The Concept of Negative Emissions and Carbon Engineering
The idea of pulling substantial amounts of carbon dioxide from the Earth's air is a daunting task, but many industries are worth more than that, including Apple or the airline industry. Definitely a tall order, but not impossible. For this idea to work globally in pullingsubstantial amounts of carbon dioxide fromthe Earth’s air, there would need to be hundreds or thousands of scaled-up plants producing hundreds of thousands of barrels of carbon-neutral fuel to drive down costs further, in the same way that solar and wind energy costs have plummeted over the past decades with increasing scales. However, to keep global warming to less than 2 degrees C, the international target to avoid the most dangerous impacts, we will need negative emissions, not carbon neutral emissions.
We need carbon to be taken out of the atmosphere and stored permanently, or the problem will only plateau indefinitely. And if Carbon Engineering is making fuel from their captured carbon, this is only a carbon-neutral plan. The reality of the situation is that when you are only capturing and storing carbon, there is no market for that. The only way to pay for carbon being captured from the air and stored, on a large scale, would be government subsidies, and to rely on only our governments to solve this problem is certainly a mistake.
And at $100 per ton at the moment, there aren’t enough carbon dioxide buyers in the market for any other uses to make a dent. Thus, introducing the idea of selling back the carbon as fuel is a way to fund such an effort. With market demand and money coming in, companies like Carbon Engineering can improve their technology, expand operations, store some carbon, and work toward making sure that less oil is extracted from the ground over time.
Critics say that we should simply just not be taking the carbon out of the ground in the first place, focusing on reducing emissions rather than capture and storage, or capture and re-use. And some worry that technology like this will allow us to think that we have no responsibility to reduce emissions. And it is cheaper to not emit a ton of carbon dioxide in the first place than to capture it. While these are all definitely valid points, technology like this can and should play a role in how we tackle climate change.
It’s unrealistic to think that every industry, every consumer, and every government in the world will change their behavior in time to tackle the rising global temperatures, as much as we wish they would. And technology like this will go a long way to help mitigate the negative effects of industries where a carbon zero result is next to impossible, like steel or cement manufacturing, or long-distance air travel.
So this may not be a silver bullet curing the world of climate change, but it is definitely a technology to be invested in as a tool in the toolbox to help solve the problem. And with direct air capture able to operate anywhere where there is air, water, and electricity, every country could in theory, have their own supply of carbon neutral fuel.
In the end, we are not mindless animals who cannot recognise the effect our behaviour is having on the environment. There are thousands of people working to solve these problems associated with an ever growing human population, with hundreds of start-ups using technology for the betterment of humankind. My audience is full of incredibly intelligent people who are more than capable of contributing to fixing our problems.
So, if you think you have what it takes to improve the world, you have probably thought about starting a company. You may not know where to start, but this course on Skillshare by a New York venture capital fund may help you. It will teach you how to generate and evaluate ideas for businesses, while giving you incredible insight from an experienced investor on how to successfully grow a start-up.
This is just one of over 25,000 classes in a huge range of topics. Ranging from creative skills like painting and music lessons to technical skills like coding. With professional and understandable classes, that follow a clear learning curve, you can dive in and start learning how to do the work you love. A Premium Membership begins around $10 a month for unlimited access to all courses, but the first 1000 people to sign up with this link will get their first two months for free.
So ask yourself right now. What skill have you been putting off learning? What project have you been dreaming of completing, but you aren’t sure if you have the skills to do it? Why not start right now and sign up to Skillshare using the link below to get your first two months free. You have nothing to lose and a valuable life skill to gain.
As usual, thanks for watching and thank you to all my Patreon supporters. If you would like to see more from me, the links to my Instagram, Twitter, Discord server, and subreddit are below.
"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enThis episode of Real Engineering is broughtto you by Skillshare. Home to over twentyfive thousand classes that could teach youa new life skill.We rarely witness evolution on a timeframeshort enough for a single human life to takenotice. These changes usually occur over manylifetimes, the gradual drift of a creaturesDNA to best survive their environment. Butin one case in the 1700s humans witnessedevolution with their own eyes, and they causedit. This metamorphosis coincided with human’srapid industrialization. We began burningcoal on levels never before seen, and it’sbi-products rapidly changed the landscapefor not just humans, but for the animals thatshared the planet with them.The peppered moth was one of those animals,getting its name from its speckled white andblack colouring, designed to camouflage themoth while it lay on lichen covered tree barks.A black variant was first observed in 1811,many decades into the industrial revolution.At first the mutation was rare, but human’sinfluence on the environment grew, so didtheir numbers. By 1895, 98% of the pepperedmoths in Manchester had this black colouringSurely this black colouring would leavethem exposed, making them easier to spot forhungry birds. In reality, these moths hadadapted to be harder to spot in this newlyindustrialised world, one stained by soot.And it may be time for humans to follow theirlead. To evolve, or die. The rate we havebeen spewing these pollutants into our atmospherehas only risen since this discover. Our carbondioxide emissions have risen from one thousandsix hundred million metric tonnes to thirtysix thousand million metric tonnes since 1865And despite our best efforts, that numberis not declining. Human population and developmentare continuing to outpace our efforts to curbedour carbon dioxide emissions.Just as alcohol producing yeast will eventuallycreate an environment too toxic for itselfto survive, humans are pumping the world’satmosphere with a gas that will eventuallyrender the world unlivable for many, if somethingis not done. So we have to ask ourselves now,are going the way of a mindless single cellfungi that continue to poison their habitatuntil they die, or are we going to recognisethat the survival of the next generation ismore important?Our previous videos have discussed ways tomitigate climate change, by planting treesin the Sahara or by using aerosols to blockout the sun. Both are pretty extreme methods,and come with some big risks that could leadto some unforeseen consequences. Instead ofsome risky engineering tactic, what if wecould just suck the CO₂ right out of theair, undoing some of the damage that has beendone?Well, in certain circumstances, this is alreadyhappening. Carbon capture and storage (CCS)has been around for years. There are a fewmain types of carbon capture, almost all ofwhich happens at power plants, capturing thecarbon that comes directly from the plant.In post-combustion carbon capture, the CO₂is captured after the fossil fuel is burned.In this method, CO₂ is separated from theflue gas, which includes CO₂, water vapor,sulfur dioxides and nitrogen oxides, by bubblingthe gas through an absorber column packedwith liquid solvents, such as ammonia. Inthe most widely used system, once the chemicalsin the absorber column become saturated, astream of superheated steam at around 120Cis passed through it. This releases the trappedCO₂, which can then be transported for storageelsewhere.In pre-combustion carbon capture, CO₂is trapped before it's diluted by other fluegases. The fossil fuel is heated in pure oxygen,resulting in a mix of carbon monoxide andhydrogen. The carbon monoxide is reactedwith water to produce carbon dioxide, whichis captured, along with hydrogen. The hydrogencan be used to produce electricity, and thecarbon dioxide is stored.Pre- and post-combustion carbon capture canprevent 80 to 90 percent of a power plant'scarbon emissions from entering the atmosphere.This is a big deal. The IPCC estimatesthat carbon capture and storage has the potentialto make up between 10% and 55% of the totalcarbon mitigation effort until year 2100.However, this carbon has to be stored somewhere.It is most often stored underground in a processcalled geological sequestration, which involvesinjecting CO₂ into underground rock formations.It is stored as a supercritical fluid, meaningit has properties between those of a gas anda liquid. When carbon dioxide is injectedat depth, it will remain in the supercriticalcondition as long as it stays in excess of31.1°C and at a pressure in excess of 72.9atmospheres. Many times, the carbon dioxideis injected into a reservoir which previouslytrapped oil and gas, since those areas havenatural rock formations that help to containthe carbon dioxide. While this might be anokay solution, no one knows for sure whatthe environmental impact could be if the carbondioxide were to leak out into the environmentin large quantities. In some instances,leakage of carbon dioxide underground hasbeen shown to increase plant mortality, reducegrowth and create potentially severe localiseddamage to ecosystems. For this to be a viable,safe option, the carbon dioxide would needto remain stored for 100s of years, or evenindefinitely, and the feasibility of thisis not certain.Other methods of storing carbon include sinkingit deep below the ocean, at depths under 3500meters, where it turns into a slushy materialthat will sink to the ocean floor under thatamount of pressure. But this method islargely untested, and again, there are concernsabout what this could mean for marine life,and uncertainty on whether or not the CO₂could eventually make its way back into theenvironment.There have been more promising experimentsin carbon storage in Iceland, where researchershave shown that pumping carbon dioxide intothe volcanic rock underground can speed upa natural process where the basalts reactwith the gas to form carbonate minerals, whichmake up limestone. This is an encouragingdevelopment, but has its limitations. It requireslarge amounts of water: 25 tonnes for eachtonne of carbon dioxide buried, meaning thisprocess would have to be limited to coastalsites. Another is that subterranean microbesmight break down carbonate to methane, anotherpowerful greenhouse gas.And while 80 to 90 percent of a power plant’scarbon emissions can, in theory, be capturedand stored in one of many ways, what aboutall of the other carbon emitting things inour world? Only 25% of global greenhouse gasemissions come from electricity and heat productionat power plants. Transportation, general industry,and agriculture collectively make up around60% of greenhouse gas emissions. Is therea way to capture CO₂ from these sources?Direct air capture has, up to recently, beena largely theoretical technique in which CO₂is removed directly from the atmosphere. Theoretical,because doing this on a scale that would evenmake a dent has historically been ridiculouslyexpensive - some experts say as much as $600per metric ton of carbon dioxide. For reference,a typical passenger vehicle emits about 4.6metric tons of carbon dioxide per year.But recently a team of scientists from HarvardUniversity and the Bill Gates funded companyCarbon Engineering announced that they havefound a method to cheaply pull carbon-dioxidepollution out of the atmosphere - they sayfor as little as $94, and for no more than$232 per metric ton of CO₂. This means thatit would cost between $1 and $2.50 to removethe carbon dioxide released by burning a gallonof gasoline in a modern car. And not onlydo they suck the CO₂ out of the air withthe ability to store it - they will also transformthe carbon back in to gasoline or jet fuel,creating net-neutral carbon based fuels.While this sounds too good to be true, themethods they use to pull CO₂ out of theair is not too different from what has alreadybeen done for decades.This type of direct air capture starts withan air contractor, where air is sucked inat high volumes. This structure “wet scrubs”the air by using a strong hydroxide solutionto capture CO₂ and convert it into carbonate.The hydroxide solution reacts with carbondioxide to form carbonate ions(CO32−.) Thisoccurs within a structure which is much thesame as an industrial cooling tower.The next step involves a “pellet reactor”where the carbonate ion reacts with calcium(Ca2+)to form calcium carbonate, in the form ofdried pellets.Then, a circulating fluid heats the calciumcarbonate pellets to decomposition temperature,breaking them apart to release the carbondioxide as a gas and leave behind calciumoxide (CaO)Finally, the carbon dioxide is combined withhydrogen and converted into liquid fuels,including gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel,using the Fischer-Tropsch process. This isa process where a mixture of carbon monoxideand hydrogen are converted into liquid hydrocarbons.These reactions occur in the presence of metalcatalysts and typically at temperatures of150–300 °C.This means the company can produce carbon-neutralhydrocarbons, meaning if you were to burnthis fuel in your car, you would release carbon-dioxidepollution out of your exhaust and into theatmosphere. But because this carbon dioxidecame from the air in the first place, theseemissions would not introduce any new carbondioxide to the atmosphere, and no oil wouldneed to be extracted from the earth to poweryour car. And perhaps most importantly forthe economic viability of this idea, theycan sell the product, which helps to offsetcosts, allowing them to capture even morecarbon dioxide, to either convert back intohydrocarbons or ultimately store.And backing up their cost estimates of between$94 and $232 per metric ton of carbon dioxideis the fact that they’ve actually testedthe technology in a prototype plant for afew years in Squamish, British Columbia, whichoffers a proof of concept that’s way strongerthan simple calculations or computationalmodels. It currently captures and processesaround 1 ton of carbon dioxide per day.However, for this idea to work on a largescale, the process has to be cost-effectiveto implement cheaply around the world, withoutthe massive costs of constructing all-newfactory parts. In the pilot plant, they pulledall this off by designing a factory basedentirely on parts that suppliers could alreadymake cheaply and by keeping careful trackof their emissions and costs at each stageof the design and production process. Theyare currently seeking funding for an industrial-scaleversion of the plant, that will use low-costrenewable energy, that will produce 200 barrelsof synthetic fuel a day, which they hope tocomplete by 2021.But how much carbon can they realisticallyhope to suck out of the air? In 2017, theworld emitted about 32.5 gigatons of carbondioxide. If this technology were built ata scale to suck all that back out of the atmosphereat $93 to $232 per ton, simple math showsthat the total cost would be between about$3 trillion and $7.5 trillion. That seemslike a lot, but many industries are worthmore than that, including Apple or the airlineindustry. Definitely a tall order, but notimpossible.For this idea to work globally in pullingsubstantial amounts of carbon dioxide fromthe Earth’s air, there would need to behundreds or thousands of scaled-up plantsproducing hundreds of thousands of barrelsof carbon-neutral fuel to drive down costsfurther, in the same way that solar and windenergy costs have plummeted over the pastdecades with increasing scalesHowever, to keep global warming to less than2 degrees C, the international target to avoidthe most dangerous impacts, we will need negativeemissions, not carbon neutral emissions. Weneed carbon to be taken out of the atmosphereand stored permanently, or the problem willonly plateau indefinitely. And if Carbon Engineeringis making fuel from their captured carbon,this is only a carbon-neutral plan.But the reality of the situation is that whenyou are only capturing and storing carbon,there is no market for that. The only wayto pay for carbon being captured from theair and stored, on a large scale, would begovernment subsidies, and to rely on onlyour governments to solve this problem is certainlya mistake. And at $100 per ton at the moment,there aren’t enough carbon dioxide buyersin the market for any other uses to make adent.Thus, introducing the idea of selling backthe carbon as fuel is a way to fund such aneffort. With market demand and money comingin, companies like Carbon Engineering canimprove their technology, expand operations,store some carbon, and work toward makingsure that less oil is extracted from the groundover time.Critics say that we should simply just notbe taking the carbon out of the ground inthe first place, focusing on reducing emissionsrather than capture and storage, or captureand re-use. And some worry that technologylike this will allow us to think that we haveno responsibility to reduce emissions. Andit is cheaper to not emit a ton of carbondioxide in the first place than to captureit. While these are all definitely valid points,technology like this can and should play arole in how we tackle climate change. It’sunrealistic to think that every industry,every consumer, and every government in theworld will change their behavior in time totackle the rising global temperatures, asmuch as we wish they would. And technologylike this will go a long way to help mitigatethe negative effects of industries where acarbon zero result is next to impossible,like steel or cement manufacturing, or long-distanceair travel.So this may not be a silver bullet curingthe world of climate change, but it is definitelya technology to be invested in as a tool inthe toolbox to help solve the problem. Andwith direct air capture able to operate anywherewhere there is air, water, and electricity,every country could in theory, have theirown supply of carbon neutral fuel.In the end, we are not mindless animals whocannot recognise the effect our behaviouris having on the environment. There are thousandsof people working to solve these problemsassociated with an ever growing human population,with hundreds of start-ups using technologyfor the betterment of humankind. My audienceis full of incredibly intelligent people whoare more than capable of contributing to fixingour problems. So, if you think you have whatit takes to improve the world, you have probablythought about starting a company. You maynot know where to start, but this course onSkillshare by a New York venture capital fundmay help you. It will teach you how to generateand evaluate ideas for businesses, while givingyou incredible insight from an experiencedinvestor on how to successfully grow a start-up.This is just one of over 25,000 classes ina huge range of topics. Ranging from creativeskills like painting and music lessons totechnical skills like coding. With professionaland understandable classes, that follow aclear learning curve, you can dive in andstart learning how to do the work you love..A Premium Membership begins around $10 a monthfor unlimited access to all courses, but thefirst 1000 people to sign up with this linkwill get their first 2 months for free. Soask yourself right now. What skill have youbeen putting off learning. What project haveyou been dreaming of completing, but you aren’tsure if you have the skills to do it. Whynot start right now and sign up to Skillshareusing the link below to get your first 2 monthsfree. You have nothing to lose and a valuablelife skill to gain.As usual thanks for watching and thank youto all my Patreon supporters. If you wouldlike to see more from me, the links to myinstagram, twitter, discord server and subredditare below.\n"
