In Just One Year, Wind And Solar Offset All The Carbon Ever Captured By CCS Prototypes

[hatrack]

A new analysis by Clean Technica found that global investment in carbon capture and storage technology (CCS) adds up to roughly $7.5 billion total. It also examined how much, for that investment, CCS has reduced atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) levels compared to an equivalent investment in renewable power generation.

The analysis calculated that “wind and solar are displacing roughly 35 times as much CO2 every year as the complete global history of CCS.” Clean Technica's Mike Barnard concluded, “CCS is a rounding error in global warming mitigation.” Carbon capture, which includes a range of nascent technologies to remove CO2 directly from the air, is a favorite climate change mitigation strategy of the fossil fuel industry. Theoretically, CCS would allow power plants and vehicles to continue burning fossil fuels while reducing the resulting carbon emissions from that combustion. This is the concept behind the failed idea of so-called “clean coal.”

A former Obama Energy Department official told the Washington Post, “Carbon capture and storage makes coal more expensive, not less.” With coal already unable to compete with renewables on cost, adding CCS is a deal-breaker.

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The concept of removing carbon from the atmosphere to slow climate change certainly has merit, as many experts have pointed out, and if it were technologically and economically feasible, incorporating this approach would make sense in any plan to limit the damages of climate change. However, “negative emissions technologies,” as they are also called, currently are neither technologically nor economically feasible to deploy on a scale with any meaningful impact.

Link to tweet

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In one variation of a process known as enhanced oil recovery, the oil and gas industry pumps carbon dioxide into older oil fields to increase the amount of oil that can be recovered from existing wells. The practice, which can also include pumping steam, water, chemicals, or bacteria into wells, is common in the U.S., constituting 60 percent of oil and gas production as of 2017. That means carbon dioxide removed from the atmosphere is being pumped below ground into oil fields, helping produce oil that is then burned and adding an estimated equivalent of 90 percent of that carbon back into the atmosphere, according to Clean Technica. In addition, a 2017 report from the environmental group Clean Water Action noted: “Given the enormous variability in subsurface conditions, the extent the CO2 actually stays in the desired formation without any migration is unclear.”

Ed. -Emphasis added.

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https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/04/27/renewables-offset-35-times-co2-carbon-capture-storage

[MH1]

1. Why does a company like Airgas need to "produce" carbon dioxide?

Or are they actually doing a recapture of some sort?

I was recently doing a job search and came across an Airgas posting. In the section about the company, this part caught my eye (emphasis added):

Airgas is a leading U.S. producer of atmospheric gases with 16 air separation plants, a leading producer of carbon dioxide, dry ice, and nitrous oxide,

Hmm. (Airgas isn't a target company for me btw, for a few reasons. Just curious about this statement. Also showing how little I know about the topic. )

[marylandblue]

2. Carbon dioxide capture is expensive and due to some basic science likely always will be.

So it's still a lot cheaper to make it than to capture it.

[MH1]

3. That's too bad.

So, over here we have way too much of it, over there we need it but it's cheaper to make more than to take it from where we have too much.

Sigh.

Anyway thanks for the answer!