Removing CO2 from the Atmosphere
We’ve all seen illustrations of devices that extract carbon dioxide from the air, and heard claims that they are possible to build. Here’s an article on the subject that at least asks the right question: But at what cost?
Obviously, there are costs associated with building and operating the equipment. Bu there is also an energy cost to any active approach that moves air into and through that equipment, and that energy is going to have its own environmental footprint.
Give that the atmospheric concentration of CO2 is 400 ppm (0.o4%, meaning that 99.96% of it is something else) this idea is doomed. As senior energy analyst Glenn Doty notes, however, it may be feasible to use such an approach to point sources of CO2, e.g., fossil energy and concrete plants, where the concentrations many many hundreds of times greater.
Since we’re interesting in solving the problem, let’s look at the most practical tactics: renewable/nuclear energy powering our homes, industries and transportation, as well as reforestation.
What a great topic to discuss over lunch! May I have an Impossible Burger, please? From their website:
The way the world produces meat today is taking an enormous toll on our planet. According to livestock researchers, animal agriculture uses 30% of all land, over 25% of all freshwater on Earth, and creates as much greenhouse gas emissions as all of the world’s cars, trucks, trains, ships, and airplanes combined.
We make the Impossible Burger entirely from plants, without the destructive impact of livestock, so that you, your children, and your grandchildren’s children will always be able to enjoy a good ol’ fashioned burger.
Craig,
As I recall, last time you claimed these installations didn’t exist and were mere scams! At the time I challenged that opinion and it’s nice to see you’ve discovered they actually exist. (acknowledgement would have been nice, but never mind :)).
I’m please to see you acquire a proprietary interest in “Impossible Foods “. Well done ! I believe advocates should invest their own money in enterprises in which they believe.
(However, declaring any vested interest is good form).
Regrettably, your enthusiastic claims artificial “meat” is environmentally ‘cleaner’ than actual meat remains unjustifiable and untenable.
Impossible Food’s website (along with many vegetarian websites) makes many claims about the environmental harm associated with conventional livestock production. Many of these claims are vague or speculative while the “facts” quoted are at best highly contentious, and at worst blatantly and obviously incorrect or deceptive.
Here are some classic examples from the website of Impossible Foods;
1) ” Because we use 0% cows, the Impossible Burger uses a fraction of the Earth’s natural resources. Compared to cows, the Impossible Burger uses 95% less land, 74% less water, and creates 87% less greenhouse gas emissions. The way the world produces meat today is taking an enormous toll on our planet. According to livestock researchers, animal agriculture uses 30% of all land, over 25% of all freshwater on Earth, and creates as much greenhouse gas emissions as all of the world’s cars, trucks, trains, ships, and airplanes combined.”
These claims by Impossible Foods, are not referenced to any authoritative research and rely on long discredited life cycle assessments published decades ago, at which time fundamental errors and false assumption were exposed.
Take the example of the much quoted “200,000 litres of water to produce one kilo of beef”.
This figure was calculated by making incorrect and totally unscientific assumptions !
The figures were calculated on the assumption all rain falling on pastures being grazed by cattle should be attributed to those cattle, while any runoff, deep soil drainage, pasture trees, foliage or evaporation simply ignored! In addition, no explanation of how the amount of rain was calculated was ever provided.
Speaking as an Australian beef cattle producer, I can cite decades of scientifically, peer reviewed, official studies, containing years of dedicated research, and extremely detailed, objective life cycle assessment of production systems in one of the driest livestock environments in the world.
Actual water use ranges between 100 and 300 litres per kilogram liveweight, equal to between 200 and 600 litres per kilogram of meat depending on breed and diet.
200,000 v/s 200-600 is quite a margin of error !
Hundreds of other factors must also be taken into consideration, but the 2006 report failed to calculate any variables, relying on largely guesswork to calculate averages.
No wonder ” Impossible Foods ” ( like yourself) fails to cite any authority to support the claims made on its website and repeated by you a a true believer !
Comparison of livestock and transport emissions seems to be also based on an old, subsequently discredited 2006 UN report entitled “Livestock’s Long Shadow”.
This report compared greenhouse gas emissions estimated for a very broadly defined livestock sector (including land clearing, fertiliser, farm, feed, transport and processing) with just the emissions arising from fuel use in transport, ignoring all the emissions associated with vehicle manufacturing, tyres, and the construction and maintenance of roads, bridges, railways and airports.
This was blatantly an “apples vs oranges” comparison, which the report’s authors conceded and amended in a subsequent report published in 2010.
Nor does the report make any allowance for the successful reduction in methane produced by ruminant livestock breeding programs resulting in a reduction by 2045 of over 80% of methane producing ruminants in both domesticated, and to a lesser extent, wild animal populations.
But hey, why use real facts when you can continue with convenient lies, eh !?
Of course, in any consumer society, consumers should be the ones to decide whether they prefer meat or chemically reconstituted artificial proteins as non-conventional meat substitutes.
Sanitarium and other Vegetarian companies have been successfully marketing vegetarian meat substitutes for generations without feeling the need to make absurd claims. What is essential is consumers be provided with objective and accurate information to enable informed decision making.
I was astonished at your bitter and vehement response to my reply where I posted a list of the ingredients and constituents of “Impossible Foods” products. You accused me of libel Impossible Foods and “Troll” like behaviour !
My astonishment to your vehemence was based on my assumption that you, as a devotee of science, would have bothered to read the listed ingredients you were eating ! Far from “libel”, I simply quoted from the list of ingredients supplied to the FDA by “Impossible Foods” !
If you have an issue with those ingredients, maybe you should take it up with Impossible Foods, not me !
Craig, from time to time, we all get carried away by our enthusiasms. However, we must always strive to remain objective or lose credibility.
You advocate, “most practical tactics: renewable/nuclear energy powering our homes, industries and transportation, as well as reforestation”
These are all praiseworthy aspirations, but not as immediately attainable as clean coal technology and a really determined effort to abolish the use of marine bunker fuel.
Developing nations will not eschew the advantages of Coal. Bunker oil remains the single largest fuel pollutant and can be easily replaced without economic disruption.
Clean Coal technology, long neglected, is now developing at a truly astonishing rate. The efforts by Japan, South Korea and India have finally been enhanced by US government initiatives and like a reluctant dragon, the PRC has started to understand it will be left behind and become noncompetitive if it doesn’t join the clean coal club.
The US has recently benefited from a succession of European ( mostly German, British and French)scientists and engineers willing to join US led initiative in Wyoming as clean(er) coal technology is being discouraged in Europe.
The importance of this revival (and the role of the US President) has been highlighted in most serious overseas media, but largely ignored by US media out of political bias.
Natural gas once seen by environmental advocates as an ” evil” fossil fuel, is now touted as a saviour !
Global reserves of natural gas including recoverable shale reserves (and reserves as yet impossible to recover with existing technology) reveals the world may experience increases in Natural gas prices as early as 2022.
Due to an accelerating rate of consumption, estimates for the economic life of those reserves are between 50 and 90 years. Those estimates don’t take into consideration increasing demand, demand for LPG, fertilizer or any attempt to replace coal globally.
Without the 40 % global share of electrical energy provided by coal, natural gas could be quickly expended in maybe as little as twenty years.
Personally, I believe natural gas with last a good deal longer with improving technology and previously uneconomic reserves becoming available. However, the current cheap gas prices will not last. Once again Coal will become economically competitive, especially once added revenue from valuable carbon by-products becomes viable.
Small scale solutions are great ! They help focus public attention on the need for the reduction of carbon and other harmful pollutants. But the end, most of these technologies are minuscule in comparison to the enormous reductions capable of being achieved by Clean(er)Coal technologies.
It sounds harsh, but I believe it’s a fair assessment to regard “environmental advocates” who ignore the potential of Clean(er) Coal technology, mere “dilettantes” or “hobbyists”.
In reality, the world isn’t going to give up eating meat, nor will the global demand for Coal diminish. Pretending such events will occur is irresponsible.
Mitigation is the answer ! Mitigation can be achieved by many methods, but the best and most effective is better technology at the source. This doesn’t mean supplementary method can’t also be valuable.
Advocates of “Leave it in the Ground” are just as useless and naive as Nancy Reagan’s, “Just Say No” anti-drug campaign !
I’m not saying that these are feasible, just that they’re not theoretically impossible. That translates into the notion that promoting them as potentially profit-making is, in fact, fraudulent.
Craig,
So far as I know the company you called a non-existent fraud and scam, Climeworks of Switzerland has made no claims to be profit making, nor is it seeking investors.
Climeworks is a research project to construct technology capable of removing CO2 form the atmosphere on a large scale. For this purpose Climeworks has built several large installations to measure the viability of the technology.
Climeworks commenced operations over a decade ago when it looked like a global price for carbon removal would exist. The company has continued to research the possibility of using use CO2 to make carbon-neutral products.
Using renewable energy, it can split water (which is created as a by-product of its process) to create hydrogen, and then combine that with the carbon dioxide in various processes to create plastics (for example, for recycled CO2 sneakers) or fuel.
The stakeholders and investors in Climeworks understand the difficulties and risk, but are willing to finance the project in full knowledge it may never prove profitable.
No scam, or fraudulent claims, just plain hard work and dedicated persistent research.
I think you owe the guys at Climeworks and apology.
As far as I’m aware, you are the only person on this planet who wishes to be taken seriously who posits that growing beef is environmentally benign.
And no, I’m not going to spend resources documenting this, other than to refer you to the 12.2 million Google hits from “beef environmental impact.”
Craig,
Wow, “google hits’ eh? Well now, that’s a really scientific method of calculation !
Why not just be honest and say you can’t support your contentions with facts, because they don’t exist ? Your facts are inaccurate and just plain wrong because you’re trying to advocate a cause based on emotional bias and personal prejudice rather than reasoned objective argument.
Nor am I the only ” person on the planet” , that’s obviously silly ! Livestock farming employs more than a billion people on the planet. 2 billion if all the indirect employment is taken into consideration.
In the USA alone, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA)has 164 full time employees and another 290 volunteers. The US has more than 64,000 cattle farmers with more than 12 million Americans employed directly or indirectly in the beef industry.
88% of Americans consume an average of just over 81 pounds of beef per year. Even allowing for “averaging’ discrepancies, that at least 250 million Americans eating beef.
Against all the opinions of all these people, all the thousands of scientific reports, your only answer you can find to support your easily disproved claims is the number of “google hits ” ?
It’s not surprising you run away when asked to verify your claims !
It’s thought Cattle farming originated in Asia Minor about 12,000 years ago. Over time, like all forms of agriculture, or for that matter all human activity, Cattle farming has made an environmental impact, both positive and negative.
Environmental concerns need to be addressed in a calm, rational and objective manner if the general public are to be asked to support environmental action.
Arrogant preaching, irrational claims, ludicrous justifications, and enviro-babble just make real environmental progress harder.
All environmental advocates must be honest and self-critical if their opinions are to be taken seriously by the general public. Otherwise they become just loud, noisy, opinionated minorities with ludicrous aims and no lasting achievements.
The total failure of the “Occupy Wall Street Movement”, is an example of the futility of such advocacy. The “movement” was largely ignored and made no positive impact, while achieving nothing except a strong counter reaction and a lot of work for street cleaners.
Craig, there’s nothing wrong with wishing to pursue a vegetarian diet, or investing in artificial food substitutes, that’s your right as an individual and consumer.
But if you make claims to persuade others, you must be willing and able to justify those claims when challenged, or you lack credibility.
I’m afraid, “12.5 million google hits” doesn’t really count !
Have you ever felt that the summer gets too hot and the winter gets too cold recent years? I felt it. I should be concerned by every person on this planet. Stop excessive carbon emission and stop waste our resource.
Beston
Nice to see you post your observation.
“Stop excessive carbon emission and stop waste our resource”, that’s a noble aspiration, but the question is how ?
Without being able to provide a practical answer, your sentiment remains just a vague wish.
remove a metric ton of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere for as little as $94.
Craig,
Sorry, my last comment seems to have hit a snag in transmission, it should read ”
Here’s some potentially good news. Carbon removal technologies are being researched by more than 70 major research institutions globally including Mit and Harvard University.
A mere 18 months ago a team of scientists at Harvard University and a company called Carbon Engineering announced a low-cost, industrial-scale method of pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.
Until then conventional wisdom agreed such technology wasn’t economically viable estimating the cost of such plants in the hundreds of millions, operating on only a very small scale and cost over $600 per metric ton removed.
Yesterday, David Keith, a professor of applied physics at Harvard announced,
“What we’ve done is build a direct-air capture process that is,as much as possible, built on existing processes and technologies that are widespread in the world, which is why a reasonable possibility of scaling up now exists.”
David Keith’s Harvard team are working in conjunction with Carbon Engineering Corp, funded privately by investors such as Bill Gates etc. Professor Kieth puts the figure of carbon removal by his system at $94 per ton.
However, a team of Japanese research scientists at Tokyo’s Institute of Technology have announced in conjunction with their Swiss colleagues, a rival working prototype operating at a removal and processing rate of 2 metric tonnes per hour costing only $ 12 dollars per ton !
The Japanese plant and infrastructure is much smaller and modular. The cost of installation once in mass production could be lower than $1 million per unit, placing the total cost of removing all human induced atmospheric CO2 at less than .05% of global GDP.
Like all new technologies, Carbon removal, carbon-neutral hydrocarbon fuels, etc are still very much at a pioneering stage. However, reading through the impressive list of renowned scientists and investors working in this field of clean technology it’s obvious this is no scam !
I realize if this technology continues to advance, it wouldn’t be good news for all those fanatical “Climate Change Alarmists”, who would be forced to find a new cause to lecture mankind on it’s iniquity !
Craig,
I appreciated the Economist article, because it was honest about the cost… at least somewhat. They claim – if memory serves – that they can accomplish CO2 extraction for between ~$100 and ~$200/ton. That’s non-compressed… but still. We’re finally starting to get out of the hype and bull promotion and down to brass tax.
I can believe $200/ton is possible, and perhaps eventually $100/ton… if we assume that the installation is at a high latitude and we factor in sufficient economy of scale.
Such a system would have to be incredibly cost efficient, but it is plausible.
The problem then becomes: now what? $200/ton is still impractically expensive. In order to stop increasing our net carbon in the atmosphere, we’d need to absorb at least 20 billion tons of CO2/year. That’s $4 trillion dollars/year(!!!) That’s not going to work.
But I can see uses for the technology. I believe there will be a rapid growth in urban farming in the next century. If you consider the truly crowded, truly polluted cities (which include most cities in the third world), the CO2 levels are far higher than those seen elsewhere. In many cases the CO2 levels within the city could be as high as 1000 ppm and indoor CO2 levels in those cities could be 2000 ppm. If an 80-story urban farm were erected in one such city, and contracted with surrounding buildings to cycle their indoor climate control with one of these style machines, then the cost of the retrieved CO2 would be ~$40-80/ton, and the system costs would be partially offset by the building that has its CO2 extracted (studies have found human attention/concentration suffers significantly as CO2 levels increase, so a giant office building could dramatically improve its productivity by signing such a contract).
Then the hypothetical urban farm would have access to cheap CO2 – a serious need for high effectiveness.
So there is some chance for future synergistic growth with what I believe will be a high growth industry in the coming century. It just won’t plausibly work on a level that could help mitigate the climate crisis.
Glenn,
I also read the economist article and like you I thought the article was fair and honest.
My criticism of the article was it tended to cite fairly old information. This is a very rapidly developing technology and what was true as recently as 2011 or even 2014 becomes rapidly superseded.
The potential for direct extraction and re-uses of captured CO2 are expanding far beyond those envisioned in the Economist article.
Your $4 trillion cost would still only be 4% of the global GDP for the developed industrial nations. A huge expense but possible. What is equally possible is the Japanese modelling which suggest a figure of between 0.5 and 0.05 when a great many other mitigation factors are considered.
The technology is still only at the “potential” stage, and hasn’t been helped by setbacks in investment. This sort of technology always attracts a large number of naysayers, largely because most giant eco-projects have been over hyped in the past and failed to meet expectations.
I don’t know if these projects will ever prove truly effective and economic, but they certainly deserve support at the research stage and serious consideration.
At even $50 dollars per ton (a cost still 5 times higher than the Japanese estimate)the technology becomes viable. !% of GDP to reverse engineer climate change is a heavy burden but feasible and politically acceptable to the electorate if the could be assured the technology was reliable.
I remain open minded and supportive of the research.
Marcopolo,
We’re walking the line on Carnot limits with some of these technologies… there’s just not that much left to gain in terms of efficiency, which means mass production is what you’re after, but mass production on that scale means ramping up metal production to a level that rivals or exceeds the global automotive industry. I don’t think we’ll see cost reduction anywhere near that quickly.
But superstructure buildings in heavily congested cities do offer a real possibility. If the building has a combined air-handling system, with multiple intakes and a central duct, then you can – without much additional capital – tap into that central air duct. The air flowing through that duct might have 5 times the concentration of CO2 as seen in the global average. If you set up a CO2 trap on that central duct, you’d rather quickly reduce the average CO2 level in the building to perhaps as little as double the global average…
That trap would not require the endless investment in air displacement, since that is already neatly handled by the climate control system. I think that’s the biggest chance of real cost savings, but then you’re talking small package systems, which is the opposite of economy of scale…
I think there’s something here, just not nearly as much as the hype claims.
Glenn,
You may well be correct, and the principle established by Nicolas Carnot may apply to the early technologies illustrated above.
The Japanese claim they have developed a different type of technology allowing greater return incorporating different construction and materials. The Japanese claim their system allow for modular miniaturization reducing the cost of installation and materials.
It may be just hype or it may not, the Japanese-Indian consortium are near completion of a working large scale prototype, at which point the issue will be settled.