Okay, but why is the government subsidizing this? That just encourages increasing the volume of production that increases emissions over time. Instead we need to progressively ramp up taxes on fossil fuels to drive down demand over time.
Because the goal is to reduce carbon emissions. This plant produces Hydrogen out of hydrocarbons, and manages to sequester 40% of the CO2 output. The Hydrogen produced maybe be used to generate electricity, for example. The obtained MWh of electricity will have less CO2 emissions than if you simply burn the hydrocarbon to begin with. Moreover, you can store the Hydrogen for load balancing. It's not 100% carbon neutral, but it's an improvement over what's available now; the perfect is the enemy of the good.
At this point, I care less about what carbon taxes pay for, than making sure they exist at all, enough to shift incentives on both production and consumption. (That said: the dividend strategy certainly does seem to have advantages for political viability, and avoiding "yellow-vest" backlash to regressive taxation.)
I like that design, since wealth is highly correlated with carbon emissions. I do want to see more programs to make rental units more energy efficient, since renters tend to be less wealthy and are in less control of how much they emit. If their landlord refuses to insulate more, switch from gas heat (or worse they are stuck with baseboard electric) there is very little someone can do to reduce their emissions and any incentives from the carbon pricing just become the punitive tax critics say carbon pricing is.
It doesn't really matter who is doing it so long as it's being done. The incentives align, and they're well positioned to do this.
> Joanna Sivasankaran, the press secretary for the Minister of Natural Resources, said, “Carbon capture utilization and storage is not a silver bullet to the climate crisis but it is an important tool on the pathway to reaching Canada’s ambitious climate goals and reducing emissions in many industries, including oil and gas.”
No to privatizing profits while socializing loses.
This type of hardware-based market is much less amenable to the type of startup-driven innovation that we see in the software world, because building a large scale chemical plant is so incredibly expensive.
I'm afraid the sanction approach would merely force Shell to limit research/commercialization efforts and take jobs and tax revenues out of Canada.
You're not designing a greenfield system. But if you want to go hardline, there would be severe consequences for Canada.
1) They convert their entire operation to green energy sources and scrap all their current investments. Meaning a major shift in operations.
2) They capture their emissions in place and turn their emitting sources into neutral (or negative) sources. To be honest, the second is probably easier and cheaper. Remember, the problem isn't so much that we are producing carbon, it is that we are producing carbon and we're ending up with too much in the atmosphere. If we produce carbon and it doesn't end up in the atmosphere then we don't really have the same problem.
Besides which, there are still many, many plants producing grey hydrogen that are going to keep running until they reach EOL. If we can find ways of reducing their carbon output, that seems like a net gain to me. This project is a demonstrator for such technology, and is a net gain over just another grey hydrogen plant.
To pull the technology through the hole where it is financially inefficient - without having to wait for some investor to take that gamble (and expect the 10x return that goes with it).
_IF_ the subsidies continue forever and _IF_ this technology now takes over all other attempts, you're totally right: Utter madness.
But those 2 ifs are extraordinary claims.
We should fund efforts like this with carbon taxes however because carbon hurts now
this is incredibly simplistic.
our whole way of living produces huge amounts of CO2. chemical engineering, mining, aviation, shipping, food production and a lot more. you can start taxing CO2 and realise that some industries cannot function without producing it. thus another solution is needed. CCS is that solution. with enough money we could have the best of both worlds: keeping our way of life and capturing all the CO2 we produce.
These are companies that topple nations if they want to, and basically own US Congress.
Their power is waning only because their stocks are collapsing.