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Search results are dependant on who is searching. But still:
When you use DuckDuckGo the first result is wikipedia.
When you use Google the first results are corporations.
When you use Bing the first result is a corporation, then Wikipedia.
Brave search gives an AI summary of carbon capture, an investment page, one of the corp pages, and then a breakdown on why 'carbon capture' is a misleading tactic.
Edit: All this to say, maybe stop using Google.
It should be blatantly obvious just from basic thermodynamics that carbon capture cannot ever possibly be cheaper than not burning the fossil fuels in the first place.
Thermodynamics tells us it takes exactly as much to put the carbon back in as you got out of it by taking it out. So best case scenario we double the price of energy (which also means increasing the price of everything by a lot due to production costs increasing with higher energy costs) and capture as much carbon as we release.
However this is the real world and in the real world processes aren't 100% efficient. Even a hyper efficient combustion engine is only like 40% efficient in converting the stored energy into a usable form. Our carbon capture techniques suck hard at the moment, but say we improve the tech. That means in the real world we would need to increase energy costs by 4-6 times. Which probably means increasing the pricing of everything by a factor of 10.
That shows just how unsustainable our current consume heavy economy actually is. And that is assuming we have a way of capturing carbon out of the atmosphere in a way that's both efficient and long term. And do this in time before the processes we've set into motion spiral out of control.
And like you say, it puts into perspective how big of a win not releasing the carbon is.
Thermodynamics tells us it takes exactly as much to put the carbon back in as you got out of it by taking it out.
Thermo says it takes at least as much energy to put the carbon back in. If the process is done in a reversible way (reversible in the thermo sense), it would take exactly as much energy. And since real-world spontaneous processes are never reversible, it will always have energy lost.
I know you said down below that energy is lost, but I'm just saying that from a physics POV, there is not a possible way that reactions can ever be done in a reversible way, so it's not like there's even a possible theoretical world where you could approach 100% efficiency.
By definition, you will always pay the heat tax to the second law of thermodynamics.
To be extremely pedantic, operations on physical systems can be performed and perfectly reversed without loss of energy, but you couldn't ever extract anything anywhere along the way - not even direct evidence that it happened. Our models predict that this happens literally all the time in quantum mechanics.
Edit: fun fact: this prediction is actually central to what makes quantum computers work.
There's nothing thermodynamically wrong with burning methane, releasing the water, and putting the CO2 back underground. Sequestration does not require un-oxidizing the carbon.
Though if we're going to bury harmful waste underground, nuclear power reduces the quantity of waste by a factor of a million.
Caveat: it's been a few weeks since I read up on this so I'm fuzzy.
It's also worth noting we will need carbon capture to actually keep catastrophic global warming from occurring. Even if we cut emissions to 0 by 2035 we're blowing past 1.5C and maybe even 2 as I recall.
Doesn't mean that we can fix the climate with CC, but we can't fix it without.
So best case scenario we double the price of energy (which also means increasing the price of everything by a lot
This wouldn't be wrong, because historicaly the price for polluting the environment and cleaning up the mess afterwards has never been priced in.
No, definitely not cheaper. Also not a viable alternative to not burning.
That said, we're probably going to need it eventually to try to undo even a small amount of the damage we've done
Problem is that it's not being used to undo the damage - it's being used to justify doing more.
Solar - even with batteries is significantly cheaper under almost any circumstances... Location, scale, photovoltaics vs thermal - it only tends to affect how much cheaper. Wind is cheaper too, but less so on average.
Funny how pulling power out of thin air is cheaper and better than digging it out of the ground, shipping it all over the place and burning it.
I think Carbon Capture is a legitimate and respectable area of research, but it's fuckall for any practical use today or tomorrow and it should never be treated as a replacement for emission goals or the maintenance of critical ecosystems.
Carbon capture is 100% useless until the day that we completely stop using carbon energy sources.
Even if you use solar panels, that energy would better be used directly.
It's not useless. Carbon capture will have to become mandatory at industries that will still require fossile fuels for a little longer after electrifying everything. Think cement and steel production. This is called on-site carbon capture and prevents releasing more carbon to the atmosphere. This is already happening.
Now that stupid thing that sucks C02 gas out of the air, yes, it's total bollocka and will never ever work efficiently. Maybe if we eventually develop cheap fusion power.
But that isn't how technology works. We'll need carbon capture to be at a point where we can actively remove carbon from the atmosphere at a higher rate than it enters the atmosphere as we ween off carbon fuels if we ever want to survive climate change long term.
Carbon capture, Carbon footprint, Carbon offsetting....
All things invented by oil and gas corporations to greenwash themselves in the public eye while they destroy the planet.
Good old offsetting.
Where it's OK to cheat on your wife, as long as you slip 5 quid to a guy in another country, and he'll tell you he's stayed celibate.
Burns, burns, burns, the lake fire...
...cuz the ring lit the lake and it was full of oil.
If you Google anything the first results are sponsored links.
...and that should tell you all you need to know.
Just looking for ways they can charge us to clean up the mess they created.
Reclamation bonding has entered the chat
Carbon Capture and Storage has proven highly effective at injecting taxpayer dollars straight into politicians’ pockets
That’s a half truth.
A lot of money was funneled directly into corporate profits and the pockets of carbon sequestration speculators.
I'm not sure that we should write it off completely...
There's a thing in Iceland that binds CO2 underground.
It's pretty cool: https://www.carbfix.com/
Here's the science behind it https://www.carbfix.com/scientific-papers
Hey, I think the tech has some promise, but my opinion is this: basing our goals and pledges to solve the climate crisis on technology that hasn't yet proven itself is putting the cart before the horse.
We need to set the objective to stop the increase of emissions, and then we can also try out sucking carbon emissions out as we do that to help accelerate our fix to the climate problem.
Whether the tech works or not, fossil fuel companies as I see it, are just using it as a delay tactic to the world reducing its dependence on their business: by making the central issue something that will help, but not ultimately solve the problem.
Agree.
The tech is in its kidsshoes, all this pushing for new technologies is almost like a hidden excuse for.continouing their fossil bullshit.
Geologist here. I work in Oil and Gas, but not for producers. Service side. We've helped with the geology of a handful of carbon capture injection wells this year. They get funded by the majors, but operated by someone else, and they drill them on site of a factory or plant that produces a lot of carbon. That way there is a local site to inject the carbon they capture as a by product od the industrial activity. Pretty cool stuff I'd you look past a quick internet search and make assumptions.
Out of curiosity, how long can we inject captured carbon underground for? Do we have a good estimation of the long-term ramifications?
Long term ramifications.. If you store carbon for millions of years underground, eventually a future species will tap it as a fuel source.
As much as I agree with the implication that O&G companies latch on to every potential carbon sink as a way to greenwash themselves, carbon capture does have merits.
However, the only ones who can currently utilize carbon capture on a significant scale are the ones who produce a lot of carbon to begin with. Technology will have to advance drastically for it to be a carbon sink effective enough to offset emission to the point where emission cuts can be scaled down.
Source: Last year I was involved in surveyon an area that was planned for huge-scale carbon storage after capture.
Hey, look at us, we are planting 2 bn trees that are ALL THE SAME.
None of the methods they present as solutions are even close to being viable. The ones that do look promising, however, are where they bind the CO2 to tailings.
Any capturing strategy is useless at scale. We need strategies to transform co2. Trees are more effective and scalable long term solutions than any carbon capture. And much cheaper
The problem is stuff like concrete… the way to make new concrete emits a shitload of CO2, whether or not you use electricity or fossil fuels. So we either need to find an alternative to cement or we need to capture all that CO2.
it's much more nuanced than that though.
naunce? in this economy?
Yup. And they've been working on it for 20 years, and have yet to illustrate any scale that would effect the problem.
Okay? And how are we supposed to deal with the emissions currently in the atmosphere? Even if we abandon all technologies that generate greenhouse gases overnight, we still have shit in the atmosphere warming the planet.
The most compelling strategy I've heard is biochar. You immolate organic matter in a medium like nitrogen so you don't get carbon dioxide, and then you bury the char or use it as fertilizer. The char is relatively stable so shouldn't create much in the way of carbon dioxide once it's formed, and because you make it in an oxygen-less atmosphere you don't get more greenhouse gases from making it.
That's the thing though, fossil fuel companies aren't promoting it as harm reduction, they're promoting it as a solution to emissions so they can keep fucking the earth for profit.
There exists a natural carbon capture cycle that will take up a lot of the existing carbon in the atmosphere. If we reduce production, it will reduce the amount of carbon capture required.
Who here is googling with sponsored search results?
It's like running all their car engines in reverse. Push a shitload of electricity in, and recombine car exhaust into petrol. Then burn it all over again.
Except they will not pay for the electricity.
Tried it and it's true. Also tried on DDG and I got mostly actual information. Use DDG.