As I was recovering from surgery in Fargo, North Dakota in January (no reason other than that it was a horrible time of year), I had the unfortunate pleasure of hearing Republican Governor Doug Burgum talk about the wonders and benefits of CCS, or carbon capture, use, and storage.
Burgum, in his address to the legislature said that the state would be a pioneer in this field. He proudly announced that “Several projects are in the works to capture over 20,000,000 tons [of CO2] by 2026 ….. We’re well on our way towards achieving carbon neutrality by 2030.” This short statement contains many errors. They don’t make it right.
North Dakota, despite its large fossil fuel production, is a state with a low population density. It ranks 33rd nationally. The “20 million” number has nothing to with the amount of CO2 that can be stored on North Dakota’s land. The state does have a lot of saline aquifers and depleted oil reservoirs. It also has rock strata that are good at trapping gas.
What is the point? All the platinum mined can be stored in any garage. How do you acquire the platinum? The rub is in the details! Doing so at a reasonable price.
, the only carbon capture facility in the state at this time, is projected to sequester 180,000 metric tonnes. We also have “Project Tundra”, which is plagued with cost and schedule overruns. The claim is that it will eventually capture 3 million tons of CO2 per year from an old coal plant. According to the latest proposal, the plant could be operational by 2025. However, given its past history that is highly unlikely.
The state will capture essentially zero tonnes by 2026, and is well on the way to capturing no more tons by 2030.
Burgum is the one I am picking on, because mutual friends have told me that he’s actually very tech-savvy. CCS scams are everywhere.
The first large projects date back more than half a century. has had, and will continue to have, a negligible effect on CO2 levels. “Of nine demonstration projects funded between 2010 and 2017 by the Department of Energy (DOE) Advanced Fossil Energy Research Program, totaling approximately 1,12 billion,” IEEE Spectrum by 2020, only one is still operational: the 240-MW Petra Nova plant. The plant closed just a few weeks after.
According to the Congressional Budget Office , between 2005 and 2012, the DOE spent over $6.9 billion to prove the feasibility of CCS in coal. However this investment yielded almost nothing.
CCS has only one purpose: Rent seeking. To transfer money between Joe Sixpack and Bob Billionaire.
In May, the DOE announced that it would begin to distribute more than $2.3 Billion for CCS Technology as part of the 12 billion dollars allocated by the Infrastructure and Jobs Act 2021. No one is claiming that this alone will achieve anything. It’s a series experimental projects, as DOE hopes to bring down the cost for carbon removal technologies to under $100 per ton by 2050. It’s an absurdly long timeline, especially in the spirit of commercial Fusion that is only 30 years away.
Even at the “deep, deep discount price”, the five million metric tons of CO2 that the U.S. emitted last year could cost a half-trillion dollars to capture. And that’s only if they were all emitted from large CO2-emitting plants. The low-hanging fruit.
The exorbitant cost of CCS has limited the total global capacity to only 43 metric tons per year. Take into account that global emissions have reached an all-time record of 36.8 gigatons. Each gigaton is equal to a billion tons. In addition, global emissions continue to increase due to China. Imagine reducing the flow of Niagara Falls by a teaspoon. Except that the flow is constantly increasing.
According to any model, the optimistic predictions that the U.S. will capture and sequester four percent of its carbon emissions by 2035 are unmeasurable when it comes to global emissions and temperatures.
Let’s keep on beating the dead horse. Animal rights groups should not care about dead animals.
Direct air or point-source capture (we will get to indirect later) works by using post-combustion or pre-combustion or oxyfuel combustion. The first removes CO2 from exhaust gases following fuel combustion using chemical solvents and adsorbents. The second method removes CO2 from the exhaust gases before fuel combustion by converting them into a mixture containing hydrogen and CO2, then separating it using different processes. The oxy-fuel method involves burning fuel with pure oxygen rather than air. This produces a flue gases primarily composed of water vapor and CO2, which allows carbon dioxide to be captured and separated more easily.
Regardless of the method used, the CO2 will ultimately be injected into deep geological formations to store it for a long time. This must then be monitored to ensure that the CO2 is contained.
Let’s continue to beat the horse.
The energy required to run a carbon-capture system is so high that it would require a brand new power plant. It is obvious that this creates a new source of carbon and air pollution, since the U.S. does not build nuclear plants anymore and never did when they did. The extra energy consumption undermines the goal of capturing the carbon in the first instance. According to research in , Biophysical Economics, and Sustainability, the U.S. emits approximately 5 billion tons carbon per year. To remove 1 billion tonnes of this through direct air capture ,would require nearly the entire electricity production of the country.
We knew this poor horse well.
This dead horse that we have been pounding is obviously liked by someone for some reason. Who and why?
Rent seekers and their political cronies are the ones who will benefit financially from this. They seek government grants, subsides, or financial incentives to support carbon-capture projects. Carbon credits and indirect subsidies are both effective in encouraging CCS. They take advantage of carbon credit markets where carbon credits or offsets are traded.
Carbon Credits are certificates that represent quantities of greenhouse gasses removed or kept from the air. Carbon credits allow companies to compensate for their “carbon foot print” by paying others to reduce emissions or to capture carbon. They can also direct private funding to climate-action initiatives that might not get off the ground otherwise. The U.S. does not have a carbon trading program. Yet. California is the only state with a cap and trade program.
We’re referring to established companies such as ExxonMobil that burn or provide fossil fuels. Chevron declared that “managing greenhouse gas emissions is an integral part of Chevron’s business planning and execution.” Or, we could be talking about newer businesses which are created solely to benefit from the subsidies. Expect a gold rush when gold is discovered or given out in boxes with pink ribbons.
Rent seekers are stacked on top of each other like turtles. The proposed North Dakota capture is almost entirely from ethanol plants. has been writing about this boondoggle since 1987 . Add ethanol producers to Big Fossil Fuel. It can get worse than direct air capture.
It’s a metaphor I thought I had invented until I stumbled upon an MIT article that made the same claim. This is a metaphor that I thought I invented, until I stumbled upon an MIT report making the same — claiming it to be a positive development. My good-faith attempt at satire was a failure.
$3.5 Billion in recently approved carbon-capture subsidies is for that. The government would be bombarded with ideas for antigravity shoes if it announced billions to develop them. Of course, none of them would work. But that’s not the point. Anti-grav boot makers and their supporters would claim that costs of manufacturing their boots are steadily decreasing. They still didn’t function.
Planting trees or other plants which absorb CO2 even more efficiently is the most efficient way to capture direct carbon. It is better to not cut them down at all. It’s a great trick to plant trees. The projects that have been undertaken globally have failed. There is just too little land in the world for the project to be successful. And if the trees are harvested–whoops–the emissions captured go right back into the atmosphere.
The only way to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere is to stop its production. Despite all the treaties, gimmicks and other ploys, the world continues to produce more CO2 each year because we enjoy what it gives us. The Chinese also do. China’s increasing contribution means that the rest of the planet could stop emitting CO2 and still see a dramatic increase in the amount.
Even if all emissions were stopped, the that is already present would dissipate over centuries. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has endorsed the CCS scam, because the majority of IPCC climate models demand CCS in order to balance carbon books.
It seems that there is not much you can do.
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I have hope. I have written elsewhere about the impact that artificial intelligence and computer systems will have on the world in the coming decade. I have no doubt that they’ll find amazing methods to reduce emissions. This includes commercial fusion, not only for the grid but to improve electric cars. It is important to note that CCS has to be physically feasible. Bummer, that.
While we wait for computers, we can still make some imperfect fixes if we believe that anthropogenic climate change is a real issue. Bjorn Lombborg is the expert on this topic. He accepts that anthropogenic global warming exists, but believes we are doing it all wrong. If people were to take it seriously, then trees and other foliage which is better at absorbing CO2 could be a part of the solution. These are CSS technologies that work.
What about the mechanical stuff? The rich and well-connected can only buy politicians to get subsidies. The “S”, in CCS, stands for scam.
