradient would be less, so again, one would lose the ocean sink, and that would mean that a greater share of any emissions that did occur (so in reducing the CO2 emissions from 37 Gt CO2/yr, one does not get to assume the ocean sink would continue as it has—and I suspect that would be a pretty fast adjustment.
For the biosphere, John suggests that he is quite concerned about the continuance of the terrestrial sink (basically, it seems, whether or not one stabilizes the CO2 concentration).
So, as I indicated initially, it seems to me that one would pretty quickly need to be taking up 90% of the 37 GtCO2/yr by your proposed approach—and that is a lot of carbon to be taking up. Hence, I’ll stand by my earlier statement that it will be hard for CDR/atmospheric and oceanic scrubbing to make much of a difference with respect to slowing the rate of climate change until emissions drop a lot.
Mike
Msg from John Harte—combined into this thread.
Mike, I think the truth is flanked by your's and Greg's statements. If we were to reduce emissions starting immediately so that each year from here on out we emit only about half current emissions, then for a decade or two, at least, the current carbon sink would roughly equal emissions and the CO2 level would be roughly constant, as Greg suggests. The concentration gradient between air and sea would slowly shrink however and so in the longer run the sink strength would diminish and emissions would have to be reduced further. At a steady annual flow from air to sea of 15 - 20 Gt(CO2)/y, however, it would take decades before there was an appreciable diminishment of that sink flow. The real shorter-term danger I think is that soil warming and forest dieback leading to terrestrial sources of CO2, along with possible CH4 releases, all because of the warming associated with trying to keep a steady 400 ppm of CO2, would necessitate much greater emissions reduction and the sooner we achieve that the better.
John Harte
Professor of Ecosystem Sciences
ERG/ESPM
310 Barrows Hall
University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720 USA
jha...@berkeley.edu
Noah Deich is a professional in the carbon removal field with six years of clean energy and sustainability consulting experience. Noah currently works part-time as a consultant for the Virgin Earth Challenge, is pursuing his MBA from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, and writes a blog dedicated to carbon removal (carbonremoval.wordpress.com <http://carbonremoval.wordpress.com <http://carbonremoval.wordpress.com/> <http://carbonremoval.wordpress.com/> <http://carbonremoval.wordpress.com/> > )
John Harte
Schuiling, R.D. (Olaf)
Questions (Andrew) and (incomplete) answers, Olaf Schuiling
From: Andrew Lockley [mailto:andrew....@gmail.com]
Sent: zondag 25 januari 2015 15:17
To: Schuiling, R.D. (Olaf)
Subject: RE: [geo] Energy Planning and Decarbonization Technology | The Energy Collective
Pls can you post this to the list?
A
On 25 Jan 2015 14:09, "Schuiling, R.D. (Olaf)" <R.D.Sc...@uu.nl> wrote:
Dear Andrew,
This is, of course, not a complete answer to all your questions.
Where are the mines: Not many in operation, because the environmental demand is still very small. 3 olivine mines in Norway, one in NW Spain, 2 in northern Italy, 4 or 5 in Turkey, 2 in China, a small one in India, 2(?) small ones in Oman, one in Eastern USA. Large olivine massifs where mines could be established are in the hundreds, in many countries on every continent
How many railcars: if you can avoid road or rail transport it will make the olivine option much cheaper. Ships, or even dumping at the mine site in a river in the wet monsoon when the river is in spate, the olivine will be deposited in the flood plains at practically no cost, or in the estuary of that river.
Crushing machines; the standard ones like for any bulk mining of rocks
For shallow sea disposal, or even for beaches, ship transport is preferable
Environmental monitoring: well, we never monitored weathering, but some field tests will be useful to get a closer look at the rate processes, and at the advantages for farming of spreading olivine over fields, or of the effects of iron and silica additions to the marine system.
I think that spreading olivine along coasts or in shallow seas for CO2 capture and restore the pH of the ocean can also help in coastal defence. Best regards, Olaf Schuiling, R.D. (Olaf)
PS: for the last question you can check sections 6 and 7 of the attached paper, rds
Christoph Voelker
Hangx, S. J. T., & Spiers, C. J. (2009). Coastal spreading of olivine to control atmospheric CO2 concentrations: A critical analysis of viability. International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control, 3(6), 757–767. doi:10.1016/j.ijggc.2009.07.001
who arrive at the conclusion
"The feasibility of the concept depends on the rate of olivine dissolution, the sequestration capacity of the dominant reaction, and its CO2 footprint. Kinetics calculations show that offsetting 30% of worldwide 1990 CO2 emissions by beach weathering means distributing of 5.0 Gt of olivine per year. For mean seawater temperatures of 15–25 8C, olivine sand (300 mm grain size) takes 700–2100 years to reach the necessary steady state sequestration rate and is therefore of little practical value. To obtain useful, steady state CO2 uptake rates within 15–20 years requires grain sizes <10 mm. However, the preparation and movement of the required material poses major economic, infrastructural and public health questions. We conclude that coastal spreading of olivine is not a viable method of CO2 sequestration on the scale needed."
I am sure that Olaf Schuiling has a different viewpoint, especially on the kinetics, but what remains independent of the kinetics is that the total amount of olivine needed to get a sizeable reduction in pCO2 growth rate is on the order of a few Gt per year..
An estimate of how much silicate minerals are mined today (to get that into perspective) is available from
Phil Renforth et al. (2011) Silicate Production and Availability for Mineral Carbonation. Environ. Sci. Technol., 45, 2035–2041
And Moosdorf et al. have estimated the carbon dioxide efficiency, taking into account transportation etc:
Moosdorf, Renforth and Hartmann (2014) Carbon Dioxide Efficiency of Terrestrial Enhanced Weathering, Env Sci Technol. 48, 4809−4816
So there s already
a lot around..
Cheers, Christoph
-- Christoph Voelker Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research Am Handelshafen 12 27570 Bremerhaven, Germany e: Christop...@awi.de t: +49 471 4831 1848
Mike MacCracken
There is a time constant for uptake of particular molecules of CO2 into the mixed layer, so mass in mixed layer divided by atmospheric flux, and that is 10 years (what I think you are referring to). I don’t think, however, that this is what determines the lag time for the net flux and so what counts in what we have been talking about—basically, if there were suddenly no gradient, there would immediately be no net flux and it does not matter which molecule is where. So, in my view, what matters is the gradient that is created by each year’s emissions, and as that goes down, the gradient will be less, and if the atmospheric concentration were suddenly held stable, the driving gradient would pretty quickly go to zero (there would still be the gradient with the deep ocean as its cycle time is of order 1000 years, so the flux to the deep ocean would continue.
And I don’t think there is anywhere near a 10-year lag in the concentration gradient between the atmosphere and the concentration at the top of the mixed layer—nor do I think that the vertical mixing time down of order 100-200 meters in the upper ocean layer is anything like a decade given wave and isopychnal mixing and wind driven flows—I’d suggest less than a year, but that is a guess. [WE NEED AN AUTHORITATIVE COMMENT FROM KEN C].
Best, Mike
On 1/25/15, 6:10 PM, "John Harte" <jha...@berkeley.edu> wrote:
Mike, I could be wrong but i was under the impression that the relevant time constant (inverse rate const.) characterizing the gradient-driven gross flow of CO2 from air to sea is on the order of a decade or two. A result I thought obtained from C14 tracer studies. I am also under the impression that the year to year variation in the sink strength does not track annual emissions very closely, suggesting that there are longer time constants in the system (as well as "noise" from variations in wind etc. and inter annual variability in the terrestrial sink).
It's been a while since I looked at this so maybe my understanding is out of date.
Cheers,
John
John Harte
Professor of Ecosystem Sciences
ERG/ESPM
310 Barrows Hall
University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720 USA
jha...@berkeley.edu
On Jan 25, 2015, at 1:27 PM, Mike MacCracken <mmac...@comcast.net> wrote:
Re: [geo] Energy Planning and Decarbonization Technology | The Energy Collective
Hi John and Greg—So responding to both messages (and I pasted John’s into the thread)
I would think the terrestrial biosphere time constant is a decade or two, but for the ocean, I’d suggest that it is much shorter. My understanding is that the time constant of the wind-stirred ocean mixed layer is a year or two—not a decade or two. Changing the net flux rate to the deep ocean would be pretty slow, but that net flux is pretty small.
And so, how would it work. Well, in terms of the net flux to the ocean, the CO2 is driven into the upper ocean by the gradient between the atmosphere and the upper ocean, so once one stabilizes the atmospheric concentration and the ocean mixed layer concentration catches, up, there will be no gradient to drive the flux.
Well, this is not quite correct as the net flux to the deep ocean would continue, so there could be a net flux from the atmosphere to the upper ocean to make up that difference. However, the ocean surface layer would also continue to warm as there is a lag in the thermal term—and so the warmer the mixed layer, the higher the CO2 partial pressure would be and this would tend to resist uptake of CO2.
In terms of gross fluxes, the carbon rich upwelling waters would end up giving off a bit more CO2 with CO2 stabilization as opposed to the situation were the CO2 higher, and the uptake in high latitudes where water is cold would not be going up because the atmosphere-upper ocean gradient would be less, so again, one would lose the ocean sink, and that would mean that a greater share of any emissions that did occur (so in reducing the CO2 emissions from 37 Gt CO2/yr, one does not get to assume the ocean sink would continue as it has—and I suspect that would be a pretty fast adjustment.
For the biosphere, John suggests that he is quite concerned about the continuance of the terrestrial sink (basically, it seems, whether or not one stabilizes the CO2 concentration).
So, as I indicated initially, it seems to me that one would pretty quickly need to be taking up 90% of the 37 GtCO2/yr by your proposed approach—and that is a lot of carbon to be taking up. Hence, I’ll stand by my earlier statement that it will be hard for CDR/atmospheric and oceanic scrubbing to make much of a difference with respect to slowing the rate of climate change until emissions drop a lot.
Mike
Msg from John Harte—combined into this thread.
Mike, I think the truth is flanked by your's and Greg's statements. If we were to reduce emissions starting immediately so that each year from here on out we emit only about half current emissions, then for a decade or two, at least, the current carbon sink would roughly equal emissions and the CO2 level would be roughly constant, as Greg suggests. The concentration gradient between air and sea would slowly shrink however and so in the longer run the sink strength would diminish and emissions would have to be reduced further. At a steady annual flow from air to sea of 15 - 20 Gt(CO2)/y, however, it would take decades before there was an appreciable diminishment of that sink flow. The real shorter-term danger I think is that soil warming and forest dieback leading to terrestrial sources of CO2, along with possible CH4 releases, all because of the warming associated with trying to keep a steady 400 ppm of CO2, would necessitate much greater emissions reduction and the sooner we achieve that the better.
John Harte
Professor of Ecosystem Sciences
ERG/ESPM
310 Barrows Hall
University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720 USA
On 1/25/15, 3:23 PM, "Greg Rau" <gh...@sbcglobal.net <x-msg://4873/gh...@sbcglobal.net> > wrote:
I'm not necessarily advocating lowering air pCO2, but stabilizing pCO2 say at the present 400 uatms. If this is stable, how does additional ocean degassing ensue? Exactly how much CDR would be needed to achieve this, the resulting response of natural CDR and natural emissions, and the required time course of this I will leave to the modelers. Ditto for achieving stability via pure anthro emissions reduction. Obviously, some combination of these will, in my opinion, be needed to stabilize pCO2. Anthro emissions reduction would appear to have significant technological and policy awareness lead relative to CDR. I'm suggesting this needs to change, in case emissions reduction alone continues to fail to achieve its promise.
As for reducing air pCO2, this already happens on an intra-annual basis thanks to natural CDR and in spite of ocean degassing: https://scripps.ucsd.edu/programs/keelingcurve/2013/10/23/the-annual-rise-in-co2-levels-has-begun/#more-940 Is it unthinkable that this decline couldn't be increased to some degree via human intervention? Wouldn't it be desirable/necessary to investigate this in the now likely event that current policies and actions have us blowing by the pCO2 "safety threshold" for decades if not centuries, or beyond if permafrost/clathrate degassing ensues?
Greg
From: Mike MacCracken <mmac...@comcast.net <x-msg://4873/mmac...@comcast.net> >
To: Greg Rau <gh...@sbcglobal.net <x-msg://4873/gh...@sbcglobal.net> >; Geoengineering <Geoengi...@googlegroups.com <x-msg://4873/Geoengi...@googlegroups.com> >
Sent: Sunday, January 25, 2015 11:10 AM
Subject: Re: [geo] Energy Planning and Decarbonization Technology | The Energy Collective
Re: [geo] Energy Planning and Decarbonization Technology | The Energy Collective
Hi Greg--The problem with your calculation is that if you were to take CO2 out of the atmosphere, the ocean and biosphere would readjust to the lower atmospheric concentration and return to the atmosphere that they have taken up earlier when the original amount of CO2 was emitted. Thus, you really have to figure out how to sequester 90+% of the 37 Gt CO2/yr that is emitted—you don’t get to keep counting the 20 Gt CO2 taken up by the ocean and the biosphere.
Mike
On 1/25/15, 1:25 PM, "Greg Rau" <gh...@sbcglobal.net <x-msg://4873/gh...@sbcglobal.net> > wrote:
Just to be clear, we currently emit 37.0 GT CO2/yr, yet in the short term only 17.5 Gt/yr remain in the atmosphere, the rest being removed by natural CDR (reviewed here: http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v4/n10/full/nclimate2392.html ). So our net emissions is 17.5 Gt/yr. Cutting this by 90% via enhanced CDR alone would mean removing an additional 15.8 GT CO2/yr over and above the 19.5 Gt/yr already removed, a 81% increase in CDR. Is this sufficient to stabilize air pCO2 or lower pCO2? If the latter then we'd also have to contend with legacy CO2 degassing from the ocean. It should be easier to reduce emissions than increase CDR, but then how is that going? I'd say it's time to find out just how easy or hard additional CDR is, relative to the technical, economic and political difficulties of emissions reduction, and relative to the consequences if the latter strategy continues to seriously underperform.
Greg
From: Mike MacCracken <mmac...@comcast.net <x-msg://4873/mmac...@comcast.net> >
To: Greg Rau <gh...@sbcglobal.net <x-msg://4873/gh...@sbcglobal.net> >; Geoengineering <Geoengi...@googlegroups.com <x-msg://4873/Geoengi...@googlegroups.com> >
Sent: Sunday, January 25, 2015 8:27 AM
Subject: Re: [geo] Energy Planning and Decarbonization Technology | The Energy Collective
Re: [geo] Energy Planning and Decarbonization Technology | The Energy Collective
Let me expand my quick description to be 90% cut in human-induced emissions (on top of all the natural sinks), so natural CDR does not count.
And on the proposed removal industry, for $100 per ton of CO2, an awful lot could be done to replace fossil fuels with other sources of energy, or even better efficiency, a huge amount of which could be done for much less, if we’d try. So, nice that there is a CO2 removal approach as a backstop to what the cost of changing energy would be—basically, you are suggesting it should cost less than $100 per ton of CO2 to address the problem. With the new paper in Nature (lead author is a former intern that worked with me at the Climate Institute) that the social cost of CO2 is more than twice the cost of, then it makes huge economic sense to be addressing the problem. So, indeed, let’s get on with it—research plus actually dealing with the issue.
Mike
On 1/24/15, 1:40 PM, "Greg Rau" <gh...@sbcglobal.net <x-msg://4873/gh...@sbcglobal.net> > wrote:
Mike,
If it takes "a 90% cut in CO2 to stop the rise in atmospheric concentration", we are already more than half way there thanks to natural CDR. About 55% of our CO2 emissions are mercifully removed from air via biotic and abiotic processes. So just 35% to go?
As for "CDR replacing the fossil fuel industry", here's one way to do that: http://www.pnas.org/content/110/25/10095.full , but low fossil energy prices (or lack of sufficient C emissions surcharge) are unlikely to make this happen. Certainly agree that we need all hands and ideas on deck in order to stabilize air CO2. But for reasons that continue to baffle me, that is not happening at the policy, decision making, and R&D levels it needs to.
Greg
From: Mike MacCracken <mmac...@comcast.net <x-msg://4873/mmac...@comcast.net> >
To: Geoengineering <Geoengi...@googlegroups.com <x-msg://4873/Geoengi...@googlegroups.com> >
Sent: Saturday, January 24, 2015 9:06 AM
Subject: Re: [geo] Energy Planning and Decarbonization Technology | The Energy Collective
Re: [geo] Energy Planning and Decarbonization Technology | The Energy Collective
In terms of an overall strategy, it takes of order a 90% cut in CO2 emissions to stop the rise in the atmospheric concentration, and that has to happen to ultimately stabilize the climate (and it would be better to have the CO2 concentration headed down so we don’t get to the equilibrium warming for the peak concentration we reach (recalling we will be losing sulfate cooling).
Thus, to really stop the warming, CDR in its many forms has to be at least as large as 90% of CO2 emissions (from fossil fuels and biospheric losses). That is a lot of carbon to be taking out of the system by putting olivine into the ocean, biochar, etc. at current global emissions levels (that are still growing). The greater the mitigation (reduction in fossil fuel emissions), the more effective CDR can be—what would really be nice is CDR replacing the fossil fuel industry so ultimately it is as large. I’d suggest this is why it is really important to always be mentioning the importance of all the other ways, in addition to CDR, to be cutting emissions—that is really critical.
Mike
On 1/24/15, 10:19 AM, "Stephen Salter" <S.Sa...@ed.ac.uk <x-msg://4873/S.Sa...@ed.ac.uk> > wrote:
Paragraph 2 mentions 'carbon negative' nuclear energy. The carbon emissions from a complete, working nuclear power station are mainly people driving to work. But digging, crushing and processing uranium ore needs energy and releases carbon in inverse proportion to the ore grade. There were some amazingly high grade ores, some once even at the critical point for reaction, but these have been used. Analysis by van Leeuwen concludes that the carbon advantage of present nuclear technology over gas is about three but that the break-even point comes when the ore grade drops to around 100 ppm. This could happen within the life of plant planned now.
As we do not know how to do waste disposal we cannot estimate its carbon emissions. But just because we cannot calculate them does not mean that they are zero.
Stephen
Emeritus Professor of Engineering Design. School of Engineering. University of Edinburgh. Mayfield Road. Edinburgh EH9 3JL. Scotland S.Sa...@ed.ac.uk <x-msg://4873/S.Sa...@ed.ac.uk> Tel +44 (0)131 650 5704 Cell 07795 203 195 WWW.see.ed.ac.uk/~shs <http://WWW.see.ed.ac.uk/~shs> <http://WWW.see.ed.ac.uk/~shs> YouTube Jamie Taylor Power for Change
On 24/01/2015 14:56, Andrew Lockley wrote:
Poster's note : none of this explains why there's any need for integration. Chucking olivine in the sea seems easier and cheaper than all.
http://theenergycollective.com/noahdeich/2183871/3-ways-carbon-removal-can-help-unlock-promise-all-above-energy-strategy
3 Ways Carbon Removal can Help Unlock the Promise of an All-of-the-Above Energy Strategy
January 24, 2015
“We can’t have an energy strategy for the last century that traps us in the past. We need an energy strategy for the future – an all-of-the-above strategy for the 21st century that develops every source of American-made energy.”– President Barack Obama, March 15, 2012
An all-of-the-above energy strategy holds great potential to make our energy system more secure, inexpensive, and environmentally-friendly. Today’s approach to all-of-the-above, however, is missing a key piece: carbon dioxide removal (“CDR”). Here’s three reasons why CDR is critical for the success of an all-of-the-above energy strategy:
1. CDR helps unite renewable energy and fossil fuel proponents to advance carbon capture and storage (“CCS”) projects. Many renewable energy advocates view CCS as an expensive excuse to enable business-as-usual fossil fuel emissions. But biomass energy with CCS (bio-CCS) projects are essentially “renewable CCS” (previously viewed as an oxymoron), and could be critical for drawing down atmospheric carbon levels in the future. As a result, fossil CCS projects could provide a pathway to “renewable CCS” projects in the future. Because of the similarities in the carbon capture technology for fossil and bioenergy power plants, installing capture technology on fossil power plants today could help reduce technology and regulatory risk for bio-CCS projects in the future. What’s more, bio-CCS projects can share the infrastructure for transporting and storing CO2 with fossil CCS installations. Creating such a pathway to bio-CCS should be feasible through regulations that increase carbon prices and/or biomass co-firing mandates slowly over time, and could help unite renewable energy and CCS proponents to develop policies that enable the development of cost-effective CCS technology.
2. CDR bolsters the environmental case for nuclear power by enabling it to be carbon “negative”: Many environmental advocates say that low-carbon benefits of nuclear power are outweighed by the other environmental and safety concerns of nuclear projects. The development of advanced nuclear projects paired with direct air capture (“DAC”) devices, however, could tip the scales in nuclear’s favor. DAC systems that utilize the heat produced from nuclear power plants can benefit from this “free” source of energy to potentially sequester CO2 directly from the atmosphere cost-effectively. The ability for nuclear + DAC to provide competitively-priced, carbon-negative energy could help convince nuclear power’s skeptics to support further investigation into developing safe and environmentally-friendly advanced nuclear systems.
3. CDR helps enable a cost-effective transition to a decarbonized economy: Today, environmental advocates claim that prolonged use of fossil fuels is mutually exclusive with preventing climate change, and fossil fuel advocates bash renewables as not ready for “prime time” — i.e. unable to deliver the economic/development benefits of inexpensive fossil energy. To resolve this logjam, indirect methods of decarbonization — such as a portfolio of low-cost CDR solutions — could enable fossil companies both to meet steep emission reduction targets and provide low-cost fossil energy until direct decarbonization through renewable energy systems become more cost-competitive (especially in difficult to decarbonize areas such as long-haul trucking and aviation).
Of course, discussion about the potential for CDR to enable an all-of-the-above energy strategy is moot unless we invest in developing a portfolio of CDR approaches. But if we do make this investment in CDR, an all-of-the-above energy strategy that delivers a diversified, low-cost, and low-carbon energy system stands a greater chance of becoming a reality.
Noah Deich
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Mike MacCracken
My guess is that the numbers for ocean carbon on the diagram include all of the active forms of C, and so only a small amount is really in the form of CO2 and so affecting the atmosphere-ocean gradient that is calculated. I have always wished that I had more solidly come to understand ocean C chemistry.
Mike
On 1/25/15, 9:38 PM, "John Harte" <jha...@berkeley.edu> wrote:
Hi Mike,
The figure is useful: If 597 (atm) had been in equilibrium with 900 (mixed layer) pre-industrial, how can 597+165 be within a few Gt(C) of equilibrium with 900 + 18? If the atm. and the mixed layer of the sea are that far out of equilibrium, seems to me the sink will operate for a while (decades) even if future emissions = current sink over that period. In other words, what I am questioning is whether there would, within a year, be a hugely reduced gradient. Am I misinterpreting the numbers in the figure???
It will be nice to sort this out!!
John
John Harte
Professor of Ecosystem Sciences
ERG/ESPM
310 Barrows Hall
University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720 USA
jha...@berkeley.edu
On Jan 25, 2015, at 6:16 PM, Mike MacCracken <mmac...@comcast.net> wrote:
Re: [geo] Energy Planning and Decarbonization Technology | The Energy Collective
Hi John—So I have attached a diagram of the carbon cycle from IPCC AR4WG1 Figure 7.3 that shows natural flows (in black) and then the augmentations as a result of human activities (in red)
There is a time constant for uptake of particular molecules of CO2 into the mixed layer, so mass in mixed layer divided by atmospheric flux, and that is 10 years (what I think you are referring to). I don’t think, however, that this is what determines the lag time for the net flux and so what counts in what we have been talking about—basically, if there were suddenly no gradient, there would immediately be no net flux and it does not matter which molecule is where. So, in my view, what matters is the gradient that is created by each year’s emissions, and as that goes down, the gradient will be less, and if the atmospheric concentration were suddenly held stable, the driving gradient would pretty quickly go to zero (there would still be the gradient with the deep ocean as its cycle time is of order 1000 years, so the flux to the deep ocean would continue.
And I don’t think there is anywhere near a 10-year lag in the concentration gradient between the atmosphere and the concentration at the top of the mixed layer—nor do I think that the vertical mixing time down of order 100-200 meters in the upper ocean layer is anything like a decade given wave and isopychnal mixing and wind driven flows—I’d suggest less than a year, but that is a guess. [WE NEED AN AUTHORITATIVE COMMENT FROM KEN C].
Best, Mike
On 1/25/15, 6:10 PM, "John Harte" <jha...@berkeley.edu <x-msg://4924/jha...@berkeley.edu> > wrote:
Mike, I could be wrong but i was under the impression that the relevant time constant (inverse rate const.) characterizing the gradient-driven gross flow of CO2 from air to sea is on the order of a decade or two. A result I thought obtained from C14 tracer studies. I am also under the impression that the year to year variation in the sink strength does not track annual emissions very closely, suggesting that there are longer time constants in the system (as well as "noise" from variations in wind etc. and inter annual variability in the terrestrial sink).
It's been a while since I looked at this so maybe my understanding is out of date.
Cheers,
John
John Harte
Professor of Ecosystem Sciences
ERG/ESPM
310 Barrows Hall
University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720 USA
On Jan 25, 2015, at 1:27 PM, Mike MacCracken <mmac...@comcast.net <x-msg://4924/mmac...@comcast.net> > wrote:
Re: [geo] Energy Planning and Decarbonization Technology | The Energy Collective
Hi John and Greg—So responding to both messages (and I pasted John’s into the thread)
I would think the terrestrial biosphere time constant is a decade or two, but for the ocean, I’d suggest that it is much shorter. My understanding is that the time constant of the wind-stirred ocean mixed layer is a year or two—not a decade or two. Changing the net flux rate to the deep ocean would be pretty slow, but that net flux is pretty small.
And so, how would it work. Well, in terms of the net flux to the ocean, the CO2 is driven into the upper ocean by the gradient between the atmosphere and the upper ocean, so once one stabilizes the atmospheric concentration and the ocean mixed layer concentration catches, up, there will be no gradient to drive the flux.
Well, this is not quite correct as the net flux to the deep ocean would continue, so there could be a net flux from the atmosphere to the upper ocean to make up that difference. However, the ocean surface layer would also continue to warm as there is a lag in the thermal term—and so the warmer the mixed layer, the higher the CO2 partial pressure would be and this would tend to resist uptake of CO2.
In terms of gross fluxes, the carbon rich upwelling waters would end up giving off a bit more CO2 with CO2 stabilization as opposed to the situation were the CO2 higher, and the uptake in high latitudes where water is cold would not be going up because the atmosphere-upper ocean gradient would be less, so again, one would lose the ocean sink, and that would mean that a greater share of any emissions that did occur (so in reducing the CO2 emissions from 37 Gt CO2/yr, one does not get to assume the ocean sink would continue as it has—and I suspect that would be a pretty fast adjustment.
For the biosphere, John suggests that he is quite concerned about the continuance of the terrestrial sink (basically, it seems, whether or not one stabilizes the CO2 concentration).
So, as I indicated initially, it seems to me that one would pretty quickly need to be taking up 90% of the 37 GtCO2/yr by your proposed approach—and that is a lot of carbon to be taking up. Hence, I’ll stand by my earlier statement that it will be hard for CDR/atmospheric and oceanic scrubbing to make much of a difference with respect to slowing the rate of climate change until emissions drop a lot.
Mike
Msg from John Harte—combined into this thread.
Mike, I think the truth is flanked by your's and Greg's statements. If we were to reduce emissions starting immediately so that each year from here on out we emit only about half current emissions, then for a decade or two, at least, the current carbon sink would roughly equal emissions and the CO2 level would be roughly constant, as Greg suggests. The concentration gradient between air and sea would slowly shrink however and so in the longer run the sink strength would diminish and emissions would have to be reduced further. At a steady annual flow from air to sea of 15 - 20 Gt(CO2)/y, however, it would take decades before there was an appreciable diminishment of that sink flow. The real shorter-term danger I think is that soil warming and forest dieback leading to terrestrial sources of CO2, along with possible CH4 releases, all because of the warming associated with trying to keep a steady 400 ppm of CO2, would necessitate much greater emissions reduction and the sooner we achieve that the better.
John Harte
Professor of Ecosystem Sciences
ERG/ESPM
310 Barrows Hall
University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720 USA
jha...@berkeley.edu <x-msg://4924/jha...@berkeley.edu> <x-msg://4873/jha...@berkeley.edu <x-msg://4873/jha...@berkeley.edu> >
On 1/25/15, 3:23 PM, "Greg Rau" <gh...@sbcglobal.net <x-msg://4924/gh...@sbcglobal.net> <x-msg://4873/gh...@sbcglobal.net <x-msg://4873/gh...@sbcglobal.net> > > wrote:
I'm not necessarily advocating lowering air pCO2, but stabilizing pCO2 say at the present 400 uatms. If this is stable, how does additional ocean degassing ensue? Exactly how much CDR would be needed to achieve this, the resulting response of natural CDR and natural emissions, and the required time course of this I will leave to the modelers. Ditto for achieving stability via pure anthro emissions reduction. Obviously, some combination of these will, in my opinion, be needed to stabilize pCO2. Anthro emissions reduction would appear to have significant technological and policy awareness lead relative to CDR. I'm suggesting this needs to change, in case emissions reduction alone continues to fail to achieve its promise.
As for reducing air pCO2, this already happens on an intra-annual basis thanks to natural CDR and in spite of ocean degassing: https://scripps.ucsd.edu/programs/keelingcurve/2013/10/23/the-annual-rise-in-co2-levels-has-begun/#more-940 Is it unthinkable that this decline couldn't be increased to some degree via human intervention? Wouldn't it be desirable/necessary to investigate this in the now likely event that current policies and actions have us blowing by the pCO2 "safety threshold" for decades if not centuries, or beyond if permafrost/clathrate degassing ensues?
Greg
From: Mike MacCracken <mmac...@comcast.net <x-msg://4924/mmac...@comcast.net> <x-msg://4873/mmac...@comcast.net <x-msg://4873/mmac...@comcast.net> > >
To: Greg Rau <gh...@sbcglobal.net <x-msg://4924/gh...@sbcglobal.net> <x-msg://4873/gh...@sbcglobal.net <x-msg://4873/gh...@sbcglobal.net> > >; Geoengineering <Geoengi...@googlegroups.com <x-msg://4924/Geoengi...@googlegroups.com> <x-msg://4873/Geoengi...@googlegroups.com <x-msg://4873/Geoengi...@googlegroups.com> > >
Sent: Sunday, January 25, 2015 11:10 AM
Subject: Re: [geo] Energy Planning and Decarbonization Technology | The Energy Collective
Re: [geo] Energy Planning and Decarbonization Technology | The Energy Collective
Hi Greg--The problem with your calculation is that if you were to take CO2 out of the atmosphere, the ocean and biosphere would readjust to the lower atmospheric concentration and return to the atmosphere that they have taken up earlier when the original amount of CO2 was emitted. Thus, you really have to figure out how to sequester 90+% of the 37 Gt CO2/yr that is emitted—you don’t get to keep counting the 20 Gt CO2 taken up by the ocean and the biosphere.
Mike
On 1/25/15, 1:25 PM, "Greg Rau" <gh...@sbcglobal.net <x-msg://4924/gh...@sbcglobal.net> <x-msg://4873/gh...@sbcglobal.net <x-msg://4873/gh...@sbcglobal.net> > > wrote:
Just to be clear, we currently emit 37.0 GT CO2/yr, yet in the short term only 17.5 Gt/yr remain in the atmosphere, the rest being removed by natural CDR (reviewed here: http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v4/n10/full/nclimate2392.html ). So our net emissions is 17.5 Gt/yr. Cutting this by 90% via enhanced CDR alone would mean removing an additional 15.8 GT CO2/yr over and above the 19.5 Gt/yr already removed, a 81% increase in CDR. Is this sufficient to stabilize air pCO2 or lower pCO2? If the latter then we'd also have to contend with legacy CO2 degassing from the ocean. It should be easier to reduce emissions than increase CDR, but then how is that going? I'd say it's time to find out just how easy or hard additional CDR is, relative to the technical, economic and political difficulties of emissions reduction, and relative to the consequences if the latter strategy continues to seriously underperform.
Greg
From: Mike MacCracken <mmac...@comcast.net <x-msg://4924/mmac...@comcast.net> <x-msg://4873/mmac...@comcast.net <x-msg://4873/mmac...@comcast.net> > >
To: Greg Rau <gh...@sbcglobal.net <x-msg://4924/gh...@sbcglobal.net> <x-msg://4873/gh...@sbcglobal.net <x-msg://4873/gh...@sbcglobal.net> > >; Geoengineering <Geoengi...@googlegroups.com <x-msg://4924/Geoengi...@googlegroups.com> <x-msg://4873/Geoengi...@googlegroups.com <x-msg://4873/Geoengi...@googlegroups.com> > >
Subject: Re: [geo] Energy Planning and Decarbonization Technology | The Energy Collective
Re: [geo] Energy Planning and Decarbonization Technology | The Energy Collective
Let me expand my quick description to be 90% cut in human-induced emissions (on top of all the natural sinks), so natural CDR does not count.
And on the proposed removal industry, for $100 per ton of CO2, an awful lot could be done to replace fossil fuels with other sources of energy, or even better efficiency, a huge amount of which could be done for much less, if we’d try. So, nice that there is a CO2 removal approach as a backstop to what the cost of changing energy would be—basically, you are suggesting it should cost less than $100 per ton of CO2 to address the problem. With the new paper in Nature (lead author is a former intern that worked with me at the Climate Institute) that the social cost of CO2 is more than twice the cost of, then it makes huge economic sense to be addressing the problem. So, indeed, let’s get on with it—research plus actually dealing with the issue.
Mike
On 1/24/15, 1:40 PM, "Greg Rau" <gh...@sbcglobal.net <x-msg://4924/gh...@sbcglobal.net> <x-msg://4873/gh...@sbcglobal.net <x-msg://4873/gh...@sbcglobal.net> > > wrote:
If it takes "a 90% cut in CO2 to stop the rise in atmospheric concentration", we are already more than half way there thanks to natural CDR. About 55% of our CO2 emissions are mercifully removed from air via biotic and abiotic processes. So just 35% to go?
As for "CDR replacing the fossil fuel industry", here's one way to do that: http://www.pnas.org/content/110/25/10095.full , but low fossil energy prices (or lack of sufficient C emissions surcharge) are unlikely to make this happen. Certainly agree that we need all hands and ideas on deck in order to stabilize air CO2. But for reasons that continue to baffle me, that is not happening at the policy, decision making, and R&D levels it needs to.
Greg
From: Mike MacCracken <mmac...@comcast.net <x-msg://4924/mmac...@comcast.net> <x-msg://4873/mmac...@comcast.net <x-msg://4873/mmac...@comcast.net> > >
To: Geoengineering <Geoengi...@googlegroups.com <x-msg://4924/Geoengi...@googlegroups.com> <x-msg://4873/Geoengi...@googlegroups.com <x-msg://4873/Geoengi...@googlegroups.com> > >
Subject: Re: [geo] Energy Planning and Decarbonization Technology | The Energy Collective
Re: [geo] Energy Planning and Decarbonization Technology | The Energy Collective
Thus, to really stop the warming, CDR in its many forms has to be at least as large as 90% of CO2 emissions (from fossil fuels and biospheric losses). That is a lot of carbon to be taking out of the system by putting olivine into the ocean, biochar, etc. at current global emissions levels (that are still growing). The greater the mitigation (reduction in fossil fuel emissions), the more effective CDR can be—what would really be nice is CDR replacing the fossil fuel industry so ultimately it is as large. I’d suggest this is why it is really important to always be mentioning the importance of all the other ways, in addition to CDR, to be cutting emissions—that is really critical.
Mike
Hi All
Paragraph 2 mentions 'carbon negative' nuclear energy. The carbon emissions from a complete, working nuclear power station are mainly people driving to work. But digging, crushing and processing uranium ore needs energy and releases carbon in inverse proportion to the ore grade. There were some amazingly high grade ores, some once even at the critical point for reaction, but these have been used. Analysis by van Leeuwen concludes that the carbon advantage of present nuclear technology over gas is about three but that the break-even point comes when the ore grade drops to around 100 ppm. This could happen within the life of plant planned now.
As we do not know how to do waste disposal we cannot estimate its carbon emissions. But just because we cannot calculate them does not mean that they are zero.
Stephen
Emeritus Professor of Engineering Design. School of Engineering. University of Edinburgh. Mayfield Road. Edinburgh EH9 3JL. Scotland S.Sa...@ed.ac.uk <x-msg://4924/S.Sa...@ed.ac.uk> <x-msg://4873/S.Sa...@ed.ac.uk <x-msg://4873/S.Sa...@ed.ac.uk> > Tel +44 (0)131 650 5704 Cell 07795 203 195 WWW.see.ed.ac.uk/~shs <http://WWW.see.ed.ac.uk/~shs> <http://WWW.see.ed.ac.uk/~shs> <http://WWW.see.ed.ac.uk/~shs> YouTube Jamie Taylor Power for Change
On 24/01/2015 14:56, Andrew Lockley wrote:
Poster's note : none of this explains why there's any need for integration. Chucking olivine in the sea seems easier and cheaper than all.
http://theenergycollective.com/noahdeich/2183871/3-ways-carbon-removal-can-help-unlock-promise-all-above-energy-strategy
3 Ways Carbon Removal can Help Unlock the Promise of an All-of-the-Above Energy Strategy
January 24, 2015
“We can’t have an energy strategy for the last century that traps us in the past. We need an energy strategy for the future – an all-of-the-above strategy for the 21st century that develops every source of American-made energy.”– President Barack Obama, March 15, 2012
An all-of-the-above energy strategy holds great potential to make our energy system more secure, inexpensive, and environmentally-friendly. Today’s approach to all-of-the-above, however, is missing a key piece: carbon dioxide removal (“CDR”). Here’s three reasons why CDR is critical for the success of an all-of-the-above energy strategy:
1. CDR helps unite renewable energy and fossil fuel proponents to advance carbon capture and storage (“CCS”) projects. Many renewable energy advocates view CCS as an expensive excuse to enable business-as-usual fossil fuel emissions. But biomass energy with CCS (bio-CCS) projects are essentially “renewable CCS” (previously viewed as an oxymoron), and could be critical for drawing down atmospheric carbon levels in the future. As a result, fossil CCS projects could provide a pathway to “renewable CCS” projects in the future. Because of the similarities in the carbon capture technology for fossil and bioenergy power plants, installing capture technology on fossil power plants today could help reduce technology and regulatory risk for bio-CCS projects in the future. What’s more, bio-CCS projects can share the infrastructure for transporting and storing CO2 with fossil CCS installations. Creating such a pathway to bio-CCS should be feasible through regulations that increase carbon prices and/or biomass co-firing mandates slowly over time, and could help unite renewable energy and CCS proponents to develop policies that enable the development of cost-effective CCS technology.
2. CDR bolsters the environmental case for nuclear power by enabling it to be carbon “negative”: Many environmental advocates say that low-carbon benefits of nuclear power are outweighed by the other environmental and safety concerns of nuclear projects. The development of advanced nuclear projects paired with direct air capture (“DAC”) devices, however, could tip the scales in nuclear’s favor. DAC systems that utilize the heat produced from nuclear power plants can benefit from this “free” source of energy to potentially sequester CO2 directly from the atmosphere cost-effectively. The ability for nuclear + DAC to provide competitively-priced, carbon-negative energy could help convince nuclear power’s skeptics to support further investigation into developing safe and environmentally-friendly advanced nuclear systems.
3. CDR helps enable a cost-effective transition to a decarbonized economy: Today, environmental advocates claim that prolonged use of fossil fuels is mutually exclusive with preventing climate change, and fossil fuel advocates bash renewables as not ready for “prime time” — i.e. unable to deliver the economic/development benefits of inexpensive fossil energy. To resolve this logjam, indirect methods of decarbonization — such as a portfolio of low-cost CDR solutions — could enable fossil companies both to meet steep emission reduction targets and provide low-cost fossil energy until direct decarbonization through renewable energy systems become more cost-competitive (especially in difficult to decarbonize areas such as long-haul trucking and aviation).
Of course, discussion about the potential for CDR to enable an all-of-the-above energy strategy is moot unless we invest in developing a portfolio of CDR approaches. But if we do make this investment in CDR, an all-of-the-above energy strategy that delivers a diversified, low-cost, and low-carbon energy system stands a greater chance of becoming a reality.
Noah Deich
Noah Deich is a professional in the carbon removal field with six years of clean energy and sustainability consulting experience. Noah currently works part-time as a consultant for the Virgin Earth Challenge, is pursuing his MBA from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, and writes a blog dedicated to carbon removal (carbonremoval.wordpress.com <http://carbonremoval.wordpress.com> <http://carbonremoval.wordpress.com <http://carbonremoval.wordpress.com/> > <http://carbonremoval.wordpress.com <http://carbonremoval.wordpress.com/> <http://carbonremoval.wordpress.com/> <http://carbonremoval.wordpress.com/> <http://carbonremoval.wordpress.com/> <http://carbonremoval.wordpress.com/> > )
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<Anthropogenic_carbon_cycle.png>
Greg Rau
From: Mike MacCracken <mmac...@comcast.net>
To: Greg Rau <gh...@sbcglobal.net>; Geoengineering <Geoengi...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, January 25, 2015 1:27 PM
Subject: Re: [geo] Energy Planning and Decarbonization Technology | The Energy Collective
I would think the terrestrial biosphere time constant is a decade or two, but for the ocean, I’d suggest that it is much shorter. My understanding is that the time constant of the wind-stirred ocean mixed layer is a year or two—not a decade or two. Changing the net flux rate to the deep ocean would be pretty slow, but that net flux is pretty small.
And so, how would it work. Well, in terms of the net flux to the ocean, the CO2 is driven into the upper ocean by the gradient between the atmosphere and the upper ocean, so once one stabilizes the atmospheric concentration and the ocean mixed layer concentration catches, up, there will be no gradient to drive the flux.
Well, this is not quite correct as the net flux to the deep ocean would continue, so there could be a net flux from the atmosphere to the upper ocean to make up that difference. However, the ocean surface layer would also continue to warm as there is a lag in the thermal term—and so the warmer the mixed layer, the higher the CO2 partial pressure would be and this would tend to resist uptake of CO2.
In terms of gross fluxes, the carbon rich upwelling waters would end up giving off a bit more CO2 with CO2 stabilization as opposed to the situation were the CO2 higher, and the uptake in high latitudes where water is cold would not be going up because the atmosphere-upper ocean gradient would be less, so again, one would lose the ocean sink, and that would mean that a greater share of any emissions that did occur (so in reducing the CO2 emissions from 37 Gt CO2/yr, one does not get to assume the ocean sink would continue as it has—and I suspect that would be a pretty fast adjustment.
For the biosphere, John suggests that he is quite concerned about the continuance of the terrestrial sink (basically, it seems, whether or not one stabilizes the CO2 concentration).
So, as I indicated initially, it seems to me that one would pretty quickly need to be taking up 90% of the 37 GtCO2/yr by your proposed approach—and that is a lot of carbon to be taking up. Hence, I’ll stand by my earlier statement that it will be hard for CDR/atmospheric and oceanic scrubbing to make much of a difference with respect to slowing the rate of climate change until emissions drop a lot.
Schuiling, R.D. (Olaf)
It is time we should stop quoting Hangx and Spiers. Their model requires grains on the beach not to move for 2000 years, and water to be completely immobile. As most of you will have noted when taking a walk along the beach, this is not the natural situation. Our experiments with imitated surfs at a very modest scale and slow movement show that rough and angular olivine grains are rounded and polished in ten days or less, and myriads of micron sized slivers are knocked off, that react with the water in a very short time (days). If you prefer models instead of reality, fine, but fortunately we have to deal with how nature really works, Olaf Schuiling
John Harte
<Anthropogenic_carbon_cycle.png>
Schuiling, R.D. (Olaf)
Where do you get that number of $100 per ton of CO2 captured from? You come close to that number if you use that silly CCS, capture CO2 from the chimneys of coal-fired power plants, clean it with expensive and poisonous chemicals and then compress it to a few hundred bars and pump it in the subsoil. If you use enhanced weathering of olivine you have
$4 for the mining of bulk rock in large open-pit mines
$2 for milling it to 100 micron
?? for transport and spreading (but ?? is certainly not $94); strategically selecting new mine sites will help to reduce costs of transport.
So when you do some economic calculations, use realistic figures, Olaf Schuiling, R.D. (Olaf)
Schuiling, R.D. (Olaf)
Well, you better forget the model of Hangx and Spiers, as it has no relation to reality. They forget that grains roll on the beach and collide and scour each other knocking off micron sized slivers, they use weathering rates obtained in clean laboratories under exclusion of biotic factors, and they assumed that waters of the sea do not move. I attach a rebuttal of it (Schuiling, R. (2014) Climate Change and CO2 Removal from the Atmosphere. Natural Science, 6, 659-663. doi: 10.4236/ns.2014.69065). A nice walk along the beach would have saved them a lot of wasted time.
From: geoengi...@googlegroups.com [mailto:geoengi...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Christoph Voelker
Sent: zondag 25 januari 2015 17:15
To: andrew....@gmail.com; geoengi...@googlegroups.com
Andrew Lockley
As regards transport: costings must follow strategy. To consider the civil engineering :
I suggest that spreading on beaches is unnecessary and logistically difficult. Far better to dump the material in shallow coastal waters with active material transport - especially where erosion threatens settlements, such as around much of the UK coast. It will be on the beach soon enough!
Open water deposition can be done with bulk carriers (either split hull or conveyor / auger fed) . Plenty of ships used for transport of minerals, grain, bulk powders, etc are available. A better spread will be less harmful to marine life, so slower deposition rates will be safer. This suggests conveyor or auger carriers .
For transport from the mine, using open river flows (if that was what was implied) seems irrational. Rivers would quickly silt, and local ecosystem effects would be disastrous. In larger rivers, barges would be viable, but most mines will not be near major rivers. Rail to the coast also avoids the need to change transport mode. Again, bulk dry materials are routinely transported by rail, and no innovation is required. Ports also are commonly fed by rail, so only track to the mine head from the nearest railway need be newly laid. In Europe, one is rarely more than a few dozen miles from a railway. A large mine will function for decades, meaning track civils costs are trivial.
I'm happy to help publish on this. I think a paper that goes down to site specifics would be very useful. Engineering publications give clarity and precision to methods - IKEA flat-pack instructions for fixing the climate.
A
Francesc Montserrat
You know I agree with you in principle, Olaf, but mentioning "just-so" anecdotes/facts/observations is not enough to discredit a model...fortunately. Most, if not all, models start with being a very strong abstraction of reality, only to be tuned as mechanistic knowledge of the process under investigation increases. Slowly, such models become the minimal adequate models (MAM) we normally use to explain and/or predict those processes.
Let's be scientific about it and come up with a better tuned model for olivine dissolution and relevant consequences in terms of carbonate system, carbon sequestration and downstream ecological impacts in natural waters, including seawater.
As for Andrew's questions on location of the mines etc., I think that Nils Moosdorf, Phil Renforth and Jens Hartmann have done a good job in their paper answering the primary questions (http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es4052022). As for coastal defense win-win: have a look at this (http://www.dezandmotor.nl/en-GB/), and then imagine one (partially) made up of olivine...but be careful to also imagine that the olivine in such a semi-natural structure releases concomitant amounts of silicate (conceivably causing massive diatom blooms, especially in the later months of the year when silicate is depleted in seawater) and considerable amounts of Nickel (of which we simply don't know what it does to the foodweb).
Cheers,
Francesc
vriendelijke groeten / kind regards,
Dr. Francesc Montserrat
Department of Ecosystem Studies
Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research
(NIOZ)
Korringaweg 7
4401 NT Yerseke
The Netherlands
Office: +31 (0)113 577 462
Mobile: +31 (0)6 2481 5595
Parminder Singh
I think you would have some serious logistical problems in trying to place olivine minerals into a UK gravel beach. Principally: returns from tagged placers in gravel is traditionally very poor. This is mainly because of what Alan Carr called the Carpet of Rejection whereby unless you have placers of equivalent size to beach material, the placer is inevitable covered by larger material (on gravel beaches). As such finding your olivine grains becomes very difficult, and hence serial changes to grains much harder to monitor, when elements of your distribution may become locked away from any wave action. My colleagues who have considered rock weathering suggest that tumble mills are probably the best prototype simulation possible.
Parminder
Oliver Tickell
It's actually very rude to dismiss Olaf's work on this as 'just so' stories. He has done laboratory tests of olivine dissolution rates in water under conditions of agitation, field tests of olivine particle evolution in farmland in the Netherlands, and is in touch with other who have, eg, measured biotic acceleration of olivine dissolution by lugworms on coastal mudflats.
That's not to say that there is not much more work to be done. But field experimentation is expensive and few funders are coming forward to pay for this kind of work. Some promise, for sure, but are very short on delivery.
Your idea that it's somehow 'scientific' to stick with 'results' that we know to be false by several orders of magnitude is to my mind somewhat paradoxical.
We know about the silicate, and indeed in many marine areas - those polluted by agricultural and sewage runoff - the bloom of diatoms at the expense of other algae would be a considerable benefit, replacing carpets of chocking algae with healthy populations of fish. Diatoms also do not expel CO2 from marine bicarbonate as part of the shell building process, and are good at sequestering carbon to deep water. The silicic acid will only cause 'massive diatom blooms' where all the other nutrients are already present to cause massive algal blooms in any case, so the effect will only be to replace one algal bloom with another.
The main metals liberated by the dissolution of olivine are Mg (already abundant) and Fe which is in many places a limiting nutrient. Nickel is not normally considered an olivine constituent, though olivine is often found with nickel bearing ores.
Oliver.
Oliver Tickell
Of course you would have to perform experiments tracking the fate of the gravel / sand once put there in order to justify any claims re scale and rates of carbon sequestration - and that's the difficult bit!
Oliver.
Hawkins, Dave
Sent from my iPad
On Jan 26, 2015, at 11:47 AM, Oliver Tickell <oliver....@kyoto2.org<mailto:oliver....@kyoto2.org>> wrote:
Nice idea! As Olaf has written (doubtless he can share the paper with us) there are areas of the North Sea with very strong tidal currents that would very effectively tumble any olivine gravel / sand placed on the seabed, so all you have to do is dump the stuff off ships into suitable areas of sea.
Of course you would have to perform experiments tracking the fate of the gravel / sand once put there in order to justify any claims re scale and rates of carbon sequestration - and that's the difficult bit!
Oliver.
On 26/01/2015 10:49, Andrew Lockley wrote:
As regards transport: costings must follow strategy. To consider the civil engineering :
I suggest that spreading on beaches is unnecessary and logistically difficult. Far better to dump the material in shallow coastal waters with active material transport - especially where erosion threatens settlements, such as around much of the UK coast. It will be on the beach soon enough!
Open water deposition can be done with bulk carriers (either split hull or conveyor / auger fed) . Plenty of ships used for transport of minerals, grain, bulk powders, etc are available. A better spread will be less harmful to marine life, so slower deposition rates will be safer. This suggests conveyor or auger carriers .
For transport from the mine, using open river flows (if that was what was implied) seems irrational. Rivers would quickly silt, and local ecosystem effects would be disastrous. In larger rivers, barges would be viable, but most mines will not be near major rivers. Rail to the coast also avoids the need to change transport mode. Again, bulk dry materials are routinely transported by rail, and no innovation is required. Ports also are commonly fed by rail, so only track to the mine head from the nearest railway need be newly laid. In Europe, one is rarely more than a few dozen miles from a railway. A large mine will function for decades, meaning track civils costs are trivial.
I'm happy to help publish on this. I think a paper that goes down to site specifics would be very useful. Engineering publications give clarity and precision to methods - IKEA flat-pack instructions for fixing the climate.
A
Where do you get that number of $100 per ton of CO2 captured from? You come close to that number if you use that silly CCS, capture CO2 from the chimneys of coal-fired power plants, clean it with expensive and poisonous chemicals and then compress it to a few hundred bars and pump it in the subsoil. If you use enhanced weathering of olivine you have
$4 for the mining of bulk rock in large open-pit mines
$2 for milling it to 100 micron
?? for transport and spreading (but ?? is certainly not $94); strategically selecting new mine sites will help to reduce costs of transport.
So when you do some economic calculations, use realistic figures, Olaf Schuiling, R.D. (Olaf)
Sent: zondag 25 januari 2015 17:27
To: Greg Rau; Geoengineering
Subject: Re: [geo] Energy Planning and Decarbonization Technology | The Energy Collective
Let me expand my quick description to be 90% cut in human-induced emissions (on top of all the natural sinks), so natural CDR does not count.
And on the proposed removal industry, for $100 per ton of CO2, an awful lot could be done to replace fossil fuels with other sources of energy, or even better efficiency, a huge amount of which could be done for much less, if we’d try. So, nice that there is a CO2 removal approach as a backstop to what the cost of changing energy would be—basically, you are suggesting it should cost less than $100 per ton of CO2 to address the problem. With the new paper in Nature (lead author is a former intern that worked with me at the Climate Institute) that the social cost of CO2 is more than twice the cost of, then it makes huge economic sense to be addressing the problem. So, indeed, let’s get on with it—research plus actually dealing with the issue.
Mike
Mike,
If it takes "a 90% cut in CO2 to stop the rise in atmospheric concentration", we are already more than half way there thanks to natural CDR. About 55% of our CO2 emissions are mercifully removed from air via biotic and abiotic processes. So just 35% to go?
As for "CDR replacing the fossil fuel industry", here's one way to do that: http://www.pnas.org/content/110/25/10095.full , but low fossil energy prices (or lack of sufficient C emissions surcharge) are unlikely to make this happen. Certainly agree that we need all hands and ideas on deck in order to stabilize air CO2. But for reasons that continue to baffle me, that is not happening at the policy, decision making, and R&D levels it needs to.
Greg
________________________________
To: Geoengineering <Geoengi...@googlegroups.com<http://Geoengi...@googlegroups.com>>
Subject: Re: [geo] Energy Planning and Decarbonization Technology | The Energy Collective
Re: [geo] Energy Planning and Decarbonization Technology | The Energy Collective
In terms of an overall strategy, it takes of order a 90% cut in CO2 emissions to stop the rise in the atmospheric concentration, and that has to happen to ultimately stabilize the climate (and it would be better to have the CO2 concentration headed down so we don’t get to the equilibrium warming for the peak concentration we reach (recalling we will be losing sulfate cooling).
Thus, to really stop the warming, CDR in its many forms has to be at least as large as 90% of CO2 emissions (from fossil fuels and biospheric losses). That is a lot of carbon to be taking out of the system by putting olivine into the ocean, biochar, etc. at current global emissions levels (that are still growing). The greater the mitigation (reduction in fossil fuel emissions), the more effective CDR can be—what would really be nice is CDR replacing the fossil fuel industry so ultimately it is as large. I’d suggest this is why it is really important to always be mentioning the importance of all the other ways, in addition to CDR, to be cutting emissions—that is really critical.
Mike
Hi All
Paragraph 2 mentions 'carbon negative' nuclear energy. The carbon emissions from a complete, working nuclear power station are mainly people driving to work. But digging, crushing and processing uranium ore needs energy and releases carbon in inverse proportion to the ore grade. There were some amazingly high grade ores, some once even at the critical point for reaction, but these have been used. Analysis by van Leeuwen concludes that the carbon advantage of present nuclear technology over gas is about three but that the break-even point comes when the ore grade drops to around 100 ppm. This could happen within the life of plant planned now.
As we do not know how to do waste disposal we cannot estimate its carbon emissions. But just because we cannot calculate them does not mean that they are zero.
Stephen
On 24/01/2015 14:56, Andrew Lockley wrote:
Poster's note : none of this explains why there's any need for integration. Chucking olivine in the sea seems easier and cheaper than all.
http://theenergycollective.com/noahdeich/2183871/3-ways-carbon-removal-can-help-unlock-promise-all-above-energy-strategy
3 Ways Carbon Removal can Help Unlock the Promise of an All-of-the-Above Energy Strategy
January 24, 2015
“We can’t have an energy strategy for the last century that traps us in the past. We need an energy strategy for the future – an all-of-the-above strategy for the 21st century that develops every source of American-made energy.”– President Barack Obama, March 15, 2012
An all-of-the-above energy strategy holds great potential to make our energy system more secure, inexpensive, and environmentally-friendly. Today’s approach to all-of-the-above, however, is missing a key piece: carbon dioxide removal (“CDR”). Here’s three reasons why CDR is critical for the success of an all-of-the-above energy strategy:
1. CDR helps unite renewable energy and fossil fuel proponents to advance carbon capture and storage (“CCS”) projects. Many renewable energy advocates view CCS as an expensive excuse to enable business-as-usual fossil fuel emissions. But biomass energy with CCS (bio-CCS) projects are essentially “renewable CCS” (previously viewed as an oxymoron), and could be critical for drawing down atmospheric carbon levels in the future. As a result, fossil CCS projects could provide a pathway to “renewable CCS” projects in the future. Because of the similarities in the carbon capture technology for fossil and bioenergy power plants, installing capture technology on fossil power plants today could help reduce technology and regulatory risk for bio-CCS projects in the future. What’s more, bio-CCS projects can share the infrastructure for transporting and storing CO2 with fossil CCS installations. Creating such a pathway to bio-CCS should be feasible through regulations that increase carbon prices and/or biomass co-firing mandates slowly over time, and could help unite renewable energy and CCS proponents to develop policies that enable the development of cost-effective CCS technology.
2. CDR bolsters the environmental case for nuclear power by enabling it to be carbon “negative”: Many environmental advocates say that low-carbon benefits of nuclear power are outweighed by the other environmental and safety concerns of nuclear projects. The development of advanced nuclear projects paired with direct air capture (“DAC”) devices, however, could tip the scales in nuclear’s favor. DAC systems that utilize the heat produced from nuclear power plants can benefit from this “free” source of energy to potentially sequester CO2 directly from the atmosphere cost-effectively. The ability for nuclear + DAC to provide competitively-priced, carbon-negative energy could help convince nuclear power’s skeptics to support further investigation into developing safe and environmentally-friendly advanced nuclear systems.
3. CDR helps enable a cost-effective transition to a decarbonized economy: Today, environmental advocates claim that prolonged use of fossil fuels is mutually exclusive with preventing climate change, and fossil fuel advocates bash renewables as not ready for “prime time” — i.e. unable to deliver the economic/development benefits of inexpensive fossil energy. To resolve this logjam, indirect methods of decarbonization — such as a portfolio of low-cost CDR solutions — could enable fossil companies both to meet steep emission reduction targets and provide low-cost fossil energy until direct decarbonization through renewable energy systems become more cost-competitive (especially in difficult to decarbonize areas such as long-haul trucking and aviation).
Of course, discussion about the potential for CDR to enable an all-of-the-above energy strategy is moot unless we invest in developing a portfolio of CDR approaches. But if we do make this investment in CDR, an all-of-the-above energy strategy that delivers a diversified, low-cost, and low-carbon energy system stands a greater chance of becoming a reality.
Noah Deich
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Francesc Montserrat
First off: I never had the intention to be rude about either Olaf or his work. I recognise his work for what it is, but we have to be fair here: He did his shaking experiments in freshwater, which naturally then rises to be pH 9 and beyond. The farmland experiment fizzled a bit, because the initial groundwater conditions were not measured and as for the biotic acceleration by lugworms, that's my own work. Yes, they increase the dissolution of olivine. But as of yet, I cannot say whether that is by intestinal action, or simply by the fact that they also exhale CO2 and thus increase olivine dissolution. Also I have performed some 10 different shaking/agitation experiments in SEAwater, which is a strongly buffered and complex system so that the theoretical 1:4 relationship does not hold. In fact, from our results it seems that the Mg in the seawater is interfering in the expected alkalinity increase. From all those agitation experiments, the main message is: alkalinity up (but not 1:4), DIC up, Silicate up, Nickel up...but ONLY when olivine is added in high enough amount. The story that Nickel is not an olivine constituent is thus not true. I have a molar Ni:Mg ratio of ca. 1:150 in the olivine I use which comes from the well-known dunite mine in Aheim, Norway.
If we "know" those model results (of Hangx and Spiers) to be off by orders of magnitude, this implies that someone has some solid observations, right ? Where are those published ? Same goes for all the other claims that you stake about the diatom blooms. From your words it seems it is already known what the downstream ecological effects will be. If so...if this is already known and in the white literature, please accept my apologies and let us bundle all this knowledge and step up to some of the larger dredging companies here in The Netherlands or to a govermental body. If there actually already IS a fool-proof method, then we should definitely jump on it !
Please, get me straight: I am NOT trying to discredit Olaf, because I do think that the principle of his idea will work. What I do want to advocate is to go about this a bit more scientific than just coming up with grand plans that no governing body will ever issue permits for because the boundary conditions are not known. If I would get my way, I'd be doing the same as Olaf: trying out these fantastic plans, preferably on larger scales. But the reality is that you need hard bloody numbers to convince those who issue the permits. Again, if that knowledge is already there: I humbly bow my head and ask for apologies. Until then, let's not pretend that we don't know what we don't know, and get our bloody arses working on it !
Francesc
Oliver Tickell
more CO2 but after allowances for impurities etc 1:1 is probably a
better figure.
I would just note: there have been comments that it's not realistic to
have to shift Gt of stuff in order to sequestrate Gt of CO2. But IMHO
that's precisely what you should expect.
Oliver.
Andrew Lockley
Moosdorf et al paper referred to earlier is available on this public link
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/89480347/Moosdorf%20et%20al_ES%26T_2014.pdf
It's about 1:1 by mass CO2:olivine. Theoretically you should get a bit more CO2 but after allowances for impurities etc 1:1 is probably a better figure.
I would just note: there have been comments that it's not realistic to have to shift Gt of stuff in order to sequestrate Gt of CO2. But IMHO that's precisely what you should expect.
Oliver.
On 26/01/2015 16:54, Hawkins, Dave wrote:
Apologies if this has been answered before but what mass of olivine is required per ton of CO2 uptake? Mining an moving bulk material around is not cost free. Is the olivine to CO2 uptake ratio 1/10th that of coal to CO2 release ratio; 1/10000th of that; some other fraction?
Sent from my iPad
On Jan 26, 2015, at 11:47 AM, Oliver Tickell <oliver....@kyoto2.org<mailto:oliver.tickell@kyoto2.org>> wrote:
Nice idea! As Olaf has written (doubtless he can share the paper with us) there are areas of the North Sea with very strong tidal currents that would very effectively tumble any olivine gravel / sand placed on the seabed, so all you have to do is dump the stuff off ships into suitable areas of sea.
Of course you would have to perform experiments tracking the fate of the gravel / sand once put there in order to justify any claims re scale and rates of carbon sequestration - and that's the difficult bit!
Oliver.
On 26/01/2015 10:49, Andrew Lockley wrote:
As regards transport: costings must follow strategy. To consider the civil engineering :
I suggest that spreading on beaches is unnecessary and logistically difficult. Far better to dump the material in shallow coastal waters with active material transport - especially where erosion threatens settlements, such as around much of the UK coast. It will be on the beach soon enough!
Open water deposition can be done with bulk carriers (either split hull or conveyor / auger fed) . Plenty of ships used for transport of minerals, grain, bulk powders, etc are available. A better spread will be less harmful to marine life, so slower deposition rates will be safer. This suggests conveyor or auger carriers .
For transport from the mine, using open river flows (if that was what was implied) seems irrational. Rivers would quickly silt, and local ecosystem effects would be disastrous. In larger rivers, barges would be viable, but most mines will not be near major rivers. Rail to the coast also avoids the need to change transport mode. Again, bulk dry materials are routinely transported by rail, and no innovation is required. Ports also are commonly fed by rail, so only track to the mine head from the nearest railway need be newly laid. In Europe, one is rarely more than a few dozen miles from a railway. A large mine will function for decades, meaning track civils costs are trivial.
I'm happy to help publish on this. I think a paper that goes down to site specifics would be very useful. Engineering publications give clarity and precision to methods - IKEA flat-pack instructions for fixing the climate.
A
Where do you get that number of $100 per ton of CO2 captured from? You come close to that number if you use that silly CCS, capture CO2 from the chimneys of coal-fired power plants, clean it with expensive and poisonous chemicals and then compress it to a few hundred bars and pump it in the subsoil. If you use enhanced weathering of olivine you have
$4 for the mining of bulk rock in large open-pit mines
$2 for milling it to 100 micron
?? for transport and spreading (but ?? is certainly not $94); strategically selecting new mine sites will help to reduce costs of transport.
So when you do some economic calculations, use realistic figures, Olaf Schuiling, R.D. (Olaf)
From: geoengineering@googlegroups.com<mailto:geoengineering@googlegroups.com> [mailto:geoengineering@googlegroups.com<mailto:geoenginee...@googlegroups.com>] On Behalf Of Mike MacCracken
Sent: zondag 25 januari 2015 17:27
To: Greg Rau; Geoengineering
Subject: Re: [geo] Energy Planning and Decarbonization Technology | The Energy Collective
Let me expand my quick description to be 90% cut in human-induced emissions (on top of all the natural sinks), so natural CDR does not count.
And on the proposed removal industry, for $100 per ton of CO2, an awful lot could be done to replace fossil fuels with other sources of energy, or even better efficiency, a huge amount of which could be done for much less, if we’d try. So, nice that there is a CO2 removal approach as a backstop to what the cost of changing energy would be—basically, you are suggesting it should cost less than $100 per ton of CO2 to address the problem. With the new paper in Nature (lead author is a former intern that worked with me at the Climate Institute) that the social cost of CO2 is more than twice the cost of, then it makes huge economic sense to be addressing the problem. So, indeed, let’s get on with it—research plus actually dealing with the issue.
Mike
On 1/24/15, 1:40 PM, "Greg Rau" <gh...@sbcglobal.net<http://gh...@sbcglobal.net>> wrote:
Mike,
If it takes "a 90% cut in CO2 to stop the rise in atmospheric concentration", we are already more than half way there thanks to natural CDR. About 55% of our CO2 emissions are mercifully removed from air via biotic and abiotic processes. So just 35% to go?
As for "CDR replacing the fossil fuel industry", here's one way to do that: http://www.pnas.org/content/110/25/10095.full , but low fossil energy prices (or lack of sufficient C emissions surcharge) are unlikely to make this happen. Certainly agree that we need all hands and ideas on deck in order to stabilize air CO2. But for reasons that continue to baffle me, that is not happening at the policy, decision making, and R&D levels it needs to.
Greg
________________________________
From: Mike MacCracken <mmac...@comcast.net<http://mmac...@comcast.net>>
To: Geoengineering <Geoengineering@googlegroups.com<http://Geoengineering@googlegroups.com>>
Sent: Saturday, January 24, 2015 9:06 AM
Subject: Re: [geo] Energy Planning and Decarbonization Technology | The Energy Collective
Re: [geo] Energy Planning and Decarbonization Technology | The Energy Collective
In terms of an overall strategy, it takes of order a 90% cut in CO2 emissions to stop the rise in the atmospheric concentration, and that has to happen to ultimately stabilize the climate (and it would be better to have the CO2 concentration headed down so we don’t get to the equilibrium warming for the peak concentration we reach (recalling we will be losing sulfate cooling).
Thus, to really stop the warming, CDR in its many forms has to be at least as large as 90% of CO2 emissions (from fossil fuels and biospheric losses). That is a lot of carbon to be taking out of the system by putting olivine into the ocean, biochar, etc. at current global emissions levels (that are still growing). The greater the mitigation (reduction in fossil fuel emissions), the more effective CDR can be—what would really be nice is CDR replacing the fossil fuel industry so ultimately it is as large. I’d suggest this is why it is really important to always be mentioning the importance of all the other ways, in addition to CDR, to be cutting emissions—that is really critical.
Mike
On 1/24/15, 10:19 AM, "Stephen Salter" <S.Sa...@ed.ac.uk<http://S.Sal...@ed.ac.uk>> wrote:
Hi All
Paragraph 2 mentions 'carbon negative' nuclear energy. The carbon emissions from a complete, working nuclear power station are mainly people driving to work. But digging, crushing and processing uranium ore needs energy and releases carbon in inverse proportion to the ore grade. There were some amazingly high grade ores, some once even at the critical point for reaction, but these have been used. Analysis by van Leeuwen concludes that the carbon advantage of present nuclear technology over gas is about three but that the break-even point comes when the ore grade drops to around 100 ppm. This could happen within the life of plant planned now.
As we do not know how to do waste disposal we cannot estimate its carbon emissions. But just because we cannot calculate them does not mean that they are zero.
Stephen
Emeritus Professor of Engineering Design. School of Engineering. University of Edinburgh. Mayfield Road. Edinburgh EH9 3JL. Scotland S.Sa...@ed.ac.uk<http://S.Sal...@ed.ac.uk> Tel +44 (0)131 650 5704<tel:%2B44%20%280%29131%20650%205704> Cell 07795 203 195 WWW.see.ed.ac.uk/~shs<http://WWW.see.ed.ac.uk/%7Eshs> <http://WWW.see.ed.ac.uk/~shs<http://WWW.see.ed.ac.uk/%7Eshs>> YouTube Jamie Taylor Power for Change
On 24/01/2015 14:56, Andrew Lockley wrote:
Poster's note : none of this explains why there's any need for integration. Chucking olivine in the sea seems easier and cheaper than all.
http://theenergycollective.com/noahdeich/2183871/3-ways-carbon-removal-can-help-unlock-promise-all-above-energy-strategy
3 Ways Carbon Removal can Help Unlock the Promise of an All-of-the-Above Energy Strategy
January 24, 2015
“We can’t have an energy strategy for the last century that traps us in the past. We need an energy strategy for the future – an all-of-the-above strategy for the 21st century that develops every source of American-made energy.”– President Barack Obama, March 15, 2012
An all-of-the-above energy strategy holds great potential to make our energy system more secure, inexpensive, and environmentally-friendly. Today’s approach to all-of-the-above, however, is missing a key piece: carbon dioxide removal (“CDR”). Here’s three reasons why CDR is critical for the success of an all-of-the-above energy strategy:
1. CDR helps unite renewable energy and fossil fuel proponents to advance carbon capture and storage (“CCS”) projects. Many renewable energy advocates view CCS as an expensive excuse to enable business-as-usual fossil fuel emissions. But biomass energy with CCS (bio-CCS) projects are essentially “renewable CCS” (previously viewed as an oxymoron), and could be critical for drawing down atmospheric carbon levels in the future. As a result, fossil CCS projects could provide a pathway to “renewable CCS” projects in the future. Because of the similarities in the carbon capture technology for fossil and bioenergy power plants, installing capture technology on fossil power plants today could help reduce technology and regulatory risk for bio-CCS projects in the future. What’s more, bio-CCS projects can share the infrastructure for transporting and storing CO2 with fossil CCS installations. Creating such a pathway to bio-CCS should be feasible through regulations that increase carbon prices and/or biomass co-firing mandates slowly over time, and could help unite renewable energy and CCS proponents to develop policies that enable the development of cost-effective CCS technology.
2. CDR bolsters the environmental case for nuclear power by enabling it to be carbon “negative”: Many environmental advocates say that low-carbon benefits of nuclear power are outweighed by the other environmental and safety concerns of nuclear projects. The development of advanced nuclear projects paired with direct air capture (“DAC”) devices, however, could tip the scales in nuclear’s favor. DAC systems that utilize the heat produced from nuclear power plants can benefit from this “free” source of energy to potentially sequester CO2 directly from the atmosphere cost-effectively. The ability for nuclear + DAC to provide competitively-priced, carbon-negative energy could help convince nuclear power’s skeptics to support further investigation into developing safe and environmentally-friendly advanced nuclear systems.
3. CDR helps enable a cost-effective transition to a decarbonized economy: Today, environmental advocates claim that prolonged use of fossil fuels is mutually exclusive with preventing climate change, and fossil fuel advocates bash renewables as not ready for “prime time” — i.e. unable to deliver the economic/development benefits of inexpensive fossil energy. To resolve this logjam, indirect methods of decarbonization — such as a portfolio of low-cost CDR solutions — could enable fossil companies both to meet steep emission reduction targets and provide low-cost fossil energy until direct decarbonization through renewable energy systems become more cost-competitive (especially in difficult to decarbonize areas such as long-haul trucking and aviation).
Of course, discussion about the potential for CDR to enable an all-of-the-above energy strategy is moot unless we invest in developing a portfolio of CDR approaches. But if we do make this investment in CDR, an all-of-the-above energy strategy that delivers a diversified, low-cost, and low-carbon energy system stands a greater chance of becoming a reality.
Noah Deich
Noah Deich is a professional in the carbon removal field with six years of clean energy and sustainability consulting experience. Noah currently works part-time as a consultant for the Virgin Earth Challenge, is pursuing his MBA from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, and writes a blog dedicated to carbon removal (carbonremoval.wordpress.com<http://carbonremoval.wordpress.com> <http://carbonremoval.wordpress.com <http://carbonremoval.wordpress.com/> > )
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Hawkins, Dave
Burning a ton of coal releases about 3 tons of CO2.
Unless I am missing something, it would take a 3 tons of olivine to handle the CO2 released by each ton of coal. Assuming mining and transport costs are similar for the two minerals, olivine would not be a cheap option
Typed on tiny keyboard. Caveat lector.
Andrew Lockley
Those assumptions aren't reasonable. Olivine can reacted with CO2 anywhere the conditions are favourable. There's also a lot of it, so you can mine near suitable use locations.
Unlike coal, which needs to be pure, it doesn't matter if olivine is mixed up with other stuff. It also doesn't catch fire or vent methane.
It's better to compare olivine to mining gravel TBH.
A
Hawkins, Dave
Sent from my iPad
On Jan 26, 2015, at 1:51 PM, Andrew Lockley <andrew....@gmail.com<mailto:andrew....@gmail.com>> wrote:
Those assumptions aren't reasonable. Olivine can reacted with CO2 anywhere the conditions are favourable. There's also a lot of it, so you can mine near suitable use locations.
Unlike coal, which needs to be pure, it doesn't matter if olivine is mixed up with other stuff. It also doesn't catch fire or vent methane.
It's better to compare olivine to mining gravel TBH.
A
Thanks Oliver.
Burning a ton of coal releases about 3 tons of CO2.
Unless I am missing something, it would take a 3 tons of olivine to handle the CO2 released by each ton of coal. Assuming mining and transport costs are similar for the two minerals, olivine would not be a cheap option
Typed on tiny keyboard. Caveat lector.
>
> It's about 1:1 by mass CO2:olivine. Theoretically you should get a bit more CO2 but after allowances for impurities etc 1:1 is probably a better figure.
>
> I would just note: there have been comments that it's not realistic to have to shift Gt of stuff in order to sequestrate Gt of CO2. But IMHO that's precisely what you should expect.
>
> Oliver.
>
>> On 26/01/2015 16:54, Hawkins, Dave wrote:
>> Apologies if this has been answered before but what mass of olivine is required per ton of CO2 uptake? Mining an moving bulk material around is not cost free. Is the olivine to CO2 uptake ratio 1/10th that of coal to CO2 release ratio; 1/10000th of that; some other fraction?
>>
>> Sent from my iPad
>>
>>
>> Nice idea! As Olaf has written (doubtless he can share the paper with us) there are areas of the North Sea with very strong tidal currents that would very effectively tumble any olivine gravel / sand placed on the seabed, so all you have to do is dump the stuff off ships into suitable areas of sea.
>>
>> Of course you would have to perform experiments tracking the fate of the gravel / sand once put there in order to justify any claims re scale and rates of carbon sequestration - and that's the difficult bit!
>>
>> Oliver.
>>
>> On 26/01/2015 10:49, Andrew Lockley wrote:
>>
>> As regards transport: costings must follow strategy. To consider the civil engineering :
>>
>> I suggest that spreading on beaches is unnecessary and logistically difficult. Far better to dump the material in shallow coastal waters with active material transport - especially where erosion threatens settlements, such as around much of the UK coast. It will be on the beach soon enough!
>>
>> Open water deposition can be done with bulk carriers (either split hull or conveyor / auger fed) . Plenty of ships used for transport of minerals, grain, bulk powders, etc are available. A better spread will be less harmful to marine life, so slower deposition rates will be safer. This suggests conveyor or auger carriers .
>>
>> For transport from the mine, using open river flows (if that was what was implied) seems irrational. Rivers would quickly silt, and local ecosystem effects would be disastrous. In larger rivers, barges would be viable, but most mines will not be near major rivers. Rail to the coast also avoids the need to change transport mode. Again, bulk dry materials are routinely transported by rail, and no innovation is required. Ports also are commonly fed by rail, so only track to the mine head from the nearest railway need be newly laid. In Europe, one is rarely more than a few dozen miles from a railway. A large mine will function for decades, meaning track civils costs are trivial.
>>
>> I'm happy to help publish on this. I think a paper that goes down to site specifics would be very useful. Engineering publications give clarity and precision to methods - IKEA flat-pack instructions for fixing the climate.
>>
>> A
>> Where do you get that number of $100 per ton of CO2 captured from? You come close to that number if you use that silly CCS, capture CO2 from the chimneys of coal-fired power plants, clean it with expensive and poisonous chemicals and then compress it to a few hundred bars and pump it in the subsoil. If you use enhanced weathering of olivine you have
>> $4 for the mining of bulk rock in large open-pit mines
>> $2 for milling it to 100 micron
>> ?? for transport and spreading (but ?? is certainly not $94); strategically selecting new mine sites will help to reduce costs of transport.
>> So when you do some economic calculations, use realistic figures, Olaf Schuiling, R.D. (Olaf)
>>
>> Sent: zondag 25 januari 2015 17:27
>> To: Greg Rau; Geoengineering
>> Subject: Re: [geo] Energy Planning and Decarbonization Technology | The Energy Collective
>>
>> Let me expand my quick description to be 90% cut in human-induced emissions (on top of all the natural sinks), so natural CDR does not count.
>>
>> And on the proposed removal industry, for $100 per ton of CO2, an awful lot could be done to replace fossil fuels with other sources of energy, or even better efficiency, a huge amount of which could be done for much less, if we’d try. So, nice that there is a CO2 removal approach as a backstop to what the cost of changing energy would be—basically, you are suggesting it should cost less than $100 per ton of CO2 to address the problem. With the new paper in Nature (lead author is a former intern that worked with me at the Climate Institute) that the social cost of CO2 is more than twice the cost of, then it makes huge economic sense to be addressing the problem. So, indeed, let’s get on with it—research plus actually dealing with the issue.
>>
>> Mike
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 1/24/15, 1:40 PM, "Greg Rau" <gh...@sbcglobal.net<mailto:gh...@sbcglobal.net><http://gh...@sbcglobal.net>> wrote:
>> Mike,
>> If it takes "a 90% cut in CO2 to stop the rise in atmospheric concentration", we are already more than half way there thanks to natural CDR. About 55% of our CO2 emissions are mercifully removed from air via biotic and abiotic processes. So just 35% to go?
>> As for "CDR replacing the fossil fuel industry", here's one way to do that: http://www.pnas.org/content/110/25/10095.full , but low fossil energy prices (or lack of sufficient C emissions surcharge) are unlikely to make this happen. Certainly agree that we need all hands and ideas on deck in order to stabilize air CO2. But for reasons that continue to baffle me, that is not happening at the policy, decision making, and R&D levels it needs to.
>> Greg
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ________________________________
>> To: Geoengineering <Geoengi...@googlegroups.com<mailto:Geoengi...@googlegroups.com><http://Geoengi...@googlegroups.com>>
>> Subject: Re: [geo] Energy Planning and Decarbonization Technology | The Energy Collective
>>
>>
>>
>> Re: [geo] Energy Planning and Decarbonization Technology | The Energy Collective
>> In terms of an overall strategy, it takes of order a 90% cut in CO2 emissions to stop the rise in the atmospheric concentration, and that has to happen to ultimately stabilize the climate (and it would be better to have the CO2 concentration headed down so we don’t get to the equilibrium warming for the peak concentration we reach (recalling we will be losing sulfate cooling).
>>
>> Thus, to really stop the warming, CDR in its many forms has to be at least as large as 90% of CO2 emissions (from fossil fuels and biospheric losses). That is a lot of carbon to be taking out of the system by putting olivine into the ocean, biochar, etc. at current global emissions levels (that are still growing). The greater the mitigation (reduction in fossil fuel emissions), the more effective CDR can be—what would really be nice is CDR replacing the fossil fuel industry so ultimately it is as large. I’d suggest this is why it is really important to always be mentioning the importance of all the other ways, in addition to CDR, to be cutting emissions—that is really critical.
>>
>> Mike
>>
>>
>> On 1/24/15, 10:19 AM, "Stephen Salter" <S.Sa...@ed.ac.uk<mailto:S.Sa...@ed.ac.uk><http://S.Sa...@ed.ac.uk>> wrote:
>>
>> Hi All
>>
>> Paragraph 2 mentions 'carbon negative' nuclear energy. The carbon emissions from a complete, working nuclear power station are mainly people driving to work. But digging, crushing and processing uranium ore needs energy and releases carbon in inverse proportion to the ore grade. There were some amazingly high grade ores, some once even at the critical point for reaction, but these have been used. Analysis by van Leeuwen concludes that the carbon advantage of present nuclear technology over gas is about three but that the break-even point comes when the ore grade drops to around 100 ppm. This could happen within the life of plant planned now.
>>
>> As we do not know how to do waste disposal we cannot estimate its carbon emissions. But just because we cannot calculate them does not mean that they are zero.
>>
>> Stephen
>>
>>
>>
>> On 24/01/2015 14:56, Andrew Lockley wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Poster's note : none of this explains why there's any need for integration. Chucking olivine in the sea seems easier and cheaper than all.
>>
>>
>> http://theenergycollective.com/noahdeich/2183871/3-ways-carbon-removal-can-help-unlock-promise-all-above-energy-strategy
>>
>>
>> 3 Ways Carbon Removal can Help Unlock the Promise of an All-of-the-Above Energy Strategy
>>
>>
>> January 24, 2015
>>
>>
>>
>> “We can’t have an energy strategy for the last century that traps us in the past. We need an energy strategy for the future – an all-of-the-above strategy for the 21st century that develops every source of American-made energy.”– President Barack Obama, March 15, 2012
>>
>>
>> An all-of-the-above energy strategy holds great potential to make our energy system more secure, inexpensive, and environmentally-friendly. Today’s approach to all-of-the-above, however, is missing a key piece: carbon dioxide removal (“CDR”). Here’s three reasons why CDR is critical for the success of an all-of-the-above energy strategy:
>>
>>
>> 1. CDR helps unite renewable energy and fossil fuel proponents to advance carbon capture and storage (“CCS”) projects. Many renewable energy advocates view CCS as an expensive excuse to enable business-as-usual fossil fuel emissions. But biomass energy with CCS (bio-CCS) projects are essentially “renewable CCS” (previously viewed as an oxymoron), and could be critical for drawing down atmospheric carbon levels in the future. As a result, fossil CCS projects could provide a pathway to “renewable CCS” projects in the future. Because of the similarities in the carbon capture technology for fossil and bioenergy power plants, installing capture technology on fossil power plants today could help reduce technology and regulatory risk for bio-CCS projects in the future. What’s more, bio-CCS projects can share the infrastructure for transporting and storing CO2 with fossil CCS installations. Creating such a pathway to bio-CCS should be feasible through regulations that increase carbon prices and/or biomass co-firing mandates slowly over time, and could help unite renewable energy and CCS proponents to develop policies that enable the development of cost-effective CCS technology.
>>
>>
>> 2. CDR bolsters the environmental case for nuclear power by enabling it to be carbon “negative”: Many environmental advocates say that low-carbon benefits of nuclear power are outweighed by the other environmental and safety concerns of nuclear projects. The development of advanced nuclear projects paired with direct air capture (“DAC”) devices, however, could tip the scales in nuclear’s favor. DAC systems that utilize the heat produced from nuclear power plants can benefit from this “free” source of energy to potentially sequester CO2 directly from the atmosphere cost-effectively. The ability for nuclear + DAC to provide competitively-priced, carbon-negative energy could help convince nuclear power’s skeptics to support further investigation into developing safe and environmentally-friendly advanced nuclear systems.
>>
>>
>> 3. CDR helps enable a cost-effective transition to a decarbonized economy: Today, environmental advocates claim that prolonged use of fossil fuels is mutually exclusive with preventing climate change, and fossil fuel advocates bash renewables as not ready for “prime time” — i.e. unable to deliver the economic/development benefits of inexpensive fossil energy. To resolve this logjam, indirect methods of decarbonization — such as a portfolio of low-cost CDR solutions — could enable fossil companies both to meet steep emission reduction targets and provide low-cost fossil energy until direct decarbonization through renewable energy systems become more cost-competitive (especially in difficult to decarbonize areas such as long-haul trucking and aviation).
>>
>>
>> Of course, discussion about the potential for CDR to enable an all-of-the-above energy strategy is moot unless we invest in developing a portfolio of CDR approaches. But if we do make this investment in CDR, an all-of-the-above energy strategy that delivers a diversified, low-cost, and low-carbon energy system stands a greater chance of becoming a reality.
>>
>>
>> Noah Deich
>>
>>
>>
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Oliver Tickell
Well done with your own research on the lugworms BTW. In a way it does not matter, though it's clearly interesting, what the precise mechanism is - the important thing is that the biotic weathering enhancement does indeed take place.
Two things are needed: 1) some very well thought out and effective experimental designs, and 2) the money to carry those experiments out.
Re the permits, one thing we do know is that the experiments are not in any sense 'dangerous'. This stuff is naturally occurring and widespread in the environment anyway. The 'worst case' is really just that it does very little at all!
Oliver.
Francesc Montserrat
As for your last three sentences, and that's my main point: we/you don't know that ! Acting like we do, will not make it so...
Francesc
Mike MacCracken
Mike
From: Mike MacCracken <mmac...@comcast.net <http://mmac...@comcast.net> >
To: Geoengineering <Geoengi...@googlegroups.com <http://Geoengi...@googlegroups.com> >
Sent: Saturday, January 24, 2015 9:06 AM
Subject: Re: [geo] Energy Planning and Decarbonization Technology | The Energy Collective
Re: [geo] Energy Planning and Decarbonization Technology | The Energy Collective
In terms of an overall strategy, it takes of order a 90% cut in CO2 emissions to stop the rise in the atmospheric concentration, and that has to happen to ultimately stabilize the climate (and it would be better to have the CO2 concentration headed down so we don’t get to the equilibrium warming for the peak concentration we reach (recalling we will be losing sulfate cooling).
Thus, to really stop the warming, CDR in its many forms has to be at least as large as 90% of CO2 emissions (from fossil fuels and biospheric losses). That is a lot of carbon to be taking out of the system by putting olivine into the ocean, biochar, etc. at current global emissions levels (that are still growing). The greater the mitigation (reduction in fossil fuel emissions), the more effective CDR can be—what would really be nice is CDR replacing the fossil fuel industry so ultimately it is as large. I’d suggest this is why it is really important to always be mentioning the importance of all the other ways, in addition to CDR, to be cutting emissions—that is really critical.
Mike
On 1/24/15, 10:19 AM, "Stephen Salter" <S.Sa...@ed.ac.uk <http://S.Sa...@ed.ac.uk> > wrote:
Hi All
Paragraph 2 mentions 'carbon negative' nuclear energy. The carbon emissions from a complete, working nuclear power station are mainly people driving to work. But digging, crushing and processing uranium ore needs energy and releases carbon in inverse proportion to the ore grade. There were some amazingly high grade ores, some once even at the critical point for reaction, but these have been used. Analysis by van Leeuwen concludes that the carbon advantage of present nuclear technology over gas is about three but that the break-even point comes when the ore grade drops to around 100 ppm. This could happen within the life of plant planned now.
As we do not know how to do waste disposal we cannot estimate its carbon emissions. But just because we cannot calculate them does not mean that they are zero.
Stephen
Emeritus Professor of Engineering Design. School of Engineering. University of Edinburgh. Mayfield Road. Edinburgh EH9 3JL. Scotland S.Sa...@ed.ac.uk <http://S.Sa...@ed.ac.uk> Tel +44 (0)131 650 5704 <tel:%2B44%20%280%29131%20650%205704> Cell 07795 203 195 WWW.see.ed.ac.uk/~shs <http://WWW.see.ed.ac.uk/~shs> <http://WWW.see.ed.ac.uk/~shs> YouTube Jamie Taylor Power for Change
On 24/01/2015 14:56, Andrew Lockley wrote:
Poster's note : none of this explains why there's any need for integration. Chucking olivine in the sea seems easier and cheaper than all.
http://theenergycollective.com/noahdeich/2183871/3-ways-carbon-removal-can-help-unlock-promise-all-above-energy-strategy
3 Ways Carbon Removal can Help Unlock the Promise of an All-of-the-Above Energy Strategy
January 24, 2015
“We can’t have an energy strategy for the last century that traps us in the past. We need an energy strategy for the future – an all-of-the-above strategy for the 21st century that develops every source of American-made energy.”– President Barack Obama, March 15, 2012
An all-of-the-above energy strategy holds great potential to make our energy system more secure, inexpensive, and environmentally-friendly. Today’s approach to all-of-the-above, however, is missing a key piece: carbon dioxide removal (“CDR”). Here’s three reasons why CDR is critical for the success of an all-of-the-above energy strategy:
1. CDR helps unite renewable energy and fossil fuel proponents to advance carbon capture and storage (“CCS”) projects. Many renewable energy advocates view CCS as an expensive excuse to enable business-as-usual fossil fuel emissions. But biomass energy with CCS (bio-CCS) projects are essentially “renewable CCS” (previously viewed as an oxymoron), and could be critical for drawing down atmospheric carbon levels in the future. As a result, fossil CCS projects could provide a pathway to “renewable CCS” projects in the future. Because of the similarities in the carbon capture technology for fossil and bioenergy power plants, installing capture technology on fossil power plants today could help reduce technology and regulatory risk for bio-CCS projects in the future. What’s more, bio-CCS projects can share the infrastructure for transporting and storing CO2 with fossil CCS installations. Creating such a pathway to bio-CCS should be feasible through regulations that increase carbon prices and/or biomass co-firing mandates slowly over time, and could help unite renewable energy and CCS proponents to develop policies that enable the development of cost-effective CCS technology.
2. CDR bolsters the environmental case for nuclear power by enabling it to be carbon “negative”: Many environmental advocates say that low-carbon benefits of nuclear power are outweighed by the other environmental and safety concerns of nuclear projects. The development of advanced nuclear projects paired with direct air capture (“DAC”) devices, however, could tip the scales in nuclear’s favor. DAC systems that utilize the heat produced from nuclear power plants can benefit from this “free” source of energy to potentially sequester CO2 directly from the atmosphere cost-effectively. The ability for nuclear + DAC to provide competitively-priced, carbon-negative energy could help convince nuclear power’s skeptics to support further investigation into developing safe and environmentally-friendly advanced nuclear systems.
3. CDR helps enable a cost-effective transition to a decarbonized economy: Today, environmental advocates claim that prolonged use of fossil fuels is mutually exclusive with preventing climate change, and fossil fuel advocates bash renewables as not ready for “prime time” — i.e. unable to deliver the economic/development benefits of inexpensive fossil energy. To resolve this logjam, indirect methods of decarbonization — such as a portfolio of low-cost CDR solutions — could enable fossil companies both to meet steep emission reduction targets and provide low-cost fossil energy until direct decarbonization through renewable energy systems become more cost-competitive (especially in difficult to decarbonize areas such as long-haul trucking and aviation).
Of course, discussion about the potential for CDR to enable an all-of-the-above energy strategy is moot unless we invest in developing a portfolio of CDR approaches. But if we do make this investment in CDR, an all-of-the-above energy strategy that delivers a diversified, low-cost, and low-carbon energy system stands a greater chance of becoming a reality.
Noah Deich
Noah Deich is a professional in the carbon removal field with six years of clean energy and sustainability consulting experience. Noah currently works part-time as a consultant for the Virgin Earth Challenge, is pursuing his MBA from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, and writes a blog dedicated to carbon removal (carbonremoval.wordpress.com <http://carbonremoval.wordpress.com> <http://carbonremoval.wordpress.com <http://carbonremoval.wordpress.com/> > )
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Ken Caldeira
Ken Caldeira
Carnegie Institution for Science
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Bill Stahl
Assuming a carbon price were in effect, could coastal governments and landowners offset the cost of beach enhancement & sand replacement with CO2-sequestering sand? It would not have to optimally efficient to be substantial.
On the face of it, getting permitted to use olivine on beaches seems a huge hurdle, but there is a already a tremendous amount of stirring-up of shallow coastal waters, budgeted and permitted. Transportation has already been arranged. Based on my familiarity of the Jersey Shore, coastal towns throw enough money at replacing sand that will quickly erode away, so why not put it to some long-term use? (Perhaps Atlantic City's unemployed croupiers can be sent out stirring the beaches). I have no idea how to calculate the potential scale, but perhaps this has already been done.
Convince homeowners' associations to link CDR to property values and you've harnessed an unstoppable force...
And is dredging relevant here? Talk about mass-handling.
Andrew Lockley
To paraphrase from an off-list exchange :
We could assume that olivine mining is 10x cheaper than coal mining, as there's little or no overburden
We can assume that transport is also 10x cheaper, as haul distances on land and sea are far shorter and there's no 'final mile'
But 1 tonne coal makes 3 tonnes CO2, and olivine and CO2 match tonne for tonne - so the costs overall are 1/3 of that of bulk coal. Which still isn't cheap.
A
Andrew Lockley
Yes, placing olivine accurately is almost the exact equivalent of vacuum dredging, but in reverse.
You could dump it with a huge Panamax class vessel, but it you'd end up with the drop too far from the shore, and probably too bunched up, too.
With a smaller ship, like a dredger, you'd get the distribution you need. Added to which, the materials handling costs are going to be almost exactly right, because with dredging you're pulling material out of the sea in an arbitrary but nearshore location, and moving it to the nearest port with a rail head where you can get rid of it.
It's olivine backwards.
A
Mike MacCracken
This is why we have to get global emissions down down, down and then also be doing something like this.
Mike
On 1/26/15, 5:36 PM, "Andrew Lockley" <andrew....@gmail.com> wrote:
Greg Rau
From: Mike MacCracken <mmac...@comcast.net>
To: Geoengineering <Geoengi...@googlegroups.com>
Cc: Andrew Lockley <andrew....@gmail.com>; Bill Stahl <bsta...@gmail.com>
Sent: Monday, January 26, 2015 5:09 PM
Subject: Re: [geo] Re: Energy Planning and Decarbonization Technology | The Energy Collective
Andrew Lockley
Surely it's pretty simple. It's a cash and risk trade off.
CCS is expensive, at about 10-30% of electricity costs. It also doesn't work on historic emissions, or distributed emissions, and it's significantly more expensive on biofuels/hydrocarbons than on coal. There are also non trivial safety concerns about reservoir stability.
Olivine works on all emissions, everywhere. The only risk is of smothering a few starfish, and shifting local ocean chemistry if it's too concentrated.
Olivine is, as we've just demonstrated, probably around a third of the cost of bulk coal, which is way cheaper than the terminal energy cost anyhow. Maybe it's 15pc on fuel bills? Probably cheaper than peak load renewables at current prices.
So, which is cheaper and safer? My money is on the olivine.
A
Schuiling, R.D. (Olaf)
Strange that some people prefer to stick with a model that is so obviously useless as a representation of reality, Olaf Schuiling
From: Schuiling, R.D. (Olaf)
Sent: dinsdag 27 januari 2015 10:04
To: 'francesc....@nioz.nl'
Subject: RE: [geo] Energy Planning and Decarbonization Technology | The Energy Collective
Come on, Francesc, you can think too. Their model implicitly assumes that grains will never move on the beach, and that water will stay immobile during 2000 years. Besides they assume the numbers for rates of weathering such as were established in clean laboratories without any biotic influences. This puts their model miles out of reality, and it is not anecdotes, we have looked at rates of reaction in flume experiments and in imitated surf, and they are several ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE larger than what they assumed. Their assumption that silica crusts will form and make further dissolution impossible is completely nonsense. I have done many experiments with olivine grains in a moving medium, and NEVER had any problem of silica crusts forming. No doubt that their mathematics is correct, but their assumptions are from a completely unrealistic phantasy world, Olaf Schuiling
Schuiling, R.D. (Olaf)
Schuiling, R.D. (Olaf)
Greenland has indeed large olivine rock deposits, but the olivine on Iceland is mainly present as olivine “phenocrysts” (crystals that form when a basic magma is cooling). This means that the bulk rock (basalt) is far from being pure iolivine. Even so, when it has to be crushed somewhere anyhow, it will help in capturing CO2, Olaf Schuiling
From: Michael Trachtenberg [mailto:micky...@gmail.com]
Sent: maandag 26 januari 2015 23:48
To: andrew....@gmail.com
Cc: Schuiling, R.D. (Olaf); geoengineering; Boer, P.L. de (Poppe)
Subject: Re: [geo] Energy Planning and Decarbonization Technology | The Energy Collective
Iceland & Greenland are chock-a-block with olivine as is much of Washington state, and innumerable other sites worldwide.
It could be mined adjacent to the ocean and deposited locally to minimize cost and infrastructure.
Mike
On Jan 25, 2015, at 8:47 AM, Andrew Lockley <andrew....@gmail.com> wrote:
Someone needs to do a proper infrastructure study of olivine to more comprehensively rebut the "contraptionist" arguments of some in the CDR community.
Where are the mines?
How many railcars?
At what scale are the crushing machines?
Will we distribute to beaches with lorries, or shallow seas with ships (and let longshore drift do the work)?
What environmental monitoring spend is needed?
Can this be used for a coastal defence win win?
Etc.A
On 25 Jan 2015 13:23, "Schuiling, R.D. (Olaf)" <R.D.Sc...@uu.nl> wrote:
Of course I support Andrew in this view, although chucking it into the sea is maybe a too simplistic view. My preference is to spread (coarse-grained, so little crushing energy spent) olivine on beaches, where the surf will crush them by grain collisions and by scraping them against each other. In a short while (in our experiments it took 10 days to see already a large effect, the water became opaque milky white from all the micron-sized slivers that were knocked off). A mixture of coarser and finer grit is more effective than a single grain size, as in society, the big ones crush the smaller ones. The surf is the biggest ballmill on earth, and it is free of charge! An extension of this method is to discharge them in shallow seas with strong bottom currents. There are many sea bottoms covered with pebbles, and there the same effects of crushing can be seen. To avoid misunderstanding, the sea will not become opaque white, slivers that form are washed away by the next wave. Within those ten day experiments, we observed that many slivers had already been transformed to brucite, (Mg(OH)2, known to carbonate very fast, and the pH of the water had already been raised considerably. And yes, of course, it will take a lot of olivine, which is fortunately the most abundant mineral on earth, Olaf Schuiling
From: geoengi...@googlegroups.com [mailto:geoengi...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Andrew Lockley
Sent: zaterdag 24 januari 2015 15:56
To: geoengineering
Subject: [geo] Energy Planning and Decarbonization Technology | The Energy Collective
Poster's note : none of this explains why there's any need for integration. Chucking olivine in the sea seems easier and cheaper than all.
3 Ways Carbon Removal can Help Unlock the Promise of an All-of-the-Above Energy Strategy
January 24, 2015
“We can’t have an energy strategy for the last century that traps us in the past. We need an energy strategy for the future – an all-of-the-above strategy for the 21st century that develops every source of American-made energy.”– President Barack Obama, March 15, 2012
An all-of-the-above energy strategy holds great potential to make our energy system more secure, inexpensive, and environmentally-friendly. Today’s approach to all-of-the-above, however, is missing a key piece: carbon dioxide removal (“CDR”). Here’s three reasons why CDR is critical for the success of an all-of-the-above energy strategy:
1. CDR helps unite renewable energy and fossil fuel proponents to advance carbon capture and storage (“CCS”) projects. Many renewable energy advocates view CCS as an expensive excuse to enable business-as-usual fossil fuel emissions. But biomass energy with CCS (bio-CCS) projects are essentially “renewable CCS” (previously viewed as an oxymoron), and could be critical for drawing down atmospheric carbon levels in the future. As a result, fossil CCS projects could provide a pathway to “renewable CCS” projects in the future. Because of the similarities in the carbon capture technology for fossil and bioenergy power plants, installing capture technology on fossil power plants today could help reduce technology and regulatory risk for bio-CCS projects in the future. What’s more, bio-CCS projects can share the infrastructure for transporting and storing CO2 with fossil CCS installations. Creating such a pathway to bio-CCS should be feasible through regulations that increase carbon prices and/or biomass co-firing mandates slowly over time, and could help unite renewable energy and CCS proponents to develop policies that enable the development of cost-effective CCS technology.
2. CDR bolsters the environmental case for nuclear power by enabling it to be carbon “negative”: Many environmental advocates say that low-carbon benefits of nuclear power are outweighed by the other environmental and safety concerns of nuclear projects. The development of advanced nuclear projects paired with direct air capture (“DAC”) devices, however, could tip the scales in nuclear’s favor. DAC systems that utilize the heat produced from nuclear power plants can benefit from this “free” source of energy to potentially sequester CO2 directly from the atmosphere cost-effectively. The ability for nuclear + DAC to provide competitively-priced, carbon-negative energy could help convince nuclear power’s skeptics to support further investigation into developing safe and environmentally-friendly advanced nuclear systems.
3. CDR helps enable a cost-effective transition to a decarbonized economy: Today, environmental advocates claim that prolonged use of fossil fuels is mutually exclusive with preventing climate change, and fossil fuel advocates bash renewables as not ready for “prime time” — i.e. unable to deliver the economic/development benefits of inexpensive fossil energy. To resolve this logjam, indirect methods of decarbonization — such as a portfolio of low-cost CDR solutions — could enable fossil companies both to meet steep emission reduction targets and provide low-cost fossil energy until direct decarbonization through renewable energy systems become more cost-competitive (especially in difficult to decarbonize areas such as long-haul trucking and aviation).
Of course, discussion about the potential for CDR to enable an all-of-the-above energy strategy is moot unless we invest in developing a portfolio of CDR approaches. But if we do make this investment in CDR, an all-of-the-above energy strategy that delivers a diversified, low-cost, and low-carbon energy system stands a greater chance of becoming a reality.
Noah Deich
Noah Deich is a professional in the carbon removal field with six years of clean energy and sustainability consulting experience. Noah currently works part-time as a consultant for the Virgin Earth Challenge, is pursuing his MBA from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, and writes a blog dedicated to carbon removal (carbonremoval.wordpress.com)
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Parminder Singh
Colleagues and I have tried a no. of UK universities if they were interested to run some beach tests and talked to Crown Estates to get their permission.
Unfortunately it was all uphill and did not get their support.
Incidently there are forsterite olivine marine deposits in the Inner Hebrides Islands of Rhum and Skye (West of Scotland).
Perhaps it is possible to make some observation on the weathering of the sediments close to the coasts.
Info on these islands can be useful if anyone knows where to get them.
Parminder
On Saturday, January 24, 2015 at 10:56:16 PM UTC+8, andrewjlockley wrote:
Bhaskar M V
ABSTRACT
Marine diatoms require dissolved silicate to form an external shell, and their growth becomes Si-limited when the atomic ratio of silicate to dissolved inorganic nitrogen (Si:DIN) approaches 1:1, also known as the “Redfield ratio.” Fundamental changes in the diatom-to-zooplankton-to-higher trophic level food web should occur when this ratio falls below 1:1 and the proportion of diatoms in the phytoplankton community is reduced. We quantitatively substantiate these predictions by using a variety of data from the Mississippi River continental shelf, a system in which the Si:DIN loading ratio has declined from around 3:1 to 1:1 during this century because of land-use practices in the watershed. ...."
Si : N ration can be restored to 3 : 1 using Olivine in Mississippi River and Gulf of Mexico Coast.
There are now about 500 dead zones along the coasts of developed countries / regions - USA, Europe, China, Japan, etc.
Summary
During the last few decades, anthropogenic inputs of excess nutrients into the coastal environment, from agricultural activities and wastewater, have dramatically increased the occurrence of coastal eutrophication and hypoxia. Worldwide there are now more than 500 ‘dead zones’ covering 250,000 km sq. with the number doubling every ten years since the 1960s."
Dead Zones indicate decline in Oxygen, therefore an increase in CO2.
This can be reversed by growing Diatoms by silica fertilization using Olivine, in addition to Iron and other micro nutrients to balance the increase in N and P flow down rivers.
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Schuiling, R.D. (Olaf)
Well, some olivine dust has caused a little storm, happy to see that it is taken seriously. Some people are asking questions for which some answers are contained in the paper that I sent you a few days ago.
(A natural strategy against climate change). Several of the other questions I recognize, but are beyond my capacities to answer, any help is welcome. One fact is clear, fortunately. The Earth’s mantle is almost completely composed of olivine, thanks to plate tectonics, we won’t have to mine it at 30 km depth. Huge slabs have been pushed up, and are now at the surface, often with a thin cover of their own weathering crust, so there is more available than we will ever need to solve the problems of climate change and ocean acidification. I am not implying that we shouldn’t use other solutions as well.
I am happy to see that you all realize that the huge CO2 problem cannot be solved with a teaspoon of some miracle stuff, Olaf Schuiling
--
Mike MacCracken
Mike
Andrew Lockley
Can anyone shed any light on whether there are already large opencast mining operations in the world with significant amounts of olivine-rich overburden?
If that's the case, they'll already have all the necessary mining and transport equipment in place. Furthermore, dumping the overburden is a massive headache for miners. CDR could solve this.
Getting rid of overburden olivine by marine dumping for CDR could be like the EOR of the oil industry.
Combining it with erosion reduction would make this a win-win operation.
Any coal mine with a 3:1 ratio of overburden to coal becomes carbon neutral, and metal ore mines become massively carbon negative.
A
Schuiling, R.D. (Olaf)
There are a fairly large number of open-pit chromite mines which occur in olivine rocks (dunites). This means that they have large dumps of crushed dunites, which provide of course even cheaper olivine to use than mining fresh rocks. The same holds for magnesite mines, the magnesite is in veins in olivine rock. The one I know best is in northern Greece, and there are at least 10 million tons of crushed olivine rock on the tailings. The olivine mines in Norway, notably Aheim are practically free of overburden (no climate for laterite formation, and fairly steep topography), Olaf Schuiling
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Schuiling, R.D. (Olaf)
One slight mistake, in the sentence I quote the word “from”(misspelled form) should read to. Mineral weathering is not around $200 but around $20, and is probably the most cost-effective CDR, Olaf schuiling
…money to go forward with mineral weathering seems to me a diversion of money form the most cost effective approaches).
--
Schuiling, R.D. (Olaf)
The Greek magnesite mine is close to the shore, but you are right that the location for beach replenishment is poor, but to load it in ships and transport it elsewhere it is not bad. The olivine mine Aheim in Norway is on the side of a deep fjord, they can put their production directly from the mine into the ship. Another olivine mine is in NW Spain, the PASEK mine, some 8 km from the nearest port. It could easily supply threatened beaches in Portugal, France, England, Belgium and the Netherlands. In the Netherlands the beach replenishment requires 25 million tons of sand annually. Sorry for this very incomplete answer, Olaf Schuiling
From: Andrew Lockley [mailto:andrew....@gmail.com]
Sent: woensdag 28 januari 2015 11:04
To: Schuiling, R.D. (Olaf)
Subject: RE: [geo] Re: Energy Planning and Decarbonization Technology | The Energy Collective
So which mines are nearest to beaches that need support, and which have the finest crushed rock? Where is wave action strongest? Likely not Greece!
Please post your response to the list
A
Oliver Tickell
As I recall there are nickel mines in Canada that have released large volumes of olivine-rich overburden.
Also SA diamond mines produce a lot of kimberlite, also olivine rich. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kimberlite
Oliver.
Parminder Singh
To get good impacting or collision on a set of sizes such as 25mm we need to have a larger counterpart in the order of 10 times
i.e. 250mm which are typically the size of cobbles. Cobble beaches are a few.
Parminder
On Saturday, January 24, 2015 at 10:56:16 PM UTC+8, andrewjlockley wrote:
Renaud de_Richter
Some studies (Dessert C, 2001) suggest that the rate of chemical weathering of Indian Deccan Traps (21 - 63 t/km2/yr) and associated atmospheric CO2 consumption (0.58 - 2.54 X 106 mol C/km2/yr) are relatively high compared to those linked to other basaltic regions. The Deccan Traps erosion and weathering can be responsible for a 20% reduction of atmospheric CO2, accompanied by a global cooling of 0.55°C, and has therefore produced a net CO2 sink on geologic time scales.
The following geoengineering idea was proposed in 2010 by Bonnelle et al, in a book (21 Unusual Renewable Energies for 21st Century, Ellipses Ed.). The following translation from French is approximate:
“Another line of research is to put into contact basalt powder with CO2-rich flue gas, free or dissolved in water. Knowing that we must treat billion tons to have an effect on the climate, pounding basalt in this sole purpose seems an unrealistic project. But, as proposed all along this book, we can also ensure that this operation comes in synergy of a clean energy manufacturing operation, or if basalt powder can be a byproduct.
Powder, it is also sawdust. Is there an industrial goal on extensive sawing of basalt? For instance to recover the gravitational energy from witch volcanoes are formed. Naturally, the idea is not to scratch volcanoes from the surface of the globe, as they are part of the landscape. Because volcanoes that are not part of the landscape, are ... under the sea.
Consider a submarine volcano whose summit, with an area of 100 km², is located 1000 m below the surface. Suppose that using circular saws, or band saws, the volcano is debited in cubic blocks of 10 m square, and in one year, a thickness of 1000 m is extracted. These cubes suspended on buoys, are moved from 50 to 500 km, and from there they are allowed to descend to 3000 or 4000 m deep to the bottom of an adjacent abyssal plain,it is possible to recover energy from gravity by racks systems , cables, and electrical generators.
This represents the corresponding power of 200 GW, more or less 2 or 3% of global electricity needs. If there are 1000 - 2000 underwater volcanoes with similar characteristics, there is enough there to keep up enough time until the development of other renewable energy take over.
If the saws are 3 mm thick, the sawing concerns 3 x 3 / 10,000, or more or less 1 ‰ of the volume treated, or 0.1 km³ per volcano. The order of magnitude (at a factor of 10) of CO2 that can be neutralized in the corresponding water mass is 100 million tons, which starts to be not negligible in relation to the climate problem. 1000 or 2000 volcanoes, is quite significant….”
And, the energy produced, not a renewable one, but carbon free, also saves CO2 emissions...
Renaud
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