I don't know why it matters that the existing users of carbon capture are oil companies.
Sure, that means it hasn't yet been used to sequester carbon in other contexts, but there's no reason it can't be.
It's like trying to discredit nuclear fission in 1950 by saying that it's a poor source of energy because all existing users of fission tech are weapons designers.
> Captured carbon has mostly been used for enhanced oil recovery (EOR): enhancing oil production is not a climate solution.
> Using carbon capture as a greenlight to extend the life of fossil fuels power plants is a significant financial and technical risk: history confirms this.
Also from OP
> Some applications of CCS in industries where emissions are hard to abate (such as cement) could be studied as an interim partial solution with careful consideration.
Unlike nuclear fission in 1950, we don't have twenty years to continue extracting oil and gas. Most oil and gas extraction should have been hard stopped twenty years ago.
Sure but carbon capture is useless without the storage component. If you just sell the CO2 for food manufacturing or any industrial use it will just go back into the atmosphere.
Unfortunately fossil fuel companies and politicians are throwing around the term "carbon capture and storage" as if it will solve everything and allow fossil fuel power plants and fossil fuel extraction to keep running. All the evidence is that it can't.
And also much natural gas comes out of the ground with a lot of CO2 in it and has to be removed to be saleable. In fact, there are places you can drill in Texas where you get almost pure CO2 and when people started doing EOR with CO2 that is where they got the CO2.
The uses for a technology are largely driven by the people who initially pay money for it. Here, clearly, carbon capture has been paid for by oil and gas companies and no one else. It feels like they have given up on the technology simply because some companies have used it for purposes they don't approve of. As I see it, no one is willing to pay the cost to purchase and dispose of the CO2, so more profitable uses needed to be found. This is something we could solve simply with funding it seems. If it's really too expensive to collect and dispose of CO2, that would be a different (much more compelling) argument, but one which the article fails to make.
1. CO2 is ONLY useful if the CO2's next use is profitably useful - the fossil fuel industry is the only economically viable user of CO2 that can "make it disappear because they inject it into wells. Any others will always re-release it (e.g. make sodas, triple-point extraction, etc).
2. CO2 extraction is probably marginal economically because you are already starting from the disadvantage of having to extract it from the air - where you first must "pay" in energy for the entropy which is always going to be costly and unavoidable.
Uh, this CCS system uses the CO2 to produce oil, which would be quite an own goal if it wasn't for the fact they are brazen enough to pretend that "out of sight out of mind" is a real strategy when dealing with CO2 emissions.
Also the use of gas in oil extraction also means a sizeable amount of that CO2 you just paid for in energy to capture goes back into the atmosphere anyway.
The reality is that carbon capture is no where near sufficient as a wholesale solution.
It can help on the margins -- in terms of perhaps airplanes and other weight bearing users of fossil fuel that are not super well addressed with electrification -- but otherwise is a distraction from real solutions.
[+] [-] andrewmutz|3 years ago|reply
Sure, that means it hasn't yet been used to sequester carbon in other contexts, but there's no reason it can't be.
It's like trying to discredit nuclear fission in 1950 by saying that it's a poor source of energy because all existing users of fission tech are weapons designers.
[+] [-] abdullahkhalids|3 years ago|reply
> Captured carbon has mostly been used for enhanced oil recovery (EOR): enhancing oil production is not a climate solution.
> Using carbon capture as a greenlight to extend the life of fossil fuels power plants is a significant financial and technical risk: history confirms this.
Also from OP
> Some applications of CCS in industries where emissions are hard to abate (such as cement) could be studied as an interim partial solution with careful consideration.
Unlike nuclear fission in 1950, we don't have twenty years to continue extracting oil and gas. Most oil and gas extraction should have been hard stopped twenty years ago.
[+] [-] lozenge|3 years ago|reply
Unfortunately fossil fuel companies and politicians are throwing around the term "carbon capture and storage" as if it will solve everything and allow fossil fuel power plants and fossil fuel extraction to keep running. All the evidence is that it can't.
[+] [-] tpc3|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PaulHoule|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vorpalhex|3 years ago|reply
If we can make oil carbon neutral or even slightly carbon negative.. why not?
[+] [-] MobiusHorizons|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] FunnyBadger|3 years ago|reply
1. CO2 is ONLY useful if the CO2's next use is profitably useful - the fossil fuel industry is the only economically viable user of CO2 that can "make it disappear because they inject it into wells. Any others will always re-release it (e.g. make sodas, triple-point extraction, etc).
2. CO2 extraction is probably marginal economically because you are already starting from the disadvantage of having to extract it from the air - where you first must "pay" in energy for the entropy which is always going to be costly and unavoidable.
[+] [-] apatheticonion|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xnx|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] osigurdson|3 years ago|reply
https://www.saskpower.com/our-power-future/infrastructure-pr...
[+] [-] SiempreViernes|3 years ago|reply
Also the use of gas in oil extraction also means a sizeable amount of that CO2 you just paid for in energy to capture goes back into the atmosphere anyway.
[+] [-] outside1234|3 years ago|reply
It can help on the margins -- in terms of perhaps airplanes and other weight bearing users of fossil fuel that are not super well addressed with electrification -- but otherwise is a distraction from real solutions.
[+] [-] Scootwilli90|3 years ago|reply
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