Really, we need both. If we don’t capture, we’re fucked even if we reduce.
There is however a world where we capture so much, we can pump out as much as we want, and sadly it sounds more easy to achieve in the current hypercapitalistic environment.
And if we get rid of the hypercapitalism this conversation is moot anyway.
It will never be efficient to capture carbon when measured against not polluting it in the first place.
The math simply doesn’t math - carbon capture at best will be an emergency action where we divert energy from other needs to desperately try and lower CO2 - we’ll never be able to not care about emissions because we can just capture it.
Right now the carbon is captured in an extremely efficient dense manner - we’re expending energy to dig it up, to harness that energy… it will never make sense to use the energy from that process to recapture the emissions.
It only makes sense to look at carbon capture if we have an entirely green grid and loads of excess energy to throw around. That is a highly unlikely scenario.
What’s interesting about the facility in the article is that it’s not capturing carbon from fossil fuels: it’s capturing CO2 generated from the fermentation of ethanol. That means the CO2 came from plants (corn), which is known as biogenic CO2. If low carbon electricity is used to capture biogenic CO2, the net result is a lowering of the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. That’s in addition to the energy content of the ethanol, which could displace fossil fuels.
Carbon capture isn’t the sole solution, but could be part of it.
Really, we need both. If we don’t capture, we’re fucked even if we reduce.
There is however a world where we capture so much, we can pump out as much as we want, and sadly it sounds more easy to achieve in the current hypercapitalistic environment.
And if we get rid of the hypercapitalism this conversation is moot anyway.
Sorry I just want to reiterate something.
It will never be efficient to capture carbon when measured against not polluting it in the first place.
The math simply doesn’t math - carbon capture at best will be an emergency action where we divert energy from other needs to desperately try and lower CO2 - we’ll never be able to not care about emissions because we can just capture it.
Right now the carbon is captured in an extremely efficient dense manner - we’re expending energy to dig it up, to harness that energy… it will never make sense to use the energy from that process to recapture the emissions.
It only makes sense to look at carbon capture if we have an entirely green grid and loads of excess energy to throw around. That is a highly unlikely scenario.
What’s interesting about the facility in the article is that it’s not capturing carbon from fossil fuels: it’s capturing CO2 generated from the fermentation of ethanol. That means the CO2 came from plants (corn), which is known as biogenic CO2. If low carbon electricity is used to capture biogenic CO2, the net result is a lowering of the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. That’s in addition to the energy content of the ethanol, which could displace fossil fuels.
Carbon capture isn’t the sole solution, but could be part of it.