Occidental Petroleum is investing in billion-dollar projects to suck carbon dioxide out of the sky. The effort is raising hopes — and eyebrows
By Daniel Estrin, Camila Domonoske
3-Minute Listen / Transcript available
Occidental Petroleum is investing in billion-dollar projects to suck carbon dioxide out of the sky. The effort is raising hopes — and eyebrows
By Daniel Estrin, Camila Domonoske
3-Minute Listen / Transcript available
I think this is necessary, but we need to stop trying to make it profitable or using it as an excuse to pollute more. This needs to be paid for through taxes. Any other source of money that is enough to actually get the job done will result in the carbon going right back into the air. Using it for extra oil extraction is doubly bullshit.
I both agree and disagree with this. If it can be made profitable, then all the better - because then economics and policy can combine to bring it about faster than either would alone. But if it can’t be made profitable then I agree absolutely that it should be done anyways with tax revenue.
Long-term it’s definitely not good to use it as an excuse to pollute more - these won’t do an ounce of good if they only exist to offset emissions we still produce. In the short term though, allowing carbon capture to act as an offset for emissions could still be a net long-term positive, in that it would shift the economics more in its favor - allowing faster development and a wider buildout. This assumes that the industries that use it in this fashion do eventually decarbonize anyways - which you could perhaps guarantee by having carbon capture stop counting as offsets at some designated future date.
I think the pragmatic solution is to introduce yearly shrinking carbon caps, and allow them to be offset with carbon capture for a limited time - say, 10 or 15 years after the “net zero carbon” goal date. After that it’s all about building up that net negative number.