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A New US Plant Will Use Captured CO2 to Make Millions of Gallons of Jet Fuel
(singularityhub.com)
this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2023
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Isn’t the point of carbon capture to remove emissions from the atmosphere? Someone please correct me if I’m wrong but this company sounds like it’s taking captured CO2 and guaranteeing that it gets released straight into the upper atmosphere where it’s nearly impossible to recapture. Unless I’m misunderstanding, this doesn’t seem like it’s any better than generating fuel from crude
Yeah, though it’s better than releasing new CO2 that is still in the ground. Just re-releasing already released CO2.
It would be nice if a company or government focused on capturing the CO2 and not releasing it again.
Climeworks and Carbfix do that:
I hope techniques like these become included in carbon pricing. They cause negative emissions = they get paid.
Agreed, it's a half step forward. Leaving fossil fuels underground is still progress, even if we aren't sequestering CO2 in the atmosphere.
I'm optimistic that building a market like this can drive design efficiency for direct air capture tech. If that efficiency is improved it could make capture and sequestration a more plausible option for govts in the future.
Fingers crossed!
Ahh cant wait to have CO2 cycles like we do El nino and el nina...
Quarterly reports are in, profits are booming! We will be cutting fuel production, hence stagnating metric tons of CO2 in the air until the next quarterly reports!
Not much else to say except yes you're right. Unfortunately, the average person doesn't care or understand the difference.
It is an important difference though. Theoretically this could make aviation carbon neutral. We could also find a deep hole in the ground to pump it so it is stored, though presumably we could turn it into something more inert than jet fuel.
Right, I think this is the point others are missing. Yes, carbon capture does not seem like a feasible way to reduce climate change. We all agree.
However, what do we do about aviation? We need to reduce carbon emissions across the board and that definitely includes aviation. However we really don’t have the technology, nor does one appear in the foreseeable future. While there have been some promising experiments with batteries, that’s not going to be useful without some huge improvements in battery tech. impractically huge. It may never happen. We’ve had much better luck with bio-fuel of various sorts but everyone here probably understands those downsides. So what can we do? Harvesting carbon from the atmosphere to create synfuel, at least helps aviation get closer to carbon neutral. I have no idea whether it can actually work or is just another boondoggle, but certainly like to see the attempt.
Yes, we know carbon capture is not a reasonable way to fight climate change, but is it a helpful way to reduce carbon emissions from aviation?
Theoretically, it could make aviation almost carbon neutral due to inherent inefficiencies, but what good will that do? We need to be heavily carbon negative in order to even have a the tiniest, faintest glimmer of hope to avert our own extinction if we continue to do nothing about this problem.
Reducing consumption is the only way to achieve this but that requires either a monumental shift in human behavior, or simply less humans. And, since we seemingly aren't making the choice, I wonder which one nature will choose for us...
I don't disagree, but the modern world relies on Air Travel and nobody is going to be willing to stop that. We don't yet have energy storage density to a spot where electric flight is "economical". It exists and works well from what I understand but we can't build a passenger jet with it for instance.
You are right though. If we don't make huge shifts then earth is just gonna shed us and recover over a few million years.
It's definitely better than nothing, I'll agree, but also underwhelming from where we need to be because it makes such little difference. Most greenhouse gasses come from factory farming and the activities of corporations. We should still make these baby steps in green technology even if it's too late to change our fate, because the science of it is or could be valuable for an easier, more comfortable, or slower extinction process - as morbid as that sounds.
We can’t afford to just change farming and corporations: we really need to cut carbon emissions everywhere we can. Let’s go for aviation, AND figure out the other industries
We can't afford it? Then we go extinct. What is the higher price? Anyway, it's probably out of our hands by now. Like I mentioned, nature will probably choose for us, and she always takes the path of least resistance.
You missed an important word.
We can’t afford to J U S T ….
Oh, gotcha. The word 'only' instead of 'just' would have made the sentence more clear. Anyway, I wish you happiness and good health!
You can’t just say we need to stop flying: no one will do that, but it’s also not the only choice. If this is a practical way to reduce carbon from aviation, let’s do it. I don’t see anything else likely nor do I see giving up flying.
We need to cut carbon emissions across the board quite seriously, but some industries/technologies will work better than others. Maybe this is all we can do for aviation, but it does help. We’ll just need to make it up elsewhere
it's all very complex but there are some simple bits of it - oil in crude is carbon that was cycling through the atmosphere before the dinosaurs and got collected by plants which got buried (due to there not being bugs to eat them) it's been locked there for ages so when we take some out the ground and add it to the atmosphere that increases the total amount, when we take it from the atmosphere and use it then we're doing the same thing that plants have been doing for billions of years and just borrowing it to make use of for a while then putting it back. without any question if we could wave a wand and replace all the crude oil to oil infrastructure with infrastructure for taking it from the air and reusing it then it would be a good thing.
Is taking carbon from the bottom of the atmosphere and putting it near the top a bad thing? probably, possibly, maybe - that gets into really complex physics which i wouldn't even pretend to understand, but it also gets into the existential angst of having to compare with the lifetime ecological and climate damage done by all the other options - is it better if people fly, take trains, or boats? cruise ships are really bad for everything, trains are great but require HUGE infrastructure which isn't always possible, and i don't even need to mention the ecological impact of a long distance car trip (or it's supporting costs). It might actually make flying a good option ecologically, it's possible with autonomous low-flying vehicles using it that it could be such a good option as to displace road transport in some areas thus removing the need for so many huge bridges and ecologically damaging road surfaces.