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Africa’s first carbon-removal plant

Africa’s first carbon-removal plant stokes questions about responsible climate solutions

https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/africas-first-carbon-removal-plant-stokes-questions-responsible-climat-rcna117590

A joint venture between Swiss company Climeworks and Kenya-based Great Carbon Valley has been billed as a springboard for creating a new, green economy in Africa.

Africa’s first carbon-removal plant stokes questions about responsible climate solutions

The article puts it up as a question about whether this practice is worthwhile since the only logical solution to climate change is to de-carbonize. Personally I think that question isn't very nuanced, certainly de-carbonizing 100'a of tons from the atmosphere from just this one plant is a small net positive. Can't let it be an excuse to keep rolling coal in your F750'a but I'm still in favor of sucking as much carbon out of the air as we can.

29 comments

Spzi

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Ah, ClimeWorks. They also operate a plant in Iceland, which I used to offset a few minor car journeys. If I'd ever use a plane, I'd do the same.

That being said, the overall approach is very questionable. Even if the plants are run 100% by renewable energy, the question of opportunity costs remains. Is the whole grid already 100% renewable energy, or do we 'steal' low-carbon electricity from other appliances? Even if the whole grid was fully green, is DAC really the best use for the excess, or should we rather use it to produce green hydrogen, to prevent emissions elsewhere?

Direct Air Capture will be needed to stabilize our climate (or to reach neutrality by 2050 in the first place), which means we need to gain experience with it. But first and foremost we need to keep fossil fuels in the ground! Capture is economically and physically so expensive, it just isn't feasible to see it (regardless how, wether it's trees or fans) as an escape. It never will be. Keep fossil fuels it in the ground.

AFaithfulNihilist

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If you had a magical machine that was powered at 100% efficiency by thermal fluctuations in the air that could suck carbon from the atmosphere at whatever speed you wanted, you would change the climate by the thermal differential you've created before you would seriously impact the amount of carbon being thrown into the air each year.

Exactly as you said, there's no other option than to simply stop burning this stuff.

Cylusthevirus

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The developing world isn't going to tolerate a reduced standard of living because Western Europeans got the industrial revolution party started first.

Fossil Fuel Austerity is the thoughts and prayers of the climate change crisis. It's not gonna happen, people. There will not be a global come to Gaia moment before everything goes to hell. So we best start figuring out how to capture carbon and actively manage the climate or our species is doomed.

Spzi

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Capture is needed, but futile if we don't stop with fossil fuels. The math does not check out. We would need to dedicate like 5% of global electricity production to run DAC plants, unrealistically assuming they run at 100% efficiency at the physically possible optimum, just to keep emissions from rising. However expensive and unpractical it might be to stop using fossil fuels, relying on DAC is probably worse.

Instigate

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We need to act on all fronts simultaneously. Reduce fossil fuels, build more tried and tested renewable energy generators, invest in new and emerging renewable technologies, AND direct air capture simultaneously and we have a chance to take ourselves off the current path to destruction. Doing only one or two of these in isolation just won’t be enough.

qfe0

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A lot of things need to happen fast to reduce the impacts of climate change. Amongst them it's gaining the knowledge of how to do all of the things that will need doing sooner or later. Lots of ideas will fail for various reasons. The more tools we work on the better off we'll be.

The other thing is it really coming at the expense of other decarbonization efforts? Or is it happening in parallel with other things.

It doesn't stop the other work well need to do, and I'm not convinced it's a net negative. I think there's room to experiment at this scale and make adjustments as we progress. Hydrogen for instance is its own can of worms and it's not clear it's the best solution, but maybe it will be. We should work on it.

Spzi

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Generally agreed. Though in a finite world, things happening in parallel can easily come at the expense of other things.

Money spent here cannot be spent there. More construction projects mean more concrete being used, another major source of emissions. Some people also worry some approaches can give false hopes, thereby politically preventing less comfortable but more impactful measures.

I'm also not fully sold why DAC, and not CCS. Both are very similar (they filter CO2 out of gas, and store it), but the concentration of the target gas makes all the difference. The process becomes much more efficient when the concentration is higher. So physically and economically, it makes much more sense to capture these molecules in the exhaust fumes of large industrial facilities like power plants, instead of waiting until they disperse in the atmosphere, to then tediously catch them again.

I think it's a challenge to settle for the right portfolio. Too few pillars and our foundation could crumble. Too many and we could end up wasting our efforts on approaches which ultimately did not work. Which matters, because time is short and tipping points allow no going back. Though in the political reality of our world, we can probably be happy about anything which avoids or removes any single atom. Or not, because maybe we could have avoided and removed twice that amount for the same effort with an obviously better approach!

gens

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A guy in india is also removing carbon... by planting trees for decades now.

Zeth0s

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The right way!

wischi

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Sadly not really. It's basically impossible to offset our CO2 emissions with trees unless we cut those trees down, store them underground like nuclear waste, plant new trees and repeat that a few times.

Zeth0s

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This is just because we produce too much co2, not because it's not the best way. We should reduce co2 production and increase transformation via photosynthesis

bobman

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That's complete bullshit.

Where do you think oil even comes from? It's mostly dead plants.

The idea that trees or other plants 'release' all their CO2 back into the atmosphere when they die is a load of bullshit and needs to stop being perpetuated.

LordBelphegor

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Carbon offset is a scam.

Chunk

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A scam that unfortunately becomes less of a scam over time 😞

Quatity_Control

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Carbon capture has had trillions and decades and still can't reach reasonable efficiency rates. Certainly real world performance is nowhere near what it would need to be to make a contribution to the environment.

The companies investing in CCS are the companies mining fossil fuels and natural gas. They are using CCS to divert funding away from renewables and to greenwash their current mining operations. In most cases the material captured is used in further mining operations. Like a 2xdmg to the environment bonus.

SeaJ

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This is different than the carbon sequestration that fossil fuel companies pushed so that they could get billions of government dollars. This is the same company that built the direct air capture plant in Iceland. Carbon removable from the air will be necessary to bring us back to pre industrial levels and needs to be researched. As long as it is using green energy and requires little maintenance like it is in Iceland, it is carbon negative.

Quatity_Control

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To prevent exceeding the 1.5 celsius increase, we need to triple the current uptake of renewables. I can extinguish a candle and say its carbon negative, however it's not really going to help. We can look at other carbon reducing technology after the immediate requirement for renewable installations. I'm all for that, but right now, it's just taking money time and resources away from renewables when we can't afford any delay.

SCB

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It's not taking anything away from renewables. The renewable investment market is blowing the fuck up.

There's investment money all over the place any sort of renewable/sustainable/green projects. There is far more investment interest than there are companies ready to deliver on any sort of product, and we absolutely will need 2nd+ gen carbon capture.

There is no way to paint this as a bad thing.

Quatity_Control

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I'd agree with you if we were already producing enough renewables. Since we need to triple the current renewable market just to hit 1.5, I don't agree with resources going elsewhere until we are on track there.

SCB

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There is vastly more funding going to renewables

Quatity_Control

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Yep. We do need more though.

Claidheamh

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Take it from the fossil fuel subsidies.

Zellith

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Id expect it to be cheaper to have pools of water and try to cultivate algae blooms then scoop it all into barrels and bury it than to run this technology.

test113

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Yes, it is not feasible; it costs more to extract it from the air than the benefit obtained from burning it, and then it still needs to be stored for at least a few hundred years in solid or gas form. Otherwise, it goes right back into the atmosphere and the effect will be null. We looked at a similar concept at my university, and the professor said, I quote, "Whoever comes up with these bullshit solutions does not really understand how climate change or physics works; it is not a solution to our problem." We also had a project like this in my city where they captured it just to sell it to a greenhouse, which releases it back into the atmosphere, so the concentration stays the same and, de facto, they have removed zero carbon from the air because it basically goes right back into the atmosphere. Actual solutions exist, but they are expensive and extensive; people will start implementing them in, let's say, 70-120 years from now, right around when we start feeling the full effects of rapid human-induced climate change.

illTempered_Wombat

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Then why try?

I hate excuses like this it doesn't work right now so then why bother. The right brothers bothered to try even though their first plane only could go a short distance and now they can do laps around the world. Look at electric cars just over decade ago they had short range and long charging times. Now you can get 100 miles in 15min or so with rapid chargers. The road to the future is paved with failure we had make terrible cars, awful lightbulbs, shitty refrigerators, crappy computers and endless failed dead end inventions to get where we are now. And we know we have to do some thing about the climate. So we better start throwing all sorts of shit on the wall to see what sticks. Becuse we are gonna find a lot of ways not to do it before we find the right way.

bobman

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Then why try?

The problem here is that 'trying' means funneling money to for-profit companies that aren't actually going to solve the issue.

It's very important that people like you believe their bullshit without a second thought because it makes them more money with less effort.

Zeth0s

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The problem is not carbon, it's CO2. They are 2 very different things. Carbon is fine, carbon is literally life, CO2 has to be transformed in some other carbon-based substances, otherwise capturing it is literally doing nothing on the big scale.

Unless they are converting the captured CO2, this thing is useless overall.

Newspapers, companies and politicians should stop talking about carbon. It is confusing and plain wrong. No one needs de carbonization of anything, we need transformation of CO2

autotldr

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This is the best summary I could come up with:

The case for investing in Africa is heightened by the disproportionate impacts of climate change, such as extreme drought and flooding, on African nations that have contributed little to the world’s greenhouse gas emissions.

“There’s a real need for safeguards on where these projects are taking place,” said Ugbaad Kosar, the director of environmental justice at Carbon180, a climate nonprofit that advocates for equitable carbon removal.

The plant, projected to be completed by 2028, will be built in the Great Rift Valley, an intercontinental depression rich in deep basalt formations that extends across Kenya from Tanzania and onward to Ethiopia.

Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, a professor of philosophy specializing in climate justice at Georgetown University, said he was skeptical that the project would benefit Kenyans over protecting the companies’ bottom lines.

Whether the technology is helpful or harmful, most experts agree that direct air capture is limited by massive price tags, heavy energy requirements and lack of scalability.

Julie Gosalvez, chief marketing officer of Climeworks, said judging the potential of a technology based on its current efficiency is not right, adding that the company plans to bring their net carbon removal into the billions of metric tons over the next few decades.

The original article contains 936 words, the summary contains 201 words. Saved 79%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

MeanEYE

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Oh, I see, someone is milking funds in Africa as well.