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Comment by thelastgallon | Hacker News Reader

Carbon capture is not for what people think it is. It is for enhanced oil recovery.

Out of the 27 commercially operational CCS projects worldwide, 21 inject carbon dioxide into oil reservoirs to force out petroleum: https://www.landclimate.org/what-is-happening-with-carbon-ca...

While renewables capture an inexhaustible source of energy (Sun), fossil fuels rely on an inexhaustible source of money for them: subsidies. Fossil fuel companies can't survive without the hundreds of billions of subsidies every year[1]. They can capture more subsides for 'carbon capture', using the captured carbon to extract more oil.

Exxon bets carbon will be the new oil: https://www.semafor.com/article/07/21/2023/exxon-carbon-denb...

[1]Global Fossil Fuel Subsidies Reached $7 Trillion in 2022, an All-Time High: https://e360.yale.edu/digest/fossil-fuel-subsidies-2022

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This is how carbon capture is being used currently. However, I it's absolutely not the goal of legislation that funds carbon capture research - research that was lobbied for by environmental groups (not that big oil didn't lobby for it too). It's also not the goal of people I know who are working on carbon capture technology research. The goal is to reduce global atmospheric carbon levels. The problem is that doing that isn't technically or economically feasible at the moment.

If we could make carbon capture cheaper and more efficient (and that's a big if - it may not be possible, which is why research is needed), carbon could be permanently sequestered.

A ton of {coal,petroleum,natural gas} emits {2.6,2.75,3.2} tons of CO2. 8.5 billion tons of coal burnt every year. 4000 billion cubic meters of Natural gas/year (~3000 billion tons - gemini), Global oil production is 4.5 billion metric tons/year.

I don't see a reason to subsidize fossil fuels, release all this carbon, and then subsidize fossil fuels companies even more to capture something thats measured in parts per million.

And all this to waste 67% to 75% of energy. See Rejected energy: https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/sites/flowcharts/files/2023-10/U...

We'd be better off not burning fossil fuels, we have the technology today. People are ok spending billions on carbon capture. But are against subsidizing EVs, ICE cars emit 1 ton of CO2 for every 2500 miles, every car emits 5 tons CO2/year. For a lifetime of 20 years, thats 100 tons of CO2. Why not fund EVs as carbon capture? Or is the only path forward to give money to fossil fuel companies?

Twenty-seven DAC plants have been commissioned to date worldwide, capturing almost 0.01 Mt CO2/year[1]. Thats the equivalent of 2000 EVs.

[1]https://www.iea.org/energy-system/carbon-capture-utilisation...

Electric Vehicles is a pretty broad subject. What absolutely must be well developed is the public transport, take Switzerland as an example.

Naturally, personal transports should be electrical, but even more important is to get people on trains.

The numbers don’t lie

Switzerland has 600 vehicles/1000 people, US has 900. Sure, its lower, but not significantly lower. US is 238 times larger and people live/commute farther. Public transit is better, but it won't work everywhere because of entrenched interests and strong resistance. It takes decades to do minor infrastructure projects, it will take centuries for US to have public transit that can work. Whats even better is walking/biking with no need of public transit infrastructure. While that hopefully, eventually happens, it is much easier to stop buying new gas cars. Nobody is saying sell your gas car rightaway and buy EVs. There are people buying new gas cars today, which will pollute and emit CO2 for the next 20 years. Instead of buying a gas car, why not buy an EV? And if you must have a gas car (which is understandable, it may not work for your specific use case), buy a used car. After all, whats the big difference between a 2023 ICE car vs 2024.

Trains are so politically unviable in the US that you might as well be talking about nuclear fusion.

Gas separation has many applications.

If Google developed an AI model for cancer detection in MRI scans, you wouldn’t claim that “AI is not for what people think it is for” because Google also uses AI models for advertising.

Those are all capturing CO2 from the waste gas stream at fossil-fueled power plants, so it's not really relevant to direct air capture of CO2 from the atmosphere.

One big problem with using fossil fuel exhaust as the input stream for productive chemistry is that there are lots of fuel contaminants - sulfur, etc. - that poison further chemical reactions on the CO2 stream, and stripping out the contaminants is just too expensive. While atmospheric CO2 has a big concentration step, it has the great benefit of not having that issue.

> While renewables capture an inexhaustible source of energy (Sun)

Fortunately that solar panels require no resources to create, require no maintenance, and take no subsidies to maintain as an industry!

They weren't suggesting renewables are made of magic carbon-free fairy dust. Rather that their energy source is inexhaustible (relative to fossil fuels anyway).

I'd love if things weren't so badly presented. Most of the subsidies are "implicit" - i.e. a tax break (not a real subsidy, just a funny money change) or a price cap (also not a subsidy, I believe). Without that, the actual subsidies were $1.5tn globally in 2022. I don't know how that's counted, but clearly the main reason fossil fuels are available, and people buy them despite high taxation on them, is that they're incredibly useful, and not because there's evil subsidisation of an otherwise-dying industry.

Tax breaks have a very real impact on the proliferation of technology and deployment of capital. I agree they are useful and the demand goes accordingly but why subsidize something that we as civilization want to move away from?

They can have an impact, just as not punching someone in the face can have a positive impact on them. I just wouldn't call it a subsidy when you're not taking someone's money.

I’m pretty sure you’d pay close to 85k for a 100k tax break on your income tax.

I would, but I still wouldn't call a tax break a subsidy, for the aforementioned reason.

Regulations / taxes have an impact. The proliferation of SUVs has entire to do with regulation.

It's easier to meet emission standards for a "light truck" (actual category of a SUV) so car manufacturers are pumping out vehicles with a similar size / front grill angle / etc so that the vehicle is under that category. You might argue that people have a preference for SUVs over Sedans but also note how similar all the SUVs appear; the appearance is part of the light truck designation so even if consumer preference drove a larger car design, the regulation has driven its appearance.

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That said, I think an additional gas tax that rose annually with the proceeds rebated on your tax return is one of the easy + effective solutions I've heard about. Doesn't apply repressively because at the end of the year they get the higher costs rebated but at the time of sale pushes people to buy non-petroleum alternatives as it's cheaper. Probably easier to just rebated it equally amoungst tax filers as opposed to a rebate and industrial use is going to dwarf consumer use so you'll personally still end out ahead.

What would $1.5tn PER YEAR subsidies in renewables look like?

What would $1.5tn PER YEAR subsidies in renewables and a reduction of $1.5tn PER YEAR subisdies in O&G at the same time look like?

Think of these subsidies like compound interest, $1.5 trillion here, $15 trillion there.... it starts to add up.

To add to this excellent point, fossil fuels have enjoyed subsidies for ~100 years. Imagine the cumulative total of the money compounded!

> Imagine the cumulative total of the money compounded!

I mean, this is a crazy line of thinking. Without fossil fuels, what's considered valuable would still be "work life balance is slightly less time manually working on the farm" and "goods are the best stuff we can buy from people crafting the stuff within a 3 mile radius" and "education is what we can learn from the smartest person in the village".

If you want now but without fossil fuels, you have to use fossil fuels hard enough to invent the thing that replaces them.

>clearly the main reason fossil fuels are available, and people buy them despite high taxation on them, is that they're incredibly useful, and not because there's evil subsidisation

Laser-focusing down to only the "main" reason and ignoring all else will (as expected) miss the forest for the trees.

Subsidies still do cause people to consume more fossil fuels than they would otherwise, so the policy is encouraging pollution (AKA health injuries and deaths that industry shirks accountability for) rather than disincentivizing it.

> Laser-focusing down to only the "main" reason and ignoring all else will (as expected) miss the forest for the trees.

This is a very strange presentation of this concept. You think that the "forest" is the ancilliary reasons? I would say that with zero subsidies people would still be driving cars and consuming fossil fuels. The only reasons not to are: pollution, and city space. They are unreasonably effective and useful compared to all other options. That's why people like them.

What is bad about injecting carbon dioxide into oil reservoirs? Is it just that it is benefiting bad companies directly, and only helping the planet as a side effect? The use of petroleum is not going away on the same timeline we need carbon to be removed from the atmosphere. We'll keep drilling for it regardless of whether carbon is sequestered as a side effect... so let's bury that carbon! I won't let my dislike of oil companies stand in the way of supporting the advancement of the technology.

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