The truth about capturing CO2 to reverse climate change
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 20 ก.ค. 2020
- The truth about capturing CO2 to reverse climate change. Go to brilliant.org/Undecided you can sign up for free. And also, the first 200 people will get 20% off their annual premium membership. Carbon capture and storage is often brought up as a solution to climate change, but do we really need it, how much of an impact could it really make, and is it in fact just an excuse to keep burning fossil fuels ... letting heavy polluting industries off the hook? It's time to find out the truth.
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Let me know what you think about carbon capture. And if you liked this video check out this one: th-cam.com/play/PLnTSM-ORSgi7cadIj6qpCWkg-tPzN1sgj.html
Don't know if it's coincidence, but "Now You Know" just released a video about a "CryoBattery" that cools air with excess electricity to make it liquid and power turbines when released again as pressurised air. th-cam.com/video/H6Ql9J3cUy8/w-d-xo.html
Here' s something I found, stimulated by a Thorium LFTR TH-cam series by Malcom McDowell. Extracting CO2 from seawater to generate bespoke fuels. Perhaps can be used to bridge fuelling maritime and aeronautical operations with fuels until alternative energy sources become available (creating a manmade carbon cycle) and can generate desalinated water - www.nrl.navy.mil/news/releases/nrl-seawater-carbon-capture-process-receives-us-patent
I believe carbon capture is a very important solution. As a product and a service. Climeworks captures carbon from the ambient air in Hinwil/Switzerland and sells it as a product to a vegetable producer who feeds it into the greenhouse a few hundred meters besides the capture infrastructure (It is just beside the Sauber F1 head quarters). The problem with CCS is that many might think of it as a get out of jail free card or a "no regret - all you can eat diet pill".
CCS MUST have a safe end-storage solution! With a solid end-storage, you might be able to motivate people to have a storage location in their neighborhood. Climeworks claims two years until the liquid CO2 solidifies in Iceland.
I believe you should emphasize that good CCS is the only real carbon-negative solution - trees are not - and I like trees, yet they are merely a carbon storage. I also like the concrete carbon storage product! Very nice - if true
My old university (go Crimson!) got a government contract to do some basic Geo-Engineering research - and all our sustainability professors think this is an uncontrollable pandora's box...so do I.... some engineers decide who gets rain and who doesn't - if they can somewhat control it.
Yet the most underrated solution to a turn around in sustainability is easily energy efficiency. Already in 2013, MIT Prof. John Sterman opened the MIT Sustainability Summit with "All the technology for a 100 % sustainable life style exists today"
@@colsylvester639 Developing "solutions" to KEEP the existing fleet of marine & aero ships is retrograde thinking.
-> While it is true "planes" simply "do not work" with ~current~ Lithium Ion battery technology (they will in a few years), it is already not the case for ships.
Because there is so much money *already invested* on ships that COULD keep working for another 30, 50 or 70 years more (needing less money for repairs than making new ones); there is little incentive to REPLACE the diesel engines with electric motors and MASSIVE, permanent battery storage.
-> It also introduces aditional steps & infraestructure requirements on ports for the recharging of such massive the batteries (cooling down the systems is trivial by itself, but it does also raise the temperature of local waters); compared with simple pumping of fuel.
Because INTERNATIONAL trade is made outside of countries, the only way for companies to be FORCED to change their fleets is by blocking them (literally shooting and sinking the ships if they TRY to enter in banned national waters) in so many places they can not simply "shift the bussiness" to another place & still be rentable.
@@adolfodef I certainly don't mean that this should be a long term solution but waiting for other solutions to replace aviation and maritime fuels doesn't stop us digging up fossil fuels in the meantime. The US navy has a tried and tested solution that has been shown to work and could be worth investigating for upscaling. The power density of batteries to fly a transatlantic craft is a long way off. I think we can all agree. As you say, there's no incentive to replace diesel engines, so let's not. Let's fuel them with cleaner fuel versions (the navy example means you can actually design cleaner fuels), and have an artificial carbon cycle that means we recycle the carbon, rather than adding to the biosphere carbon load by burning fossils. It could also free countries that don't have their own fossil resources from the OPEC and global price variability. Hawaii has (and still does?) and island nations import diesel for base load electricity in some cases. The energy supply of any nation is more resilient with a diverse energy source mix. I'm not discounting renewables but a nuanced approach that can work now means we can tackle climate change sooner rather than later. Thanks
I actually spent 5 yrs of my life researching (i.e. in the actual lab) carbon capture, back when it was called CCS - carbon capture and sequestration (at a conference I went to they said we should stop using sequestration as it is too fancy of a word for the general public to understand). We worked with a lot of the big (and small) companies in this field and even got a $8M DARPA grant for our work.
Here's the problem, most carbon capture technology uses an amine solvent (like MEA, monoethanolamine) to capture CO2. You then have to desorb the CO2 by heating it to high temperatures, which takes a lot of energy and then compress it for storage, which also takes a lot of energy. The models we and others developed showed about half the power generated in a typical coal fired power plant would go to the CO2 capture and compression. We worked with enzymes to accelerate the CO2 capture and reduce the amount of energy needed but even in our best case scenario it would still require about 30% of the power plant's energy output.
Then the question is what are you going to do with the CO2? Sure you can use it for enhanced oil recovery or pump it into abandoned oil wells, but that really only works in Texas. Pumping CO2 from, say, Nebraska to Texas is energy intensive. One big earthquake could release all that CO2 and cause massive deaths (it's happened before, see Lake Nyos disaster). You can pump it to the bottom of the ocean where the weight of the water above will keep CO2 in a liquid state and at the bottom, but again that takes significant energy (bottom of the ocean is ~ 15,000 psi). CO2, energy wise, is bottom of the barrel (it's fully oxidized), so there's not many uses for it at the scale we're talking about. Remember, the scale of CO2 capture is HUGE.
Capturing CO2 from the air is just a stupid idea. As you said the concentration is so low in the atmosphere that the driving force is almost zero. The flux (transfer) of CO2 from the air to the liquid capture solvent is proportional to the driving force, this means it would require huge capture towers to make any difference, and these take massive amounts of energy to run and significant capex to build. The MIT thing may work in the lab and will make a good paper, but is not scalable. You can't override the laws of physics and chemistry, no matter how good you are. The only way anything meaningful will work is to capture it at the point of generation, i.e. coal (or natural gas) fired power plants (there's over 350 in the US and probably 5 times that in the rest of the world).
To sum it up, there is nothing technically difficult about capturing CO2. The problem is you have to essentially build an extra power plant for each existing one just to provide the energy for CO2 capture and compression, which means you have to burn twice the amount of coal you're burning now. And then you have to figure out what you're going to do with it. Just doesn't make a lot of sense. Reduction (population control?) and renewables make more sense.
(FYI, I have a B.S. in chemical engineering and a Ph.D. in Biochemical Engineering)
And that's the problem with technological silver bullets. Technology doesn't replace energy. You can't ignore the law of conservation of energy in the closed system that is Earth. The only solution is to stop consuming and shift entire industry to production of renewable power plants.
@@sodalitia The only real option is reducing consumption and limiting population growth. Sure hydroelectric is great, if you have a fast flowing river nearby and ignore the environmental impact of the dams. Solar requires massive surface area and the commensurate amount of solar panels (which have their own carbon footprint to make and install and have a limited lifetime). Biofuels have a long ways to go and still require huge land masses with the required water and fertilizer and the logistics to transfer all the bio-feedstocks to the fermentation plants. Algae shows a little bit of promise, but again you need large areas and water to grow the algae, then you have to separate all the water from the algae and recover the oil, which is really the achilles heal of algae tech.
@@sjn7220 Well, to be honest, by saying "solution" I was overly optimistic here. I don't claim it will solve the crysis, especially when we already likely passed the tipping points. But I was saying that in contrast to pipe dream of CCSes. If we don't have political will to shift most of the world industry to serve transition to renewables, regardless how unachievable the ideal of 0 emissions is, and curb our rampant consumption, we are done here. All forms of energy production have problems, because by increasing the energy porfolio even by renewables you enable and stimulate, within the capitalist system, more resource extraction and production. It's called energy-production interface. I don't really see solution to climate change within capitalist system. When it comes to overpopulation and overconsumption, lets remember that the latter results in way higher emissions than the former. Despite record population growth, the poorest countries have the lowest carbon footprint, so I think we should be very careful about population control, when average American produces 14 tons of CO2 a year while average Indian 1.7.
Hey, since you actually know what you are talking about: Thoughts on enhanced rock weathering ?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_weathering & projectvesta.org
It seems like THE solution that checks all the marks, and is so simple that any flaw should be easy to spot. Yet I don't hear much about it...
Regarding Algae biofuel, one would think it would be relatively easy to engineer them to concentrate and release their oil on their own.
Both processes are fairly common in various life forms.
Matt, now that you talked about carbon capture, I think that it would be interesting to compare this tech to planting trees. Thanks.
It would be better to have both. To reverse our impact and help restore things would be optimal...
@@justinfigley4867 Yes, we probably need both, but knowing how they compare would help inform decisions when it comes to allocating money.
depends on the scenario, right now it's definitely a viable option, but once the real climate crisis kicks in, land might be too dry as water becomes more scarce, this is happening right now and we don't have enough desalination plantations to supply everything and only will be building nutil it's too late (as usual with politics nowadays...), so efficiency will be key and new little trees that have to grow and need a couple of watered acres before they make an impact might not be worth the effort. BUT this will be a worst case scenario. nd only for a short time, and as those guys before me said, both will be needed, as we probably don't want to wait millions of years until the co2 is composted to oil and shifted back into lower layers of the earths curst^^
@1 2 Not a total solution. But an important part. The trees don't have to be cut down. Those that are can be used as lumber to build houses. Could also bury them underground as a form of carbon sequestering.
last data i saw was 1x50c tree was 13000x more cost effective than any capture machine currently in use
ah yes, carbon capture and storage: what the rainforests we're cutting down used to do
yepper's the rain forests just weren't doing it well enough so that why we cut them down instead of finding out a more efficient solution for them first off sounds risky to me if you think about it cause step one is climate change step two is suffocation
@@raven4k998 English isn't your first language, is it?😂
You really have no idea how big the rainforests are!
By the time we raze one field, ten more will grow
It's not the rainforests that do main work. It's the oceans people!
@@NullPointer871ICant no it's the flowers dumb ass the oceans and rain forests just look pretty that's all
To the “just plant trees” group, no one is stopping you from planting trees while we work toward engineered solutions. It’s gonna be a multipronged approach to solve climate change. At this point I don’t see people or governments making difficult decisions to change their behavior (just incremental ones). Technology is the only pragmatic solution I see in coordination with incremental changes in energy production, farming, renewables, conservation, etc to solve the climate crisis.
It might help if actual viable solutions like nuclear didn't keep getting thrown out. Imagine if california had built a couple thorium reactors as they had their big push on renewables.
Trees are great at capturing CO2, but forests are a more complex issue. There's always a tradeoff between a forest's CO2 capture and its CO2 emissions. Emissions come from decaying organic matter from tree litter, dead trees,the carbon bound up in the soils, from respiration as the tree's oxidize the sugars they make from sunlight, and of course fires. As temperatures warm and forests burn more the net balance can easily turn from net CO2 sequestration to net CO2 emissions. Beyond the massive CO2 release of a forest fire, the burn scar exposes the soils to direct sunlight and heat accelerating the decomposition of the organic material in the soils, releasing CO2.
In subarctic forests - which are historically some of the best carbon sequestering forests - the melting of the permafrost or early melting of the seasonal frost soils also accelerates CO2 emissions in these carbon rich soils.
In rain-forests burning to create arable land can also quickly turn the forests into net carbon emitters. This is happening more and more often. Also forests go through life cycles and early and mid life are when forests are most efficient at capturing and sequestering CO2, old growth forests much less so.
It's great to have trees in your backyard and on your street, but the heavy lifting in CO2 capture happens in large forests, and warming is reducing their effectiveness considerably.
@Bee Kay I guess you hear what you can comprehend.
@Bee Kay I think you made a mistake. Here let me fix that sentence.
'All I say are big words, no common sense.'
@@glibsonoran I'd add that some of what I have seen getting planted is more like a tree farm than a forest. The interest in rebuilding biodiversity and habitat doesn't seem to be part of the thinking for the "just plant trees" crowd.
Your videos are great. Enjoy all the content. One small point of clarification and possible modification for the accuracy of your videos is around the portrayal of cooling towers for nuclear power plants as a source of air pollution. This is a really common mistake that people make.That stuff that looks like steam that's coming out of the coolant towers is simply that, steam. It is not any source of air pollution. Again, thanks for the video and I enjoy all of your content.
Fair point on the cooling tower shots.
@@UndecidedMF Same with many towers in oil refineries. Not that they don't pollute. They do, it's just not the billowing stream you see coming from them.
Actually h2o is just as bad of a green house gas as co2. And as the earth get hotter more gets stored in the atmosphere, causing this to speed up. Not saying that you’re wrong but water vapor is a green house gas.
@@the2theonly672 In that case dont we need to drain all oceans? They made on h2o, you know?
@@Vednier The Water in the oceans is just that: WATER. Steam, on the other hand, is water VAPOR. It's a gas. It is the water vapor (a gas) that is a powerful greenhouse gas that adds to the over-heating of the atmosphere. To go further with this, the heating of the oceans as the world over-warms is driving more of the ocean's water to vaporize into the atmosphere, further heating it. (a "vicious cycle")
We already have carbon capturing devices.
They are called 'trees'!
Yeah but trees are REALLY needy in order to stay happy and healthy. Now you can get one at a time but it would be more efficient having a forest with plenty of native plant diversity.
Its take 15 years for tree to grow, you also need lots of land ..... these capture plant can do the work of 1,000 trees & it works 24/7 as soon as you turn it on
I really appreciate your just giving the facts…thoroughly. You relay information not in a gloom and doom or a denier way to where people can just take the info as it is without feeling politicized. We need more of this in the world. Good job!
I've always known climate change is a challenge worth addressing, but I hated almost every time it was mentioned because of that reason. Since finding Undecided, it's been interesting and hope inspiring to hear about the potential solutions and possibilities.
its a giant fan with a sock for a filter, this is a scam
@@maximusDAbiker The hard political climate movement just seemly looks for stuff to beat over your head. There is no compromise and therefore the fighting back and forth is fierce. Real climate scientists will tell you exactly what is happening, and what to expect, and are more willing to debate and negotiate. The political climate movement is not about debate - merely name calling to support their cause.
My first thought: Can't we just turn co2 into bricks?
Matt: Building materialsssssss
Google.de
You still have to capture the co2
You can also make carbon fiber
Why don`t we just let Co2 grow more plants ?
Yeah there's this thing called trees. And the. Chinese have planted a billion of them.
1:39 that's steam btw
Many movements require the ignorance of the masses
@@allahbole indeed.
What I find especially ironic is how dependent renewable energy is on fossil fuels.
@Philip Ethan van Harreveld no, just no. The monent the sun goes down and the wond stops blowing is when gas power plants get turned on. This does not apply to eg nuclear. So nuclear ends up being more environmentally friendly. Even moee when you take the new models into account.
What about BECCS (bio-energy carbon capture & storage)?? No need for carbon-capturing machines... nature provided us already with such, effective machine: trees. Tree biomass from sustainable forestry can be used to power electricity plants, etc and the carbon is then stored with the described storage techniques, creating a big negative sink. Besides capturing carbon this would also enhance biodiversity, store carbon in the forest itself and give many other ecosystem benefits on the contrary with carbon-capturing machines. Thanks for the video!
Smooth Gefixt. Yes agree it would be much better for all of us if they allowed the trees to continue to absorb the carbon dioxide like they do along with every bit of all of our vegetation on planet Earth relies on that carbon dioxide to stay alive if it doesn't have it all the plants on planet Earth will die and a very short time but before they all die most all of us will be gone leaving behind a big stinking pile of corpses as I would not want to guess how much time we have left and it's a rate people are battling this fake weather conditions fake carbon greenhouse effect stupid crap it was all invented in Congress it ain't one scientist behind this at all... Where are the numbers to report the climate change of the DraStic weather changes where's all the where's all the information I'll tell you where it's at there isn't any information cuz it's not happening it's all a scam it's propaganda bent on one thing what happens when all the plants die does anybody know that's our only source for oxygen and when we run out of oxygen our hearts quit beating and will die and we're on a downward spiral pretty fast right now I'm losing life sustaining oxygen levels that it doesn't matter anymore because there is enough people smart enough to even know what I just said seriously I spent the last 3 months talking to people in my local neighborhood friends friends and friends just striking up the conversation and when I started to begin to tell people of why we have to have carbon dioxide and why there's not enough right now they they really don't want to hear it and I have really interrupt me and tell me that we don't care about none of that there's nothing to do about anyway I just forget it well I have to do is stop a handful of people who are deliberately setting us up to die you remove the carbon dioxide you remove the plants when the plants are gone there's no air for us to breathe no oxygen be playing here but it won't be an accident that I should level is maintained by the amount of oxygen that's expelled from plant life it's been in balance pretty well for the last 50,000 years I can't change it all and not changing at all the only thing that can change the goddamn climate is the tilt of the earth and how much sunlight it gets per day that's what will change the climate when the poll sits and what they're calling global warming yeah it's global warming all right at work producing more heat than we're receiving from the Sun we're not retaining any word producing more how do you suppose that is well the other day when they reported that the Earth's core was lopsided that's an area about what 8,000 miles around it A thousand Miles through it when you switch that around inside the world here it makes sense of thousands of degrees of heat real quick that's what heating up the planet as every planet in the solar system is suffering from the same symptoms and I can tell you what that is it was that brown dwarf star of our sunstar the twin that just went around the Sun two months ago I washed it on TH-cam when the lightning bolts were striking out from the Sun nobody mentioned it but I see it and I also saw it back in 1983 when it was photographed by national sales on satellite that my cousin had a lot to do with like the invention of the infrared lenses that goes on these binocular telescopes so they can see more than just in the dark they can see in upward higher wavelengths of light which is the only way you can see our Brown door big chunk of iron 10 times bigger than Jupiter that means it has a value of gravity at least 10 times more than Jupiter . Genesis prime the most powerful natural magnet and our solar system and it is the only possible way that Earth's core could have lop sided
But nobody cares what's really happening and why they just want to all do something together like killing ourselves I think that's pretty f****** stupid don't you think so to take the nourishment away from the plan so they'll die so we'll die I don't see how that's going to cure anything
I've got a couple of thousand carbon capture machines on my land and they are zero energy usage, they also increase the oxygen level of the atmosphere, I have a couple of hundred more to "erect" in the next few weeks, they are called TREES, the most perfect carbon capture device known to man.
I can understand skepticism about CCUS schemes, given the involvement of oil and gas companies... but one thing to consider in the longer term is that even if we electrify EVERYTHING, we will still have a whole bunch of excess carbon in the atmosphere from the last 200+ years of human activity. If we want the technology to pull it out of the air and put it to use in a way that keeps it out of the air, we'll need to keep developing these technologies.
The thing is that Trees are more efficient than CCUS. And they cost about $1 per tree to 'make' and plant. Heck flooding the Sahara with sea water and covering it in mangroves would be more cost effective. The problem is that those solutions don't make oil companies money.
@@tnk4me4 The problem is we've been releasing carbon that had previously been trapped underground for millions of years, so even if we were to restore global tree coverage to pre-industrial levels, we'd only be storing amounts of carbon comparable to those pre-industrial levels. And somewhat temporarily at that, since trees will eventually burn or decompose.
However that's not to say that there is NO role for trees and other biomass to play. I'm cautiously optimistic about cross laminated timber and hempcrete as alternative building materials that can hopefully store carbon for a long long time. Additionally, there are a lot of other benefits to increasing the amount of greenery in our living spaces . Cooling effects for urban areas, localized food production, etc. The beautiful thing is, we can do those things AND pursue CCUS tech.
This video wildly overstates our current CCUS/CCS capability & is similarly wildly over-optimistic about scaling up current carbon capture technology into the multi gigatonne range of capture/drawdown we need to achieve - with no mention of the enormous energy/resource requirements to construct global capture/drawdown infrastructure & the associated transport requirements for construction & final disposal. It's not just about money - the technology ain't there yet & the essential would-be investors know it.
@@adamlytle2615 Agree. Basically, if we want to go back anywhere near the original normal, then the amount of Carbon above and below ground would need to be similar to what they were. If we go with @Tnk4me's suggestion, then we are heading for an unknown eco-system balance. It might be OK, but it wouldn't be what we had before industrialisation.
My scepticism has less to do with who's involved and more to do with the complete lack of action in implementing them.
Apparently, after more than a decade of talking about it, there are a total of 19 industrial scale CCS implementations in the whole world.
When it makes coal + CCS more expensive than renewables + storage, I just can't see it happening without major subsidies in perpetuity.
I was watching a video on a company doing compressed air energy storage that would dovetail with this nicely. They have to strip the CO2 from the air anyhow as a byproduct of the compression process. The intent is to use the compressed air as a battery. Take surplus power from renewables to compress the air, then in times of demand use the compressed air to run turbines to make electricity..
It seems elegant to use a solution to renewable's variable power output to make the whole process carbon negative.
Sad to see the massive hybrid Poplar farm in eastern Oregon sold. I thought growing trees specifically for construction in an area where renewable energy is readily available for harvesting those trees was a nice solution to capturing and storing carbon.
Klamath county is burning at near record levels with smoke spreading across the nation and the planet. The Bootleg Fire could set new records for the state. Management is key.
Shoot, when did that happen? I grew up driving by them and thinking they were the coolest thing! Sad to find that out 😕
Hi first time watcher. Not normally the type of videos I watch, but I really enjoyed this thanks. I clicked because I always thought was this possible, but never heard about it. Thanks.
Come on Matt, you used the same video clips all media does showing power plants emitting STEAM, that is not harmful! Every media site does this, even with nuclear, they show steam exhaust as if it is bad. It is not pollution, it is water vapor. CO2 can't be seen.
Even water vapor can be harmful if it’s too much but you are right, every time medias want to show how bad industries are they show big clouds of vapor, cos people can’t be angry to thing that they can’t see
Vapor can't be seen either. It is condensated water what you see.
What's your proposal to demonstrate emissions of an invisible gas?
@@HardstylePete not show steam, you?
CO2 is an odourless, colourless gas invisible to the naked eye. CO2 is not soot and a clean burning fire produces no visible smoke, what other imagery is there to convince everyone of our impending doom? Giant plumes of harmless water vapour of course.
6:21 As the owner of an agricultural business where I have to purchase around a Ton (dimension) of CO2 per year as a "fertilizer" for my crops, I would love smaller scale Direct Air Capture CCUS options to be able to implement on my property. I am already spending money, so I would love to better place it. I'd love if anyone could help me explore options. Matt, were you able to find any info on smaller companies (than ones wanting to operate on coal fire plants) during your research? Climeworks wasn't able to work in the US the last time I spoke to them, so unfortunately that wasn't an option.
It can be done. No mention at all of using photosynthesis (the old fashioned way) of storing carbon. Can be done locally on small scale Already reduced to practice. Has valuable output and ROI of less than 5 years and shrinking. Now working on business plan to make attractive to tens of thousands of sites.
my thoughts on carbon capture: its great idea to reduce the impacts on the environment, however it will give people an excuse to keep on using fossil fuels..the mindset of people wont change to opt for cleaner energy sources..
I am currently working on a Cryogenic Carbon Capture solution for heavy fuel oil powered marine vessels. Process uses a series of heat exchangers to initially cool flue gas then compress and later expand the mixture to reach -100C or below. Interesting thermodynamic property of CO2/N2 mixtures is that the CO2 will deposit (gas -> solid) out and your separation is complete. I am wondering why this topic has not been discussed, especially against amine based solutions which are very energy intensive, have a slower refresh rate (have to wait for binding and unbinding) and require cleaning to maintain. Thoughts?
Just a comment from someone working in the industry: The only mature technology (TRL9) for CO2 capture at low concentration is amine. To remove CO2 from amine, you need additional 3GJ/t of CO2. It means you spend much more energy than needed to capture CO2, and then more pollution, more money... Many companies are really waiting for a better technology.
In Europe, you have a CO2 pricing policy. Morgan Stanley expects a 90€/tCO2 by 2030. The amount of CO2 industries are producing is +100(0) times bigger than the current CO2 markets you told us about.
It means than both releasing CO2 into the air or capture it without using it (storage) might make the industries go bankrupt. If the economy is going down, much less people is interested in environment...
The biggest efforts to be made are in creating a sustainable market using CO2 and finding a new CO2 capture with high energy efficiency.
We are far from it...
@wantafanta01 A solar panel takes 4 years to pay back the energy of its construction and then they provide net positive for the next 30-50 years. New panels can be made using power from the previous generation of panels.
EVs can also be made using power from renewables and be charged using power from renewables.
Your essentially arguing that because EVs and solar still cause CO2 emissions that there is no point and we should keep using coal. How is that even an argument. They cause less emissions. Any emissions that are unavoidable can simply be offset by using some of the net positive output to carbon capture.
This is true but at the same time if we are on the edge of a mass extinction event, it really shouldn't come down to this then it should be run no matter the cost. Running on solar something clean
@@nocare He's not making that argument. He's talking about CO2 at a power plant. He's not mentioning EV's or solar panels.
We can't survive for another century on fossil fuels anyhow so we need another energy source to live. I believe this is a way better argument than climate change arguments.
Too many climate change arguments pushed in the media are wrong and they are proven a false alarm for almost a century.
Tony Heller is great at capturing the media's absurd climate hysteria.
Real climate scientific journals are different but like all areas in science, they all have a bias. They think they are right. Science is always up for debate. Scientist debate all the time.
@@belogical3961 I can't be certain as its 4 months ago but I think I remember the original comment talking about how solar panels not reducing overall emissions or something like that in addition to other things about EVs not being better for the environment.
I won't assert that as the comment obviously says no such thing now.
In that regard my comment makes no sense as it currently stands. Nothing in the current OP would make me write what I did.
In reply to your second part. There is overblown fear mongering media on climate change this is true. However many many people use this as an excuse to not do research or learn about climate change and push it off as not a big problem or not man made.
Climate change is man made and is a big problem even if the media and some percentage of politicians make it out to be worse or better than it actually is. It's our job as members of a society to have accurate views on it and listen to the experts rather than listening to politicians, alarmists, or oil lobbyists.
Yes all areas of science have bias to various degrees. However predictive power is the only know way to verify the truth of a claim that goes beyond observation. Thus only an answer that demonstrates it has superior predictive power should ever usurp the current answer.
So unless you or anyone else can start providing multiple peer review papers showing accurate predictions of climate systems, climate change, atmospheric systems, gas and atomic theory;
and those papers show climate change isn't man made (Not saying you believe that) or that climate change isn't a concern in the near future (not saying you believe that either just covering bases). Then they/you have no footing to stand on, other than believing what the experts say.
I believe humanity has less that 20 years to make serious decreases in emissions otherwise by the end of the century the majority of biodiversity on the planet will be lost and many millions of people will have died while 100s of millions will have been displaced from their homes.
Humanity will NOT go extinct from climate change we will reduce emissions enough before that ever has a snowball's chance in hell of happening; but the world we live in and more realistically the following generations will be worse than if we change now.
@@nocareIf China isn't stopped, it really doesn't matter. Supposedly they will start lowering their emissions in 2030. That's what they have agreed to anyway.
I fear they will just increase them until then though.
I more worried about running out of fossil fuels.
They predict in 40 years most fossil fuels will be depleted.
Unless we start making changes now, we are in big trouble.
It would be smarter to make that the issue but I guess they are afraid it will just lead to more drilling in hopes to find more.
Do you mean 3/4 is from energy? Or from fosil fuels (incl. Transportation)?
"Reverse climate change"... right. Once we've done that, let's work on reversing the spin of the earth and then reversing our orbit around the sun.
Why dont you like the way we spin? Whats the problem with the orbit?
@@LordHakai what is wrong with the climate
@@marvenlunn6086 Nothing and that is what this is about. Not flooding the earth and reducing agricultural output as population grows is a good thing. Why murder billions of people by changing the climate?
Lets all ignore the biggest polluter CHINA and lets GIVE THEM MORE MONEY for making solar cells XD BIDEN VOTER LOGIC 101
@@BasedPajeet The larges lifetime polluter and per capita polluter is the USA. China produces 1/3 of the Co2 per capita of the US while literally makeing all of the things that the US uses. Somehow they serve as the worlds factory while keeping their emissions somewhat manageable for a country of their size. Under the current global economic system they (and every other developing nation) would have to either remain underdeveloped or burn hydrocarbons like all of the developed countries that got there through naked colonialism.
I am very very sceptical about CCUS. Just the fact that major oil producers are interested makes me worried. And they're going to use it to release more oil. And there are huge tax breaks in the US for CCUS. They're not capturing CO2 from the air, they're just slowing down their own emissions (one might hope). It just seems like a very expensive way to avoid the oil companies from going bust.
Plant trees...
So how much energy does it cost to capture carbon. And how much carbon is released to generate that power...
Good point!
While a valid concern, the energy used does not have to generate carbon dioxide while being produced. So it entirely depends on the grid its hooked up.
@@alexxans1154 I wish I did but it doesn’t, because even if you power it with only green power, that green power could have been used to not generate CO2 in the first place somewhere else and so if that would’ve saved more CO2 from being made then we are capturing with that same amount of energy we are at a net loss.
The only thing that matters is how much CO2 they capture for kilowatt hour and what the average CO2 generated per kilowatt hour is.
Wherther they powered it with green energy or not, until the average mix is green enough that this is more efficient then say running the dirtiest plant in that mix there is no net gain, Otherwise shutting off that plant is better
If you can use saline and co2 together, can’t you combine ccs with saline from desalinization plants? Imagine finding a use for that solid material left.
That would've the holy grail of current World issues
Can't the saline from desalinization plants just be used to produce sea salt?
Nice video. Just one point to adding CO2 into concrete. Not so easy. In reality - most of structures are not build of plain concrete, but reinforced concrete - concrete with steel rebar inside to cary tensile load. Steel is prone to corrosion. The magic of reinforced concrete is, that concrete has naturaly such high pH (basicity), that corrosion of steel simply can not occure. Unless the pH falls. That happens, when CO2 from air penetrate surface of concrete, gets into its structure and forms CaCO3, which is acidic. This proces lowers pH in concrete and in some point steel rebar starts to oxidise. Basic rules in design of reinforced concrete structures are to protect rebar from air. Well - I guess this doesn't need more explanation. Adding CO2 to concrete is only possible, when no steel rebar is used - and that is only in those structure elements, that are not exposed to tensile forces or bending - that is not many.
What provides the power for all of these methods? What scale do we need to build these at to make a difference? How big are the storage facilities required to do that, and what are THEIR energy requirements? Would we be better growing and storing fast growing wood?
Wood (or more generally waste biomass) is economical, but only oceans have the space to scale it as needed.
Matt, you are just awesome! I am a Chemical Engineering graduate that never worked in the industry. I was turned off by the callous attitude towards the environment which I saw first hand at the place I did my undergraduate internship. I am pleased that the entire world seems to be paying a lot more attention to environmental issues. That was generally not the case in the late 80's when I had my own awakening.
By the way one good way utilize captured CO2 is in the growing of plants - as a gas or in solution as foliar spray.
Why not just let the ocean convert the excessive CO2 into calcium carbonate (CaCO3)? What do you think has happen to the enormous amounts of CO2 injected into the system by volcanos for billions of years? Where did it all go? The consecration in the air is determined by the ocean as described in Henry's Law. You really think we can alter the chemical balance between the air and the ocean?
Re: one good way utilize captured CO2 is in the growing of plants
Why not just chop down all the trees and store them in a gigantic pyramid? As long as we keep this gigantic pyramid dry, the CO2 will be stored there, and new trees will grow up and harvest more CO2. Pretty safe and low cost solution? But will it work? Will it be any point? No. 100% waste of time and money. The ocean will release new CO2 into the air to replenish the CO2 that has been removed from the air until the chemical balance again has been achieved.
Look up the lifecycle of Krill in the ocean.
@@elbuggo Or 100 years ago with millions of rather dirty motor vehicles & millions, maybe billions of domestic stoves & fireplaces burning coal & wood (A typical old Australian home had a fireplace in most rooms, typically 3-7 & there ware no gas or electric heaters.
hundreds of thousands of steam locomotives in steam @ any one time & many thousands of even bigger machines like steamships & coal fired power stations & heavy industry.
Go back another 50 years & pretty much the same, only a little less.
you forgot things like planting trees or cultivating algae to remove co2.
Planting trees won't help without cutting down trees. A mature forest is carbon neutral because it has nowhere to store the organic material. The growth is balanced by decay.
And then what do you do with the algae? When photosynthetic organisms die they are quickly broken down and turned back into CO2.
Trees are horrible: Once the die they carbon bomb the environment.
LETS MAKE C02 CARTRIDGES AND PLAY AIRSOFT AND PAINTBALL FOREVER
@@shockwaverc1369 LOL
I saw you talked about renewable energy to cut down carbon emission, but isn't nuclear power more effcient for that ?
The energy required for CCS means that it's better to leave the carbon in the ground in the first place.
@Niall Mccarthy We or anything else don't need the excessive amount that humans are producing.
@@3rdrock Perhaps it's sad, but it's easier to create huge global infrastructure projects than to change our behaviour. CCS is here to stay.
@@samspencer7765 Too bad there are none that actually work.
@@3rdrock Carbon sequestration does work we just won't be at scale until the middle part of the century, there's good promise in energy storage for renewables too
@@samspencer7765 Can you cite one example that isn't Advanced Oil and Gas recovery(AOG)?
But planting trees have the added advantage of regulating temperature and moisture in the air and soil. Not to mention it can also produce fruit.
Not to mention plants need a minimum of 150ppm just to survive. If CO2 was higher (up to 1700ppm) a plant’s yield would double without changing anything else.
@@MK-ib4dp Well let's hope it never gets that high, I think it will probably peak between 600-700 ppm and then the climate will stabilize. Hopefully we are invested in taking care of our climate and regulating all Earths forests and how much greenhouse gases are emitted and we can reduce it to 250-300 PPM again.
@@MK-ib4dp that only works if the plant has enough of everything else like water and nutrious soil. Both are affected by climate change
I was wondering whether there are any mofs for ccus well:-
10:57
Regenerative agriculture, specifically conservation tillage and cover cropping, has huge potential for CCS. Cover crops are chosen for their ability to capture carbon and nutrients from the air and transport them to the roots of the plants where they are sequestered. No-till and continuous cover help build soils, unlike conventional agriculture where tilling is practiced and therein the soil carbon is released and little organic material is added to replenish the soil. Farmers have lower maintenance, fertilizer irrigation costs, and yields and thus profits are boosted. Regen works on photosynthesis, not diesel.
I thought I have seen a carbon capture project that used Algae growing it turning it in to just O2 and then making a biodiesel or cookin oil from the algae
Algae uses CO2 as food, then you can turn algae into oil. A perfect cycle but gas from that is still a bit too expensive and the farms take up a lot of land. I guess we will have to stick to the best fuel ever, fossil fuel.
@@outofcompliance1639 they already make cooking oil out of it . Not looking for a replacement for fossil fuel but as with any type of cooking oil it can also be used in diesel fuels. Comment is based on carbon capture technology not to replace fossil fuel . Why is this important? well when they start a carbon tax instead of other means to control it . As for cost well this country always had oil in the shale but it was too expensive to extract until the price went up and now we use that oil. The Algae thing is a carbon capture technique not for making a replacement fuel and its byproduct has uses one of which is biodiesel .Don’t look now but biodiesel is already in use and that best fuel ever is slowly being replaced and the internal combustion engine which uses it is being replaced by Electric motors. Yeah I know it has limits but refueling is not one only the time of recharge is , solid state batteries are almost here to replace lithium ion batteries. Unfortunately give it 2 years 4$ per gallon gas is coming our current government will make that happen and as a whole both sides never met a tax they didn’t like!
@@outofcompliance1639 the farms used non arable desert land that was otherwise worthless, so land isn't an issue. As for cost, it's just a matter of genetically engineering the algae and then producing it at scale and it will be cheaper than normal crude extraction.
Also, the strain of algae Sapphire Energy developed didn't make biodiesel- it made crude oil that could be refined into ACTUAL diesel. Also gasoline, kerosene, JP5, propane, etc-whatever normal crude oil can be refined into.
All we need is enough people demanding govt development of it, since it is clear the existing energy interests will never fund its development.
@@jadedandbitter It does seem like algae farms are good option to develop. A few years ago was the last time I saw something on it and it was still in the $6+ per gallon range when refined at best. Of course gas prices may end up there in the next few years if the GND people get their way. But as I remember the amount of land needed to make enough for all our energy needs was about the size of the Mojave desert (not worthless to the life that exists there) and the amount of water needed might also make it difficult to do at that scale.
It certainly seems better than solar and wind farms or the massive amounts of energy needed to pull CO2 out of the air when we really don't even need to.
@@outofcompliance1639 yeah, it's diesel costs were $5-6... At prototype scale without genetic engineering. Engineering the algae to "sweat" the oil so that it wouldn't have to be dried and pressed, and engineering the algae to be resistant to algae phagic microorganisms to increase yield would massively decrease the cost and space required.
Hi Matt, thank you for this very interesting analysis. May I suggest you do a piece on C02 deep sea storage? This is promising as the average ocean dept is below 3000 m (300 bars) the level at which CO2 is more dense than water hence stays on the ocean bed.
Appreciate the suggestion!
This idea is nothing new but compression take tremendous amounts of energy, where will that energy come from?
As a graduate student studying CO2 injection into offshore deep sea basalt, this should be talked about way more as the CO2 is mineralized and stored far enough away where leakage into groundwaters/atmosphere isn't really possible. I would love your take on storage in basalts versus sedimentary basins and depleted gas fields Matt!
XPRISE CARBON CAPTURE
The heat loss from a smokestack can be forced into a large tank containing hot liquid microcrystalline petroleum wax. The heat will keep the wax at a molten state which facilitate the carbon to be absorbed when combined with the wax. Carbon when mixed with wax reacts like a dye. The wax-carbon amalgamation result in a black wax solution thereby making it impossible for the carbon to escape into the environment. Other toxic particles are also captured in the wax settling at the bottom of the wax holding tank forming into a sludge. A sludge release valve is located at the bottom of the tank. After the sludge is removed more wax is replaced in the vessel working something like a toilet. The sludge becomes a byproduct that can be used as an additive to asphalt for roads or used for cocooning nuclear waste materials for long-term safe burial. The entropy of the Earth has been increasing at a startling rate since the beginning of the industrial revolution caused mainly by the carbon that is released into the atmosphere. Government scientists have failed to stop and prevent carbon pollution from entering the environment. This problem can only worsen until a solution is found before this problem becomes irreversible. It has been discovered that formulated wax has been shown to be the only answer to this problem. William Nelson
A great concept for sure, I have always thought the cleaning process should be located where the harm is generated, this seems to be the answer.
Who’s here after Elon’s tweet?
Me trying to win but me dont know shit
I'm 😂
Well hello fellow entrepreneurs 🖖
Sounds like we have a squad going? Where do we start? lol
@@oneverse111 we could search best carbon capture technology on google and submit it as our own
Tax the air i breath out ,= plant food .
The accounting of these techniques is going to have heavily audited by regulatory agencies so that companies don't use it for cover to generate emissions.
Besides, we have all the technology to avoid emissions right and it is what we should be focusing on.
The government has satellites which can monitor carbon emissions in the air. Making sure that a flue-mounted carbon capture device is working properly (and therefore the company is not cheating) would be easy for the government to accomplish.
I believe people underestimates the work required to convert the US from fossil to green energy. It is not only a conversion in the power sources but a lot of work needs to go into the grid to handle all the new renewable resources. Renewable energy sources tend to be much smaller than fossil power plants. They also tend to turn on and off more often. Sunlight and wind is not always consistent. Wind doesn't always blow and clouds can reduce solar output. This makes a lot of noise on the grid which makes it difficult to keep stable. Large powerplants act as a filter to this noise. Any technoldogy that gives us time to advance our grid to handle green energy is greatly needed.
Thanks Matt. I loved your presentation - great narrating. ☺
CCUS has always sounded like a bit of a scam to me. I do worry about long term leakage. And using it to make oil drilling more efficient is so stupid. Unfortunately our Australian government has been duped into believing that CCUS will mean that we can just keep burning coal forever. I live in Victoria, which has very dirty electricity production, based mainly on brown coal. We took on the problem at our household level 6 months go and put in a decent amount of rooftop solar and a battery. So far, we have exported net 2 MWh. This is after powering our home, a PHEV and an EV. If more people did this, we wouldn't need CCUS.
The part of CCUS that has me the most interested is how we can reuse the CO2 to improve things like concrete. Not only is it making a better product, but it's helping to clean up things at the same. Seems like there's a virtuous circle there. But I'm very much in the same camp around concern that this may give industries an excuse to just keep polluting.
@@UndecidedMF Thats what uniper is doing now, they have coal, oil and gas plants in germany and now released in multiple media, the will start using carbon capture technology. But on the other hand they opend a new coal plant in June in Germany. (coal has to be imported from brazil) This is so stupid...
@@UndecidedMF the problem with all building materials is the half life or even environmental breakdown... How long is it really contained, not much point temporarily trapping CO2 only to have had it all escape within a couple of years. Especially that the half life of carbon is as old as the bible at 5700 years. It will eventually escape. I can already see scientists calculate how much escaping per year is acceptable when the true answer is "none". Like you said... Money makes decisions, and if scientists want to keep earning, concessions will be made to integrity.
You've been duped into believing that there's a climate emergency
@@notskottkendall I do not believe that you are simple, but the climate does need to be looked after, especially with all the forrests burning in the last couple years... Amazon, australia, and california... I'm sure you know the source of oxygen and it's need for it in the type of lifeforms living in this ecosystem. I don't believe in many things... But the need for trees on earth, and the change in climate due to excess CO2 floating above the oceans warming it up and causing larger hurricanes, also affects climate. It's cooler in the forest than in the city, it would be logical that more trees means "cooler" earth overall.
can CCUS be fitted to a car with a tank for the CO2 to be released into collection tanks at servos ?
Usually these techs are difficult to make efficient on a smaller scale, you might pollute more from the added weight and effort from filtering the gases, usually improving engine efficiency and reducing imperfect combustion waste gases is a more realistic approach
Can't we plug this directly at the end if chimney of coil powered plants?
At the beginning of the video when you're talking about pollution and energy companies you do realize you're showing cooling towers and what you see coming out of them is Steam we have come a long ways since we go straight from burning coal to putting the exhaust up a smoke stack and emission control is required and is essentially a secondary building that scrubs the exhaust particularly of the Ash and sulfur particles to clean the air and keep sulfuric acid from forming when it rains. It just gets annoying when you see people say that steam is pollution.
CO2 is also not pollution: it’s the very food of life. Of course you can have too much of it, like you can have too much chocolate.
yeah i was wondering that too. but ill let it slide
My dad pioneered the stack baffles to take particulate matter out of exhaust but C02 is a gas and it escapes with the water vapor.
Water vapor IS a GHG just so you know. Not as persistent and powerful as CO2 though.
Thanks for the video. What ever happend to the 20 Million Trees?
Theres over 100million now
Plus another couple million
They were burned as " bio fuel " .
More so for manufacturing factories with CO2 emissions, energy production probably can be changed in long run, but factories not so easily
I have prototyped a scrubber that is 99% efficient on dust and toxic gases. It can pull high volumes too. It uses little to zero energy depending on the application.
I am now stuck with making the solution that will capture Co2 and how to store it.
"Stuck with fossil fuel generators for a while..." What is a "while?" If we make objective decisions and apply our resources to it, we can close all the coal and gas plants in a decade. Read Stephanie Kelton on financing the transition. Read Clack et al on the actual transition in the U.S. Where will the money come from? Read The Deficit Myth for the answer to that question. Many recent studies and models indicate that swift retirement will actually save money in the energy sector. The same is true for transportation and heating/cooling buildings and water. Seriously, read Kelton.
M.H.D. coal as clean as gas fired electricity
This is a good job of describing these technologies but how effective are they? How does the energy balance work out? The bugaboo with CO2 is that it usually takes a lot of energy to do anything productive with it including transporting it. How good are these solvents? I was under the impression that dissolving CO2 at standard conditions was problematic.
Landfills actually do a pretty good job of sequestering carbon. Especially with forestry products. I would like to see more coverage about that part of the carbon cycle. That and planting might be the most pragmatic approaches we have right now.
The US Navy uses mono-ethyl amine for CO/CO2 scrubbers aboard ships and subs. The resulting CO2 gas the then compressed and sent to a CO2 Burner which captures the carbon through chemical interaction and heat, releasing O2 and water vapor into the air.
Not the most efficient method in terms of energy, but quite effective at maintaining liveable atmosphere for crew.
The biggest issue is you need to build utility scale Trainspotting and Storage network. The UK government currently has a consultation out of how they will start building their network.
Very informative! Great job!!
I'm about to pursue PhD studying in ccs this Sep !!
A coal burning power plant with the best carbon capture technologies will still release more carbon than a modern nuclear power plant, if you are serious about climate change then nuclear must be part of the solution
You're not going to hear a big argument from me ... other than ... it has to be next-gen nuclear or thorium.
A coal power plants will.produce more C02 to power these units than they scrub its just a way to profit by making people buy carbon credits
One important thing that I think this video missed is, how much is the cost for each one of these alternatives in terms of CO2 emissions? because if you are emitting the same or more CO2 in those "promising" processes which would be the point of doing so?
Thank you for this great, useful video. Energy corporations (oil companies) should be obligated to advance carbon capture technology instead of jacking up energy costs and paying their executives huge salaries. Sadly they don't recognize the social responsibility that comes with this industry.
This was a great update on the technologies available, and the status of what's being done. What I'd like to see is the cost. Last time I investigated this was about 15 years ago. At that time on average, if bundled into the existing cost infrastructure for the energy sector, the average increase for a zero sum solution was 30%, which at the time I thought was pretty good. Very curious what it would be today. I suspect not much better, if at all.
Just to comment on a single aspect of this video, capturing CO2 from air to put it into carbonated drink is not really doing anything. The person drinking the drink will not absorb the CO2, it will just go back to the atmosphere pretty quickly.
It's a fringe problem, but many of the CCOS projects have comparable problems, where either the storage is non-permanent, or the capture requires energy that is still generated from fossile fuels, so there is no net-effect.
It's really time we start understanding that no amount of technological process available within the next 50 years will free us from the responsibility of significantly reducing our consumption, especially for those of us part of the global 1% (i.e. those having a monthly income of more than 2500$ PPP).
This is a solution to a degree only because we already put carbon into drinks. But it is like using plants to deal with carbon, but speed running the results. However, taking the carbon to make into a solid or solid component will be the best long term solution. Especially when paired with thorium power plants.
and also, we need consider when planting too many trees. Especially in hot and humid climate conditions.
I dunno maybe planting too much trees is causing climate change not like hundreds of thousands of acre of forest land is being removed yearly
5:00 The thing about the waste stream it happens after you have sold your product walked away from the transaction with profit in hand. At the end of the life of the product trying to get a company to take responsibility for the waste by cutting into their profit margin of the original sale to get the product deconstructed into bioavailable materials or capturing the material to reuse in a new product. Corporations have been holding the profits for centuries. Some have been re-spent back into the economy, wages, real estate, bank fees, capital gains and losses. Everyone trying to make a bit of profit on every transaction, but just dumping the end of life product out the window.
Monomers could be recaptured and reused. Right now it is cheaper to make new polymers but plastic can and should be recycled. My dad's concern with plastic was that it structurally fails all at once. He used bridges to teach me this. "Steel oxydizes from the outer surface to the core. So we sand and paint bridges." Then he showed me an old, clear acrylic paint brush handle and it was crazed all the way through. He was worried that some monomers act like biologic substances in the body and we did not yet know what they did. He fought pestecides and petrochemical farming his whole life because it poisoned the plants not just the bugs and destroyed the vital microbes in the soil. Our escallating cancer rates prove he was correct.
Out of curiosity, Would it be more beneficial to focus on capturing particles with far greater global warming potential like Methane vs. Co2 at first since for every ton captured, the potential warming effect reduction would be 25x greater with Methane vs. capturing a ton of Co2?
To answer your question blatantly, methane isnt produced as much, yes it is a lot stonger then co2 but methane i believe is able to curculate through the environment enough to make it a greater concern to talk about co2 emissions then methane, though we would see benifets in capturing methane, it would be wiser to gear our attention towards, reducing the amount of emmisions of co2 wether that be via greater energy efficiency or capturing carbon or transitioning to more heathy forms of energy such as solar wind and hydroelectric power, an argument could be made for nucular power but that is a hole other subject. thank you for your question though Jason.
They are looking into it. There are some promising technologies to capture agriculturally produced methane to later sell as natural gas. A big source of methane production is just pipe leaks. The new MethaneSAT satellite - which detects methane point sources from space should help companies find these leaks faster an repair it. One difference between capturing methane and capturing CO2 is that methane is much more profitable than CO2 so emitters have a huge incentive to capture and sell the stuff, rather than letting any of it leak into the atmosphere.
"It's not profitable"
What I'm hearing is The Carrot(saving the world) isn't enough incentive so The Stick(Fines and Penalties) need to be brought out short term.
Make not doing it more costly and ensure that these 'extra costs of doing business' don't go to consumers.
Two little facts you can look up. First, what is the ideal CO² level for plant growth & what is the current atmospheric level?
Second, how much land surface is deserts and how much carbon is needed for plants to cover the deserts? How much carbon is estimated buried as coal & oil?
Also maybe very important: the effects of higher CO2 levels on the brain. And on plants, deserts are barren because of the lack of water and the extreme heat. Not because there’s not enough CO2
My concern is the long term, So if we end up cutting emissions and get super efficient at retrieving CO2 from the atmosphere, how is that going to affect the planet once we revert the atmosphere to below the original pre-industrial level. Because then we'll have to stop trying to suck it all up and find new ways to release it again.
Plant life and everything else which relying on plant life requires a minimum level of CO2 to be sustainable. While what we have now is an excessively high concentration, we also need to keep at least some around so that it doesn't become too low.
I understand there is also a move towards reducing methane emissions in order to reduce the weather pattern changes over a short period as methane breaks down in a decade compared to the much longer life of CO2.
If you want to capture CO2 just grow plants...
We need both if we want to survive.
How about capturing CO2 and using it in greenhouses, grow food and make oxygen instead of storing it for the next generation to deal with
Lol, that is what we are already doing. The greenhouse is called the earth and it is getting greener and growing more food due to increased CO2.
@@outofcompliance1639 Indeedly do! It's also not "hotter than it's ever been!"
@@outofcompliance1639 I literally had to explain to some college girl that plants inhale Co2 and exhale oxygen. NOT inhale oxygen and exhale oxygen. 🤦♂️ She didn't believe it.
@@Mannwhich Carbon and oxygen are literally the food and drink of life.
@@outofcompliance1639
And hydrogen... You beed two of those guys to give us sweet sweet H2O
Ex Service technician in the heating industry speaking. Local 463 New York. Retired.
I ran emissions tests in and around NYC on large multi-boiler installations down to residential applications.
Co2 output from combustion has increased steadily. The calculator for efficiency is stack(exhaust) temperature and % of carbon dioxide in the flue gasses. High efficiency heating equipment produces, and is a adjusted for the highest practical C02(up to 15%) and lowest practical stack temperature(300f net). Pre- 1973 - 8% C02 & 500f were acceptable. 12% and 300f is the oil fired standard 15.25% is Laboratory maximum for oil fired equipment. Gas is lower. In all applications Carbon Monoxide is also a concern, and it also relates to quality of combustion and C02 levels in the exhaust gasses.
Carbon sequestration is a positive step in the right direction for any type of carbon based combustion technology.
Graduate; Iron Fireman School of Combustion, Virginia, USA. I believe in Climate Change due to man made causes.
I've always seen carbon credits as "get out of jail" cards for companies to pollute as much as they want.
@Focal Point Images lmao! I bet you believe the world is flat and only 6000 years old as well.. right?
If you don't worry about corporations you're a bigger sheep than you claim I am.
Let me propose a more rapid way forward to combat climate change:
Every large emitter of CO2 must capture 80% of all it's emissions, which are not allowed to be utilised in a way to re-enter the athmosphere.
This can be easily done through regulation and is similar to other regulations imposed on polluting industries. Markets will then show the way forward, which will likely be a massive push for solar-, wind- and bio-energy.
Ahhahahah, but money!
That will put most compaines out of business.
@@ArabGamesGeeks It would definitely change the market, because cost will change. If they go out of business, then they were not sustainable in the first place and their value proposal is weak.
I guess we agree: This is a climate CRISIS, so the do nothing or change slowly option is not available.
What are you going to do with the captured CO2? There is no low cost, low energy solution to that.
Let me propose a more rapid way forward to combat climate change: half the world commits suicide. Here's maybe a better solution, each person in the world is limited to 1.5 children, where each child they have counts as 0.5 child against their limit.
Its funny how you spew "regulations" and "market showing way" in one sentence. Make up your mind already, because this fantasy, deteched from the political and more importantly physical reality is laughable. How exactly large emitters will finance and where get their energy from to capture said 80%? They will go under, or cheat the regulation. You see, you want to eat your cake and have it to. Your cake is capitalism and the only option for morbidly obese diabetic is to throw it into the bin.
Any idea how much trees and farm crops can sequester in a year?
The thing about trees and farm crops is that they sequester CO2 only temporarily. They already are trapping and releasing CO2 in cycle now. That CO2 is still in the "above ground" system.
All the carbon buried as coal and oil is about the same amount needed to cover the deserts with forests.
How much back-pressure would restricting the exhaust with a carbon capture system cause at the turbine?
Have you ever done any research on synthetic fuel? Is it really more efficient and less polluting?
So, when are you going to address the issue of carbon emissions from thousands of volcanoes worldwide?
idk just Give Bill Gates tax payer money and eat bugs to cut carbon emessions
Which part of carbon capture dont you understand ?
Brilliant for catching CCS story. It is the biggest engineering challenge of the next 50 years and it's going almost unreported at the moment.
I'm wondering if the carbonate solution can be fed to algae for the production of animal feed???
I could list 20 other produces made from algae, but my question is considering the toxicity of the carbon captured and it's ability to be used.
Who would you recommend for a business to invest in???
From what I gathered, there was a study done where plant life does better where there is more CO2. So if this is true, we have plenty of room for more CO2 in our huge atmosphere. We need to be honest with ourselves and stop letting the power hungry politicians and media that helps them deceive the public.
Why do you show steam leaving the stacks and tell people it's CO2?
Because he is a standard leftist china sucking libby. If he was being honest at all times in every video, he would have no content lol
seriously? I really mean: seriously? From which tomb in your brain did you pull out this stupid question? Or is it all over you r brain and mind like this?
If you burn coal, a lot of CO2 is produced from C + o2 -> CO2. and to CO for some part. Yet, coal - and oi even more - also contains hydrogen from aliphatics ... which reacts to water . Now, very hot water gas is invisible like CO2, yet, if hot water gas cools down, it condenses to small droplets, and this is what you see. The CO2 you wont see, of course, it stays gaseous above -70 d.c. ...
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well, before publicly showing that you are lazy (you could have looked up on wiki before writing crappy comments) and\or stupid (you did not despite you know that there is wiki) you at least show a minimum of self-reflection and shut up.
let's stop cutting down the trees and start planting more trees and what is the carbon craziness, its plant food, not cyanide . we have no ideea how the climate on long term functions
we do have some idea though. but those studies have been shushed by the climate debate. the climate are working in a cycle. but we with our emissions are speeding the cycle up. but the climate would change with us or without us in the end, just a matter of, at what speed
WHAT ???
@@inquisitorwalmarius6650 Like you said climate changes over time without our input simply due to nature, but we are causing a significant effect as the industry and economic activities for the sustaining of 7 billion people are quite massive, us changing the climate with our greenhouse emissions is quite devastating and nearly catastrophic due to the speed at which this is taking place a temperature increase of the likes that we have seen in the past 2 decades are the kind that would happen over hundreds or thousands of years.
im interested in carbon capture for the home. there are carbon scrubers in spacecraft, but could it be reasonable for home use?
This technology, has several drawbacks and even dangers: 1) Interrupts the biodynamic cycle for the regeneration of photosynthetic oxygen. 2) Interrupts the geodynamic cycle of absorption by weathering of silicates. 3) It is an energy waste. 4) Economically it is very expensive and useless. 4) It interferes in the development of life since the carbon cycle is fundamental in the biochemical development and in the chemical balance of the hydrosphere.
We're going around promoting videos that help raise awareness for climate change, and this one made the list! Congratulations!
Define " climate change " .
@@grizerbear4898 global cooling new ice age didn't happen like they were predicting neither did global warming predictions happen so they changed it to climate change that has been happening before humans even evolved
Can we just genetically modify trees so they can capture CO2 themselves more? Won't be more efficient since you also increase O2 levels?
Would be a great idea but the problem is that Genetic engineering has a bad reputation, alot of people think it's bad because of bla bla bla bla...
Which isn't even true and with Genetic engineering we could actually solve many problems
@@matteoaievola8643 It is not like we gonna eat it. People won't have a problem as long as they don't need to get into their systems or I hope they have at least that much of IQ to understand that trees won't grow arms just because it is genetically modified a bit.
@@exosproudmamabear558 you only need to say the word "Genetic engineering" and people get emotional and arguments don't work anymore. You have to much hope in humanity to think they use rationality. I am just realistic
@@matteoaievola8643 People have a problem with genetically modifying things that they're eventually going to eat. For everything else that we don't eat most people won't care and might even be onboard with it.
@@killman369547 Yeah as long as some idiot wont come out and say genetically modified trees produce radiation or sth we are fine. But I doubt some idiotic clickbait news site won't make some shit up about it.
Do you have a source for the figures @2:50 pertaining to amount of CO2 able to be captured from Coal/Natural Gas power plants?
I had a thought the other day. Would it be any more feasible to produce O2 and N2 instead of capturing CO2?
increasing the amount of atmosphere is wildly infeasible. CO2 concentration is much less than 1%. The total amount of atmosphere is also limited by the gravity and magnetosphere of Earth. Extra atmosphere would just get lost to space, so diluting the atmosphere wouldn't work, unless you want to waste huge amounts of Earth's mass and energy.
@@theDnDaddict I gotcha. I just figured since carbon capture in any significant volume seems wildly unfeasible itself, why not entertain the thought. But yeah we’d all better start planting redwoods real soon.
This is all just trying to re-engineer the tree. Trees have a 370 million year head start.
But not thumbs, ah-ha!
speed & scale
I mean we redesign stuff pretty well
But trees take forever to grow and it's not like they store much carbon. Do you want to wait decades for tree to grow to only a few hundred kilos of carbon? Besides, when trees die and wilt, a large chunk of the carbon just goes back into the atmosphere. The point is to take the carbon out of the carbon cycle entirely, not just progress it to a different part of the cycle from which it will come back anyways.
@@Tomatenmark13579 Uh no, you have in backwards. Trees capture the most carbon when they are growing up, after that they capture little or even begin emiting more carbon than it captures.
If they extract pure CO2, what are they supposed to do with it afterwards? Create massive facilities with thousands of storage cylinders? With trees at least you can use them as wood so their carbon content won't be put back in the atmosphere in a while. Genetically modified trees that extract more carbon just make way more sense.
Just grow up trees, cut down them and drown them in the Mariana Trench lmao
Even better, grow loads of kelp and sink it to the bottom of the ocean in every place deeper than a specified point so we don't end up sinking a ton of biomass on top of important shallow water ecosystems.
instead of storing it in the ground feed it to algae farms and Cube style Vegetable Farms.
if you feed it to an algae farm. the Algae produces oxygen and oil as a byproduct.
And you could build an algae farm in the worst places in the Wasteland with vertical seal technology.
We could just recycle the algae oil into an electric generator and recapture the carbon for future use.
You may have already done something on this: could Earth be cooled with large banks of radiative refelctors like Skycool or any of the numerous companies coming out with this kind of tech? Also when people are focused on carbon doesn't it seem like the conversation should also include general air cleaning for toxins?
XPRISE CARBON CAPTURE
The heat loss from a smokestack can be forced into a large tank containing hot liquid microcrystalline petroleum wax. The heat will keep the wax at a molten state which facilitate the carbon to be absorbed when combined with the wax. Carbon when mixed with wax reacts like a dye. The wax-carbon amalgamation result in a black wax solution thereby making it impossible for the carbon to escape into the environment. Other toxic particles are also captured in the wax settling at the bottom of the wax holding tank forming into a sludge. A sludge release valve is located at the bottom of the tank. After the sludge is removed more wax is replaced in the vessel working something like a toilet. The sludge becomes a byproduct that can be used as an additive to asphalt for roads or used for cocooning nuclear waste materials for long-term safe burial. The entropy of the Earth has been increasing at a startling rate since the beginning of the industrial revolution caused mainly by the carbon that is released into the atmosphere. Government scientists have failed to stop and prevent carbon pollution from entering the environment. This problem can only worsen until a solution is found before this problem becomes irreversible. It has been discovered that formulated wax has been shown to be the only answer to this problem. William Nelson
Have you ever heard of an advanced carbon capture technology called tree?
We should plant more of those.
I heard they are a ancient technology that is just being reintroduced. A bit like the railway system
The reason we don't use this primitive tech is because when the tech is destroyed in fire or decayed with time, it releases everything it stored. It is like if there is a leak in the bottom of a boat, so you store the water on the top of the boat. Sure, you will stay afloat for longer, but eventually, the boat will still go down.
Such tech needs to be used in conjunction w/ planting more trees, minimizing & stopping deforestation, reducing wastes, & changing to a greener lifestyle.
The minimum global forest cover percentage was in 1912. We have more trees and other photosynthesizing plants now than at any time since.
psmag.com/environment/the-planet-now-has-more-trees-than-it-did-35-years-ago
Most environmental groups only talk about the total amount of trees harvested in a given year to make it seem like we're in dire straits. But of course, like Matt said, it's all about money and the eco groups need to make things look scary to get donations.
Truth is, the reason we have so many trees today is because logging companies adopted long-term plans to increase the forest cover. Makes sense that a company that relies on trees being around would want to make sure there are plenty of trees in bio-diverse forests.
www.nippon.com/en/ncommon/contents/japan-data/213859/213859.png
Thing is, they use the term "carbon capture" to evoke images of soot and smoke and smog. But it's nice, invisible carbon dioxide. And what do plants need a lot of? Carbon dioxide for photosynthesis! It's literally a greenhouse gas because it's added to greenhouses to help the plants grow better. If you look at satellite images over the last 50 years, the planet keeps getting greener because there's more CO2 for the plants.
This is nothing more than an expensive, complicated solution to a non-problem.
@@allahbole There's a delicate balance that's being interrupted though. Yes, plants need CO2, but not nearly as much as is the excess currently present in our atmosphere, literally eating through our ozone layer. And there are more trees now than there were before, however the increased number of them is nowhere near enough to offset the massive increases in CO2 emissions Not to mention the incredibly diverse rainforests etc. are simply being replaced by plantations such as palm oil farms, which don't fix the ecological damage that is being done.
@@bmiboy4875 Step 1, stop mixing intricate issues and complicating the discussion.
To be clear: you're claiming that CO2 has an effect on the ozone layer? Wow.
"CO2 is increasing the amount of ozone by preventing nitrogen oxide from breaking it down."
co2coalition.org/2018/04/13/does-co2-deplete-the-ozone-layer/
@@allahbole Ok. I can quote too. That source is from a climate denial group and their information is either very misleading or just straight wrong. "The CO₂ Coalition is a nonprofit climate change denial advocacy organization in the United States founded in 2015. The group's claims are disputed by the vast majority of climate scientists".
@@bmiboy4875 [citation needed]
@Undecided with Matt Ferrell: why did you leave out one of the most green ways? Simply use co2 to make plants and vegetables grow faster? It increases food production or can be used to grow plants used for bio fuels... In the Netherlands we capture co2 from waste ovens to pump directly into the (relatively) nearby greenhouses. The co2 increases food production and could even be used to make algy grow faster to be used for bio diesel.
Is this talking about fly ash in concrete, or pozzolan in lime mortar?
It would be cool if the Earth had its own natural CO2 scrubbers. You know something that could take in all the CO2 and turn it into oxygen or something instead of man made machines. That would be cool.
You mean trees, plants and algea?
@@gufranahmad8631 Yeah! But those don't exist. Only in fictional works.
The problems with trees are: They need water and they can burn.
How much carbon foot print does it take to capture this carbon?
The choice, however, isn't between a coal plant running and a coal plant running with a CCS retrofit. Since coal-fired power stations are very uneconomic these days, the choice is generally between a coal plant running with a CCS retrofit and a coal plant that has been shut down and replaced with cheaper alternatives.
The 45Q subsidy is extremely hefty - of the order of $4 per MWh - and is hence a subsidy for coal to keep on emitting the carbon dioxide that evades capture (_at least_ 10% plus 1/3 for the energy consumption of the CCS process, even assuming the never-before-demonstrated-at-this-kind-of-scale-or-efficiency technology works as advertised for a 90% capture rate).
Hi Matt,
Thanks for a really informative video. I think it is completely a necessity.
Why are steam towers always used in these type of emission videos? I know sometimes the towers are from coal steam plants, but I have even seen nuclear steam towers used. Just saying.
Imaging to help push the narrative.
Water vapor is the greenhouse gas that nobody has been brainwashed into fearing.