Arguments
Climate Adam: The tough reality of Carbon Capture & Storage
Posted on 13 December 2023 by Guest Author
This video includes conclusions of the creator climate scientist Dr. Adam Levy. It is presented to our readers as an informed perspective. Please see video description for references (if any).
Depending who you ask, carbon capture and storage (CCS) might seem like a vital fix to climate change, or a dangerous distraction from the hard work we need to do decarbonising - from protecting nature to building renewables. But when it comes to tackling climate change, there are no simple truths - carbon capture and storage is both hero and villain of our fight against global warming.
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Informative video as always. Its true that fitting CO2 capture technology to coal fired power stations isn't compelling because it just prolongs our reliance on coal fired power and the technology is plagued with problems. DAC (direct air capture) that removes CO2 directly form the air sounds helpful in dealing with areas of the economy that are hard to decarbonise. Or would it? Consider the maths:
We emit about 37 giga tons of CO2 globally each year.
Lets assume we use direct air capture to extract 20% of this each year, so 4,625 giga tons, because about 20% of the economy is really hard to decarbonise.
There are about 20 DAC facilities operating globally. The largest existing DAC facility extracts 8,000 tons CO2 each year. And this plant is large and complex and energy intensive.
This means you would need 925,000 DAC plants!!!!!
I feel the number speaks for itself. Yes you would not necessarily rely just on DAC but even so it would be a collosal challenge.
Excellent point Nigel.
I would add that the lack of reduction of climate change impacts by the portion of the global population that benefit most from the harm being done has made 'Carbon capture from the atmosphere and locking it away' an essential action to bring the level of impact back down to 1.5 C.
The people today who have benefited most from the damage done to date owe the future of humanity a significant number of DAC facilities being built and beginning operation in the near future, no matter how expensive that is.
Excessive levels of impact, far beyond 1.5 C, are now almost certain. The accounting of credit for actions to limit the harm done during the curtailing of human caused climate change impacts, during the transition away from unsustainable developed activity, needs to exclude any 'credit' from DAC facilities (or extra trees planted). Those CO2 removal actions need to be understood to be a 'debt penalty owed' in addition to the Loss and Damages penalties owed.
The top item (the first Open Access Notable) in the Skeptical Science New Research for Week #50 2023 appears to be a comprehensive presentation of understanding related to and aligned with my comment @2.
I have only read the introduction of The distortionary effects of unconstrained for-profit carbon dioxide removal and the need for early governance intervention, Grubert & Talati, Carbon Management.
After I have read the full item I will make any further comments about how Carbon Dioxide Removal will hopefully be managed/governed to limit harm done to the future of humanity on Skeptical Science New Research for Week #50 2023 (based on reading the Intorduction, I expect to learn a lot and may have nothing more to add).
nigelj,
While reading the report I mention in my comment @3, I came back to re-read your comment.
There is indeed a concern about the scale of required DAC's. But the math appears to be:
The report I refer to @3 indicates a higher possible range of required Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) in the following quote:
Thus far, estimates of how much CDR might be needed range from almost none up to more than 300 gigatonnes (Gt) cumulatively by 2050, or over 1,200 Gt cumulatively by 2100 [Citation10] – that is, up to about 10–15 GtCO2/year starting immediately, contingent on simultaneous rapid emissions mitigation, to meet 1.5° or 2 °C targets. Such estimates are purely mathematical, balancing positive with negative emissions: in theory, CDR could be used to counteract any emission (currently about 60 GtCO2e/year [Citation5]). As such, CDR requirements will be higher for less rapid and/or lower levels of emissions mitigation. To date, binding requirements for decarbonization that clearly articulate which emissions should be mitigated and which remain residual emissions to be addressed via CDR [Citation12] are rare, and CDR remains voluntary, contributing to a lack of clarity on necessary scope, scale, pace, and degree of resource competition.
Also note that the author's CDR includes many actions, not just mechanical DAC, as described in this quote:
Here, we define CDR to mean intentional, additional actions taken to capture CO2 from the atmosphere (either directly or via intermediaries like biomass or the ocean) and permanently store it such that the CO2 will not return to the atmosphere on time scales that at least match the lifespan of its impacts on the atmosphere and ocean [Citation5]. Commonly proposed approaches that are potentially capable of delivering CDR include (but are not limited to) direct air carbon capture and storage (DACCS); biomass carbon removal and storage (BiCRS);Footnote1 direct ocean carbon capture and storage (DOCCS); enhanced rock weathering (ERW); forestry; and soil carbon management. Some storage mechanisms, particularly those that rely on biological sinks like forests and soils, are not permanent in the sense of matching the lifespan of CO2’s impacts. As such, we distinguish between CDR-capable interventions (e.g. an afforestation project) and actual CDR, which might entail consistent rehabilitation or replacement for projects where CO2 is stored for less than geologic time (and which necessarily imposes greater administrative burden for strategies requiring relatively short replacement intervals).
OPOF @4
Thank's for correcting the math. I think I know what happened. I scribbled some numbers and calcs. for different scenarious on a piece of paper and came back to it later, and transposed the wrong number into the computer. The main thing is the total is 925,000 DACs, or even more using the assumptions in your copy and paste.
We clearly need some sort of way of extracting CO2 from the atmosphere. But the thing I was trying to get across about the DAC industrial plant option is that 925,000 DAC's would clearly require a vast quantity of materials and energy, and over a 30 year span if its function is just to offset certain emissions. These plants are not small. Photo of worlds largest existing instillation here.
For comparison purposes the world currently has 600,000 bridges and about 24,000 coal fired power stations built over our entire history. The issue is whether the world has enough materials and spare energy for something like 925,000 DACS, - especially if they are all built over about 30 years. Remember we are also building renewable energy at the same time.
Known reserves of concentrated deposits key minerals are only expected to last another century or two at current rates of use. There are enough apparently to build out a renewable energy grid, (Jacobson) but add in 925,000 DAC's and its another matter entirely. I'm not a minerals depletion pessimist and we will probably discover new reserves, but it intuitively looks like we might not have enough materials to do everything.
The other options you list for extracting CO2 from the air ( biomass, soil sinks, enhanced rock weathering, marine storage, etc ) look interesting an dpotentially useful, and intuitively look less materials and energy intensive given natural processes do some of the work. But they are very land intensive. DAC does have the advantage that its a rapid extraction, and less land intensive and CO2 storage is permanent or close enough.
I might try and find or calculate some comparisons of materials and energy required if I have time.
It seems to me that to find the bottom line for carbon capture used to keep fossil fuel production going in the future all you have to do is look at the production facilities that the UAE, Saudi Arabia and the oil majors have built or planned. As I understand it, they combined have about one large facility world wide. They recover CO2 from their refinery operations and pump that back into the ground to recover more oil, but that is not carbon capture and storage.
If the fossil fuel produceers were serious about carbon capture there would be many facilities planned or under constrution. These facilities take 5 years or more to build, and longer to plan and permit. The lack of proposed facilities indicates that this is the last gasp of the oil producers hoping everyone will look at the squirrel instead of installing solar and wind.
The only realistic solution is to build out wind and solar as fast as possible. If all fossil fuel subsidies were transferred to building renewable energy we would finish the system in a decade.
China alone will install over 300 gigawatts of renewable energy this year. If the entire world put in as much effort as China we would be in a much better place. The fossil plants China is building will be obsolete before they are commissioned.
A more reliable source states China will install 230 GW of wind and solar in 2023. This compares to 75 GW in Europe and 40 GW in the USA.
nigelj,
Agreed about potential limits for DAC operations. The research article I refer to in my comment @3 includes information regarding the limits of all the potential CDRs, not just the mechanical ones like DAC facilities.
CDR being a ‘limited’ opportunity is mentioned in the selected quote (stating that CDR is “limited resources”) presented on the Skeptical Science New Research for Week #50 2023 page.
If you do pursue a more detailed evaluation of the limits of DACs the article may provide helpful references for you, particularly in the section headed “CDR as a limited allocable resource”.
M Sweets reasons sound quite convincing. There may be additional factors with CCS. The development of CCS applied to fossil fuels generation has been very slow. Probably a good thing given it is such a band aid solution. Perhaps it's partly because it requires politically unpopular subsidies. The public generally dislike the corporates getting tax payer money, in New Zealand anyway.
Or alternatively where CCS is incorporated into emissions trading schemes, this isnt working, because currently forests appear to provide lower cost offsets, and the free market dogma says allow the lowest cost alternative in the short term to prevail. Im not so sure the dogma makes complete sense, but it's good if its delayed CCS.
And renewable energy is now cost competitive so for aging coal fired plant it might make more sense to just build a wind farm. In comparison it looks like its much harder reducing the costs of CCS, which is not so surprising when you look at the technology and the processes.
Once we run out of land for forests, there may be serious interest in CCS, but by then, how many coal fired power stations will be left anyway?
As I've been involved as a volunteer in helping researching and writing a paper with IEEE's Planet Positive 2030 initiative I've come to learn a great deal that I hadn't considered beforehand regarding approaches to addressing climate change:
1) Mass education - education that teaches/reminds us all to become planet stewards in the context of each our our own local environments.
2) Context matters - its important for people to learn within our own surroundings, to make it real. Dig our hands in our own soil, speaking figuratively AND LITERALLY.
3) Ensure all levels of education are trans-disciplanary. Societies, especially in Western affluent societies, are over-specialized resulting in intelligent, yet nonsensical solutions, similar to what Climate Adam describes with CCS.
What these simple steps aim for is helping people redirect their thinking of climate change as an abstract idea for which they feel compelled to be "for" or "against" it (what a waste of brain energy), rather to have them engage in the present, in their surroundings, learning how the planet works such that more of us appreciate the earth's interconnected systems, and how we're a part of those systems.
My thinking is the inertia of the gradual behavior change could be dramatic in improving the climate we all need to sustain our species. We might all get along better to boot.
I should have added to my comment ... that I'm following my own advice by volunteering with a local Adopt-a-Stream organization in monitoring my local waterway. In doing so I'm meeting wonderful folks who are of the "regenerative systems" mindset (and expert in it) and learning from them. I'm also learning through one of my connections how he is aiding some of the indigenous peoples in the US state of South Carolina relearn some of their lost knowledge about their lands by teaching them about their native plants and geology, and how the systems of their land work. That amazes me.
michael sweet,
I agree that focusing on building the renewable energy systems, along with reducing unnecessary ‘luxury’ ghg emissions, is the most rewarding action, from the perspective of the future of humanity. It is far better to do that than build partial fixes like Carbon Capture Utilization and Storage (CCUS) in an attempt to make ‘parts of unsustainable damaging systems – like the fossil fuel systems – appear to be ‘helping to achieve’ global net-zero.
In addition to wasting effort attempting to prolong an unsustainable damaging developed system with CCUS, getting those parts of the fossil fuel system to appear to be net-zero will require significant amounts of Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR).
A serious concern is the use of CDR to make those parts of the ‘system that is still, all things considered, very damaging’ appear to be excusable/acceptable. The article I linked to in my comment @3 explains things well in the following quote from the part titled A CDR thesis:
CDR is a limited resource [Citation14]. For-profit goals inherently prioritize the activities for which some entity will pay the most, which are likely disproportionately related to compensatory removals in high wealth contexts. Allocation of more CDR to compensatory functions constrains availability for drawdown while increasing overall demand for CDR and CDR scaling. These incentives create a structural bias toward providing offsets to high-wealth emitters who can provide ongoing revenue streams, and away from offsets for low-wealth emitters or remedial drawdown activities. In effect, unconstrained for-profit governance of CDR allows for luxury consumption to colonize [and tragically abuse] an emergent global commons.
Another example of plans, not started to be built, for a major CCUS operation with an eventual demand to unnecessarily consume CDR resources is the action plans of the Alberta oil sands operators in Pathways Alliance. Refer to this linked CBC News article “Oilsands giants continue work on proposed $16.5B carbon capture project, despite lingering questions”
Alberta already has some CCUS, similar to the Middle East capture of CO2 and its use to produce more oil or gas. But a major collective CCUS project, subsidized by public funding, is the first part of the Pathways Alliance plan to be able to claim to be ‘net-zero’ producers of exported fossil fuels by 2050.
By 2050 there will hopefully be a very small market for exported fossil fuels. And that fossil fuel use would hopefully be restricted to assisting people who live less than basic decent lives.
The Alberta oil sands operators, with the support of government in Alberta and Canada, plan to compete to be exporting 5 million bpd or more in 2050 and beyond (being an exporter of choice). Other regions with already discovered exportable fossil fuel resources can be expected to do the same. Who would give up on such a potentially lucrative opportunity? And they will all potentially end up fighting to be among the few who end up with the least ‘stranded fossil fuel reserves’. Tragically, that marketplace for-profit competition to be the biggest winner will also consume massive effort and resources, public and private, to build CCUS facilities that will also end up ‘stranded’.
If, instead of being assisted to build CCUS, they were required to build DAC facilities, those DAC facilities could continue to be beneficial after the need for ‘dead-end fossil fuel extraction for export’ is substantially ‘transitioned away from’ (by 2050).
Global leadership focusing on rapidly building the transition away from fossil fuels, along with reducing unnecessary energy demand, will reduce the unnecessarily tragic damage being done to the global commons by making the ‘deservedly tragic future’ of all the ‘pursuers of maximum benefit from fossil fuels’ harder to deny.
I wish to clarify that in my comment @12 I inserted the wording in square brackets in the part requoted below:
In effect, unconstrained for-profit governance of CDR allows for luxury consumption to colonize [and tragically abuse] an emergent global commons.
It is my attempt to indicate that this is a 'Tragedy of the Commons' matter.
NPR News has just published the following comprehensive report on Carbon Capture. It shows how 'the fundamentally ethics-free marketplace' is causing Direct Air Carbon Capture and Storage to be pursued for the benefit of people who unjustifiably developed ways to have higher status by getting away with ‘excused’ harmful unsustainable activity.
"This oil company invests in pulling CO2 out of the sky — so it can keep selling crude"
This Market-drive development undeniably makes the future worse than it needs to be by protecting unjustified unsustainable developed perceptions of status. Burning fossil fuels is not sustainable. Getting more of the non-renewable stuff out does not have a future ... but it sure can increase current day ‘enjoyment of life’ by some people.
Marketplace competition ‘freer from ethical governing’ develops very little motivation to learn to be less harmful and more helpful. There is a tragic diversity of examples of harmful unsustainable activity becoming popular and profitable, some benefit at the detriment of other, including cases of the current generation benefiting to the detriment of future generations.
Competition for status undeniably develops interests that very powerfully motivate people to oppose and resist learning to be less harmful and more helpful to Others.
An important consideration regarding my comment @14 ...
A massive amount of less harmful, more sustainable, energy is needed to run these Direct Air Capture and Storage operations.
All that 'development of less harmful energy' could likely be 'better employed to sustainably improve living conditions for people'.
Regarding nigelj's @1 astute point about the scale of the direct air carbon capture challenge:
The NPR article I pointed to in my comment @14 is about Occidental Petroleum's Stratos carbon capture plant which will be 0.5 Mt/year. The article introduces the plant as follows:
"The Stratos plant — being built in the midst of oil fields — is playing a key role in scaling up the technology, which is not fully proven yet. Once it's up and running, the billion-dollar facility will be 100 times bigger than any direct air capture plant ever built — and yet, even if it works perfectly, it will take a year to remove less than 10 minutes' worth of global emissions."
Later in the article it provides more details about the scale of the global challenge, with my inserts in [square brackets]:
"Some climate advocates agree that Oxy's doing something extraordinary for the planet. Others, however, are raising alarms about why.
The International Energy Agency calculates that the world needs to remove 80 million metric tons of carbon dioxide per year through direct air capture by 2030, and more than 1 billion metric tons per year by 2050, to meet the world's goal of holding warming beneath 1.5 degrees Celsius.
That assumes the world also cuts emissions sharply and restores vast expanses of forests and wetlands, which also remove carbon dioxide from the air.
Getting to that scenario would require about a thousand giant direct air capture plants twice the size of Stratos, each capturing a million metric tons per year
But the slower the world acts [to reduce fossil fuel use], the bigger the numbers get. [DAC used to offset 'unnecessary', but popular and profitable, climate impacts develops the need for even more 'unnecessary' DAC]
The IEA described one possible future where cutting emissions more slowly would mean that the world would need to capture more than 3.3 billion metric tons per year from the atmosphere. Some projections call for much more than that."
And near the end the following statement is made:
"The Stratos plant may be the biggest of its kind, but even when run perfectly, it would end up taking a full year to capture what the world releases in 7 1/2 minutes today [the 'less than 10 minutes' bit].
Pulling carbon dioxide out of the sky the way Oxy plans to do also requires enormous quantities of energy.
And carbon removal has simply never been done at the scale Oxy envisions. In a report this fall, the International Energy Agency warned that relying on this kind of technology to keep global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius is unacceptably risky because if technologies fail to deliver, there's no backup option.
"Removing carbon from the atmosphere is costly and uncertain," Fatih Birol, the head of the IEA, said this fall. "We must do everything possible to stop putting it there in the first place.""
OPOF:
In addition to the flaws you discuss about the Stratos plant, as you described in post 16 it is "being built in the midst of oil fields" The carbon will not be stored, it will be used to extract more oil from the ground!!!
Oil companies are not storing carbon when they are using it to extract more oil, the carbon dioxide comes back out of the ground with the oil. This is a completely false story, Occidental fooled the reporter. I guess that you could claim that Occidental is showing how to air capture the carbon.
We will have to wait until the plant is built to evaluate how much energy it takes to capture the carbon and at what cost. My bet is that it will be too expensive and take too much energy, but that is simply speculation at this time.
Even if you thought that using the carbon to extract more oil is storing it, as Nigelj pointed out, the number of plants needed to make a dent in carbon pollution is enormous and the number of plants being built is very small. The scale of extraction plants is way too small to make any significant difference.
Who will pay for carbon that is permanently stored? Not the fossil fuel industry.
michael sweet @17,
Agreed that the use of CO2 to scrub oil off of rock formations, a possible benefit of CO2 injection to increase the production of oil as presented in the article, would almost certainly mean that CO2 comes out with the oil. But, to be fair, CO2 injection can potentially lock-away CO2 while producing more oil from an oil deposit.
Here are potential stages of oil production:
So oil can be produced by injecting and trapping CO2. But scrubbing oil off of the formation that the oil is in would mean CO2 comes out with the oil.
However, CO2 thought to be trapped in an oil deposit may not be truly trapped. Accurate pressure monitoring over a long time frame would be required to prove that the CO2 is staying where it was put. And until the completion of that pressure testing it is uncertain that the ‘claimed to be trapped’ CO2 is properly trapped. If a pressure test fails, the pressure drops, then the ‘carbon removal’ action plan is failing. And there would be little that could be done to keep the rest of the ‘believed to have been locked away’ CO2 from leaking out.
Who will pay for removing it and locking it away? Everybody essentially pays for the profit obtained, or pays for the government subsidy (worse when the government subsidizes the obtaining of profit - nobody should profit from publicly funded harm reduction like CO2 removal).
It would be nice if the ones who benefited most from the developed total current problem paid the most to limit the harm done ... but the current systems have a histry of making the least fortunate, who do not deserve to be penalized, suffer the most harm. Refer to the lead article in the Skeptical Science New Research for Week #50 2023 for a detailed presentation of concerns regarding free-market development of Carbon Capture.
A follow-on to my comment @18,
If CO2 is injected to produce oil with the end result hoped to be trapped CO2, then the long period of pressure testing to prove that the CO2 is truly trapped can only begin after the ending of the oil extraction ... and sampling for CO2 coming out with the oil, and capturing it for reinjection, is required during the oil extraction.