#31 — Carbon Capture

Hiring the Fox to watch the Henhouse

By now, anyone who is paying attention understands that we have a big problem: greenhouse gases, mostly a result of the activities of humans in the northern hemisphere, are building up in the atmosphere and trapping the sun’s heat. Carbon dioxide is public enemy #1 in that regard. Over the eons, staggering amounts of CO2 have been removed from the atmosphere and stored by nature, largely by plants and tiny ocean creatures. If they can do it, why can’t homo sapiens, those apex critters with the big heads, do it even better?

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change tells us that if we are to save the planet that we know and love, we will likely have to resort to artificial carbon capture and storage technologies. In other words, we have squandered the opportunity to let nature do the rebalancing by our failure to cut carbon emissions soon enough (like 30 years ago when the problem became obvious.) Although the IPCC’s early timetable for the effects of global warming were far too optimistic — warming has proceed much more quickly than their predictions — they have never been far off on necessary paths for mitigation.

First, Capture It

Artificial Carbon Capture can use three main pathways:

• REMOVE IT BEFORE IT’S BURNED — Since the vast majority of the problem carbon comes from fossil fuels, this approach depends on removing and storing the carbon in them before combustion.

• CATCH IT BEFORE IT LEAVES THE SMOKESTACK — In this scenario, hydrocarbons are burned in the traditional manner, but the CO2 is captured before it leaves the generation facility.

• SCRUB IT FROM THE ATMOSPHERE — Blow air through a gizmo that will remove the CO2 from it.

Problem #1

All of these approaches use a lot of energy! If fossil fuels are used to generate this energy, the cost is very high and there is virtually no net reduction in atmospheric CO2.

Then Store It

Once the carbon is captured by one of the above means, it must be stored in such a way that we won’t have to worry about it leaking back into the atmosphere.

• You can make stuff out of carbon, even fuel! A Canadian company, Carbon Engineering, has been making transportation fuels from stored carbon since 2017. Plastics and other materials can also be made from captured carbon.

• Pump it into oil wells. This technique is already used to force more oil out of depleted wells. Can you guess who likes this plan?

• Store it in deep stable rock formations. This is the gold standard for carbon storage.

Problems # 2, 3, 4, 5………….

All of these solutions have been tried, and they work at some level. They are all vastly more expensive than the more obvious solution — just stop putting CO2 into the atmosphere!

For a more detailed look at carbon capture technologies and pitfalls: Sierra Club

Can you guess who loves the idea of artificial Carbon Capture?

The very industry that first determined that greenhouse gases were a serious problem, then spent millions to try to sweep the news under the rug, is now the big proponent of carbon capture and sequestration. The business plan behind this “solution” is obvious: Let’s pump more sequestered carbon out of the earth and burn it to put that carbon back into storage.

Because there was not a single Republican senator willing to put our children’s future ahead of party politics, it was necessary to make a devil‘s bargain with Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia — a man who happily takes more campaign contributions from the petroleum industry than anyone else in the Senate. His stranglehold on the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 produced more tax breaks for carbon capture pilot projects. Here’s a bit of history on the Trump administration’s plan for tax breaks for carbon capture.

Hedging our bets.

If the IPCC is right it may be necessary to employ carbon capture (on a vast scale and at staggering expense) in a last ditch attempt to avert climate catastrophe. If so, some research now might be a wise investment.

The outrage.

It makes my blood boil that we must take money out of renewable energy projects in order to subsidize research by a cynical industry that we have been so generously subsidizing for decades. In this case an ounce of prevention is worth several tons of cure — we should be spending every penny available to support wind, solar and storage projects — technologies that are proven, already on the shelf, and vastly cheaper. The fossil fuel industry is enjoying record profits as a result of the war in Ukraine — it is pure chutzpah to ask us to pay for the research they hope will insure their future!

The optimism.

It looks like the Inflation Reduction Act will pass. If so, it will fund real progress on climate mitigation. Although both sides claim it is a huge investment, it is entirely paid for without raising taxes on individuals making less than 400,000/year. The cost is a pittance compared with the size of our economy, or the cost of past tax cuts for the already wealthy. Carbon capture is being done on a huge scale by forests and grasslands. Let’s work on ways to expand them, rather than cutting them down and plowing them up!

Carbon Capture the Right Way. Stop cutting it down!

For a look at a proven method to capture carbon and make our cities more livable on the cheap: Urban Carbon Capture

Thanks for reading,

Doug Hylan, Brooklin, Maine

“Winning slowly is the same as losing.” Activist Bill McKibben

Believe in the power of your own voice. The more noise you make, the more accountability you demand from your leaders, the more our world will change for the better.”      Al Gore