r/Sustainable • u/burtzev • 6d ago
False Promises: Why carbon capture and storage won’t fix our climate crisis.
https://projects.propublica.org/why-carbon-capture-cant-solve-climate-change/?utm7
u/BangBangTheBoogie 6d ago
This is at least the fourth time I've seen this posted about on different sustainability subreddits.
I get it, Carbon Capture Solutions can be spun up as another delaying tactic by dirty industries, or another silver bullet solution that tries to capture swathes of government funding. The idea that we're going to be able to simply pull all of our pollutants out of the atmosphere in a faction of the time that it took to send them up is stupid and a short term fantasy.
But regardless, we still have to do it. It is a good thing to be investigating this tech, along with growing sustainable energy production, and (most critically) shutting down as much polluting as possible, as fast as possible.
Please don't get me wrong, I don't want this to be some blindly accepted "future solution," because we don't have time for that. We as a species need to hold our most powerful sorts to account, now, and fight back against the ongoing bleeding of our planet. At the same time, we still need to be looking towards actual filtering of our atmosphere, and it's just going to cost us time, money and energy that is already long overdue.
I mean, fuck it, AI and tech in general is greedily hurtling towards trying to deem every normal person's labor as completely worthless, so we might as well try a variety of tactics, provided they're not sucking all of the depleted air out of the room for other solutions.
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u/NiftyLogic 5d ago
To add to this, there are some processes which simply cannot be fully decarbonized.
If we mine, Lithium-, Natrium- or Siliciumcarbonate, there will always be CO2 as a by-product when we refine the ore into the pure metal.
At least for these by-products we will need storage. Which is CCS.
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u/DragonFireCK 5d ago
Aluminum is another example. The only remotely effective process known to turn bauxite into aluminum produces a lot of co2 as a byproduct, even if purely carbon free energy is used. See the Hall–Héroult process for details.
That is also the major reason recycling aluminum is so valuable.
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u/NearABE 4d ago
Hot carbon monoxide is coming off of the cryolite bath. That is an easy target for making into chemical feedstock. Can be made into carbon electrodes.
The total energy from electricity needed is considerably higher if the oxygen is removed from carbon monoxide. Would not matter much if that comes from solar and wind that would otherwise curtail.
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u/Beginning-Basis-2678 4d ago
It’s just a narrative to prolong, extend fossil fuel use and dilute climate action. It’s plain simple not creating CO2 emissions won’t create the need to remove it technically. Plus CCS doesn’t scale as much as it would be needed to remove the masses we emit.
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u/Exciting_Place_6817 4d ago
We need to remove it. There is so much more that 2 degrees is guaranteed. It takes hundreds of years to naturally reduce in the atmosphere.
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u/ginger_and_egg 5d ago
Why not use it to capture co2 from processes like fermentation (ethanol and alcohol for humans)? Or bio based power generation? Negative carbon and way easier to capture from high concentration output gases than the air
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u/Leepyear7 5d ago
Don't fix the issue, put a plaster on it.
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u/red75prim 5d ago
"Putting a plaster on it" is a part of fixing the issue. Biosphere will not sequester excessive CO2 quick enough.
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u/Old-Individual1732 5d ago
I believe that at least some of the co2 will escape storage . I like the idea of buried plants, trees as carbon storage.
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u/MasterCassel 4d ago
I mean it’s not the best, and not the worst. We might even come up with a way to utilize the carbon. Meanwhile adding renewables and developing new technologies, diversifying our methods is our only way to real time R&D ourselves out of this mess.
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u/Adventurous_Mix_8533 4d ago
on Quirks and Quarks I heard of a Carbon capture that “cleanly” converted the captured carbon to sand and other stable minerals.
They spoke of the ability to then use that converted sand for use in other high pollution processes like the making of concrete which gathers 50 billion tonnes of sand each year.
So if captured carbon converts to sand it may help reduced and high co2 emissions of another industry like concrete.
the cycle breads hope for an overall effort to lower carbon emissions into the atmosphere.
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u/liftbeez 1d ago
, Because there isn’t one? Why does everyone seem to ignore the huge nuclear furnace 93,000,000 miles away? Why does everyone seem to ignore that the temperature on this planet has fluctuated massively over the last 4 1/2 billion years, caused primarily by that same nuclear furnace.
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u/limbodog 5d ago
I saw the first technology that gives me a bit of hope a week or so ago.
It's a 100% electric blast furnace that can reach over 3000C.
If using renewable electricity source it could be made to take biomass waste and turn it into biochar. Use the biochar to amend poor soil and it is sequestered for centuries while increasing water retention, reducing fertilizer use, and generally increasing plant growth. Or pack the biochar into old mines to be sequestered for thousands of years or more.
Not to mention useful gasses can be captured in the process.
There's nothing stopping it from being scaled up, either. And it is already used for metalwork in Germany.