CCS Redux: Carbon Engineering Was All the time A Figleaf For Fossil Gasoline Business, Now It’s Owned Outright By Them

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Carbon seize and sequestration in all of its numerous ineffective, inefficient and costly varieties is having one other run up the hype cycle. Nothing has actually modified. The issues nonetheless exist. The options are nonetheless higher. The potential to be used continues to be minuscule. And so, the CCS Redux collection, republishing outdated CCS articles with minor edits.

What number of methods are there to say that mechanical direct air seize (DAC) of carbon dioxide is a deeply silly concept? Regardless of the quantity is, I’ve most likely used the vast majority of turns of phrase. So have many others. That, in fact, doesn’t cease the fossil gasoline trade, those who they affect, individuals who simply don’t know any higher and hopeful folks with no STEM capabilities from loving the sphere.

And Occidental Petroleum simply confirmed its love in a giant approach, committing $1.1 billion to purchase Carbon Engineering, the Canadian-ish DAC agency that arrange store in Squamish, BC just a few years in the past. On the time, I used to be aggravated that the Canadian authorities was throwing taxpayer cash at it, however unsurprised at what number of fossil gasoline firms had chipped in.

That motivated me to publish 9 prolonged items assessing totally different features of the know-how and its precise markets, after which wrap them up in a 54-page case examine with a foreword by Professor Mark Z. Jacobson of Stanford, well-known for his group’s ongoing work on a situation of 100% renewables by 2050, now protecting 143 nations. I went deeply nerdy on this, rebuilding my mind to be a poor excuse for a chemical engineer, working in moles and reviewing scads of literature on artificial gasoline manufacturing. I’ve a bunch of chemical engineering nerd followers as a result of I each labored up the chemistry and identified that Carbon Engineering was fully missing in something resembling garments, by no means thoughts ones befitting royalty.

For these within the full case examine, right here’s a downloadable PDF model of it: Chevron’s Fig Leaf: A Case Examine of Carbon Engineering’s Direct Air Seize Plan.

Within the authentic collection, I checked out all the doable use instances for the know-how and asserted that Carbon Engineering’s Solely Market Is Pumping Extra Oil. That was, certainly, the headline of that article, and solely a few months later, Carbon Engineering signed a take care of Occidental to do precisely that within the Permian Foundation oil area of the southern USA. Because the engineer behind it, David Keith of Harvard College, made clear in his peer-reviewed publications over a decade in the past, the plan was to use pure gasoline to energy a few kilometers of 20-meter excessive, 3-meter broad followers blowing air by dripping carbon-capturing resolution, after which to warmth the carbon-rich resolution to 900° Celsius to unlock the CO2 so it might be captured. Oh, and to energy the 2 totally different carbon seize techniques required to seize the half-ton of CO2 from pure gasoline per ton of CO2 from the air as effectively.

Keith can also be recognized for his couple of remarkably weak research that discovered that wind vitality — you recognize, one of many two largest vitality success tales and about essentially the most benign type of electrical technology we now have in the present day — wasn’t all that, and his tireless efforts to place a bandaid on international warming by pumping sulfur particles into the stratosphere, ignoring all the different issues with burning huge quantities of fossil fuels, together with ocean acidification. That he has the ear of so many prosperous and influential folks resembling Invoice Gates continues to perplex me.

Yeah, let’s take a bunch of sequestered carbon in pure gasoline, pump it up from underground, burn it to create 500 thousand tons of CO2, and use the facility to seize 1,000,000 tons of CO2 from the air. Then we’ll pump all of the CO2 underground to sequester it. Seems like a win, doesn’t it? Detrimental CO2?

Besides, it’s important to ask the following query. The place is there a variety of low-cost pure gasoline and a spot to place CO2? Properly, in tapped-out oil fields. They usually have pure gasoline that’s simply sitting there leaking out of the fracking and shale oil websites in quantities too small to be value piping to markets, however adequate for illuminating a fig leaf.

Particularly with the following bit. Tapped-out oil wells aren’t empty of oil, they’re empty of simply extractable oil. There’s a bunch of tarry sludge left underground, and CO2 has this helpful property of liquifying tarry sludge. Pump it underground into tapped-out oil wells, liquify the sludge, improve the stress, and pump the oil out the opposite finish. That’s one of many strategies of enhanced oil restoration (EOR). And it sometimes recovers a lot oil that the CO2 discount claims are fully bogus, particularly with burning pure gasoline to energy the equipment.

What’s with the Venn diagram? Properly, that’s the size of the CO2 within the ambiance proper now, with the size of our historic additions and the size of our annual additions. The invisible dot is our present annual consumption of CO2 as a commodity. Why do I carry this up? As a result of the one largest marketplace for CO2 in the present day is enhanced oil restoration, a couple of third of that 230 million tons that someone pays for yearly.

How do I do know that? Properly, it’s as a result of the identical yr I checked out all the vital carbon seize services for the previous 50 years based mostly on World Carbon Seize and Sequestration Institute — sure, it’s transparently a fossil-fuel trade lobbying and advocacy group — knowledge and went by public info to determine what precisely was what. As I decided out with out a lot effort, Carbon Seize’s World Funding Would Have Been Higher Spent On Wind & Photo voltaic. Giving CCS each doable profit out of the doubt, and burdening wind and photo voltaic vitality with excessive prices and low capability elements, it will have been vastly higher to construct wind and photo voltaic as an alternative.

Claiming that we are able to vacuum CO2 out of the ambiance to take care of the historic and annual downside is specious nonsense, after which utilizing CO2 to pump extra oil so as to add to the issue is including insult to harm.

So yeah, after taking a look at just about each use for CO2 and the Carbon Engineering technical resolution, it was clear that the claims of constructing low-cost plug-compatible artificial fuels had been nonsense and that its solely pure market was enhanced oil restoration.

Oh, wait. The corporate was claiming one thing aside from the one factor the equipment was good for? Yeah, and it nonetheless is. However right here’s the factor. They had been sucking CO2 out of the air at nice energetic costly, considerably like closing the barn door after the horses had fled, if the horses had been numbered within the billions, invisible, tiny, and will fly, after which had been going to make use of electrical energy from someplace to get hydrogen at a lot higher energetic expense. After which they claimed that they had been going to create carbon impartial diesel or jet gasoline at but extra energetic expense, and that this was going to be virtuous and cheap.

Did any of this stand as much as the slightest scrutiny? No, in fact not. The desk above was the freight truck comparability, the place it’s rather more costly and excessive carbon to make use of their resolution in the absolute best case situation the place I gave them each advantage of the doubt than simply placing the electrical energy into electrical vehicles. I did the identical with jet gasoline vs sustainable aviation biofuel, and the comparability was a lot worse.

Word the “BC Electrical energy.” British Columbia, the jurisdiction Carbon Engineering has its idyllic Squamish base in, has actually low-carbon electrical energy at 12.9 grams CO2e per kWh. That was used each for manufacturing the hydrogen for Carbon Engineering’s artificial gasoline and the electrical energy for the Tesla Semi in my workup. You may’t make artificial fuels from inexperienced hydrogen with out them having carbon money owed which can be multiples of simply utilizing the electrical energy immediately. Nearly each jurisdiction on the planet has electrical energy that may multiply that carbon debt above the extent of diesel, normally by a great distance. For example, the USA’s common is 389 grams of CO23 per kWh, 30 occasions worse. Carbon Engineering’s diesel would have had a CO2 load 16 occasions that of diesel on the typical USA grid electrical energy.

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Nobody goes to purchase artificial fuels constituted of direct air seize and hydrogen as a result of there are decrease carbon, less expensive options. And but, that is the declare Occidental is making, per the press launch.

“The U.S. oil producer goals to construct about 100 crops utilizing direct air seize (DAC) know-how that strips carbon dioxide (CO2) from the ambiance to bury underground or to be used in making merchandise resembling concrete and aviation gasoline.”

“About” is a enjoyable phrase, isn’t it? However let’s faux that Occidental goes to construct 100 of Carbon Engineering’s crops along with the one which it’s constructing within the Permian Basin for enhanced oil restoration. That ought to be “about” 100 million tons of CO2 captured from the air yearly, with one other 50 million tons created from burning pure gasoline. Positive.

Per the press launch, 30 of these services shall be inbuilt Kleberg County, Texas. Remarkably, that county has a variety of tapped-out oil wells. I ponder what Occidental goes to do with 30 enhanced oil restoration machines burning pure gasoline in that county?

Properly, it’ll be harvesting the USA’s Inflation Discount Act turbocharged 45Q tax credit for carbon seize and sequestration in fact, and sharing within the largesse of $4.5 billion to arrange a CCS hub within the area. Once I was at a convention just a few years in the past the place one in every of Carbon Engineering’s engineers was on a panel, they let slip underneath gentle questioning that the corporate was going to be receiving $250 per ton of CO2 from a few governmental tax credit for its enhanced oil restoration. Looks as if that financial and local weather madness is constant.

The $1.1 billion buy value doesn’t appear so massive now. Occidental will most likely have the ability to harvest that and the prices of constructing the partitions of followers powered by pure gasoline immediately from taxpayers with out passing go. Many of the oil that it pumps as much as proceed to make the local weather disaster worse shall be pure revenue. Who couldn’t want taxpayer-funded income upon a serious oil agency?

And who couldn’t want an oil-soaked however very profitable exit from a startup for Invoice Gates and Breakthrough Power Ventures, early traders in Carbon Engineering? In any case, their whole goal is to place cash into local weather options. Isn’t it? Anybody? Bueller? Anybody?