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CultFuse t1_j5uqk8l wrote

Reply to comment by scheckentowzer in Researchers unveil the least costly carbon capture system to date - down to $39 per metric ton. by PNNL

If this technology exists already then, regardless of the cost of the current or even earlier versions of it, why is it not already being used? Why doesn't every group or politician fighting against climate change push for it to be implemented?

Edit: Thanks for all of your responses. I'm glad there was an opportunity to learn more information about this. It didn't make sense to me that such a promising solution wouldn't have already been used but now I see putting a plan into action is a little complicated.

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Stone_Like_Rock t1_j5v5x4m wrote

The issue with carbon capture is that it takes energy to remove carbon from the atmosphere. Unless every energy transfer from release of carbon to capture of carbon is perfectly 100% efficient it will always result in more than 1 tonne of carbon emitted to capture 1 tonne of carbon using fossil fuel power stations.

The solution to that is obviously to use renewable energy and until the power grid is almost entirely renewable energy carbon capture won't be the best use of our time and effort.

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BlameThePeacock t1_j5v7frs wrote

And this capture only works on greenhouse gas energy stations, so it's not particularly helpful once those get phased out.

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Stone_Like_Rock t1_j5v87fh wrote

I mean yeah I'd rather we spent time replacing fossil fuel with some combination of nuclear and renewables as I think that'd be a better use of our time and money

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CultFuse t1_j5v9a53 wrote

So is it a technology that has to be placed on site to work? The way carbon emissions from specific facilities are affecting the entire world, it almost seems counterintuitive to think you couldn't also set up carbon capture "plants" around the world to offset emissions.

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scotty_dont t1_j5vlgzw wrote

Each of those “dollars” of input to do the carbon capture are coming from a system that releases carbon. The materials to build the plant, the transport of those materials, the transport for the people to run and maintain it, the clothes on their back, the food on their plate, the bank where their salary is deposited, the studio that makes the movies they watch etc. All those processes release carbon.

You can’t just look locally and say “well, I have green energy capturing carbon so this must be a net positive” because a lot of the carbon cost is externalized. You need to reduce the carbon footprint of a dollar of economic activity.

Otherwise you will be sitting there confused why atmospheric carbon is still increasing despite you building more and more capture systems.

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CultFuse t1_j5vnswe wrote

That's another point I hadn't considered but it seems like we should have the means to do all of that without causing more carbon emissions. Money can't be the reason we don't do it, that's a copout.

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Stone_Like_Rock t1_j5vc91g wrote

It depends on the carbon capture system being used. Some can be placed wherever others have to be placed at a Powerplant to capture emissions at the source. Again the issue is the energy required to capture this carbon will always result in more emissions than they capture until we have a renewable/low carbon energy grid to begin with and thus what we should really be doing is reducing the carbon output of our energy grid.

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Tearakan t1_j5vphl6 wrote

Yep. Entropy kills us here. With us continuing to emit co2 carbon capture is kinda pointless.

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N01_Special t1_j5ux6vl wrote

Because then they would have to, 1-admit that it is an issue, 2 - stop themselves and others from squeezing every last penny out of the current situation

Once you admit it's an issue you are boxing yourself into solving it or being against solving it. If it's not real than you are not against solving it.......

Edit to clarify what they are currently milking.

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CultFuse t1_j5v8ctr wrote

I know the political process doesn't work this way but it seems like you should just force them to do it in this situation because of what will happen if they don't. Idk, maybe they have so many greedy allies that it would turn into a violent disaster.

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N01_Special t1_j5v9iub wrote

You would think it should be easy, since the down side is we are the leaders in an industry and now have a bunch of new technology around making and storing energy, one of the biggest growing commodities in our current life, but they either don't care or don't think any disaster is coming and they just want to keep making money the way they are rather than try something unknown that they may not have as much control over.

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Chickensandcoke t1_j5v3odz wrote

In addition to the other response, there isn’t anywhere to put it yet

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mrlolloran t1_j5uvvf6 wrote

I’m not an expert but I think not all endeavors in carbon capturing are successful.

I’m also not sure how big this particular group of people are but there are people that see big corporations investing/spending money on carbon capture and because it’s big businesses doing, likely to be able to keep doing business as usual for as long as possible they seem to genuinely want these efforts to fail out of spite for companies. Pretty sure the Guardian ran a piece last week practically gloating that whatever company Microsoft(among other companies) pay to do carbon capturing to offset their output was failing to do so.

The only other reason I can think of is that people want to do this process more naturally. I can understand that but we need all hands on deck and we’re not going to regrow the vast sections of the Amazon overnight. Another solution I’ve seen is increasing the amount of algae in the seawater but this suggestion has several problems. For one thing I’ve never seen an actionable plan to do this. I’ve also seen marine scientists say that this would have an absurdly profound impact on Ocean ecosystems.

Again not my area of expertise, maybe somebody can help explain better. Basically people don’t like the solution because they have doubts as to its efficacy (fair but misguided, solar panels weren’t as efficient as they are now so the current efficiency shouldn’t be a long term consideration), they don’t like the majors players currently pushing this technology or they think a more natural solution is what we should pursue.

I’m an all hands on deck kinda guy myself

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CultFuse t1_j5v9pdc wrote

I kinda agree with you. If it works & it doesn't cause some other problem that might turn out to be worse, we should probably be using it even if it's expensive.

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