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Comment by markvdb | Hacker News Reader

Just replacing expensive fossil energy with cheap renewables and storage doesn't help. The problem is Jevons paradox. Cheaper energy means more consumption.

A sensible global policy could be:

- Tax carbon positive energy consumption to death. I.e. coal, oil or natural gas.

- Tax (close to) carbon neutral energy consumption at a fixed high rate, e.g. solar, hydro, nuclear or wind. Tax nuclear separately because of its other side effects if you want.

- Use the proceeds to negatively tax carbon negative energy consumption only.

Not that I have any illusions of any policy even remotely like this ever getting enacted. Zero consensus on earth and too many dangerous and selfish idiots.

Our children will be boiling frogs and angry.

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Jevons paradox is often claimed, but largely irrelevant in this case, imo. If the demand rises, the price rises again, as well. It doesn't force anybody to keep using fossil energy

Price elasticity definitely is a thing, but I'd argue not in the way you see it.

Have a somewhat competitive energy market and falling production prices like we have for carbon neutral energy. What do you think will happen? The market will gobble up any and all production.

Look at what we currently have even with largely fossil energy. The substantial US/EU delta in energy price and energy consumption. Notice how similar the deltas are?

> carbon negative energy consumption

There is no carbon negative energy consumtion.

CO2 capture can be carbon negative, even if it consumes energy.

CO2 capture is carbon negative by definition. That's not what I said.

There are some experimental methods of capturing CO2 (or rather just carbon in CO2), but I replied to a proposed negative tax on economic activities that are carbon negative as energy consumtion. There are none. There's only experimental carbon capture with no products and no services generated as an output of this "economic activity" that consumes energy and CO2 as inputs. And it costs money - a lot more money than what CO2-positive economic activities could generate if all their CO2 were to be captured.

> CO2 capture is carbon negative by definition

Really? It's certainly not in actual practice - the largest actual carbon capture and sequestration projects on the globe to date are, by definition, carbon release reduction programs that are intended to store back a small percentage of what will be released as part of large natural gas extraction projects.

(eg: proposed Browse Basin (~400 km (250 mi) off NW coast of W.Australia) expansion)

(also: Chevron’s Gorgon project, the biggest CCS operation: https://australia.chevron.com/what-we-do/gorgon-project/carb... -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorgon_Carbon_Dioxide_Injectio... -- https://ieefa.org/resources/gorgon-ccs-underperformance-hits... -- https://australiainstitute.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/12... )

It's a simple (albeit technically complex) proposition - puncture a gas basin, release large amount of CO2, grab some of that and stuff it back in the hole. Overall a net positive amount of CO2 is released, before addressing any further release as a by product of consuming the LNG, etc. But it's called CCS (carbon capture and storage) because carbon is captured and stored.

There are no larger programs at scale on the planet, they are net CO2 release programs, and less CO2 would be in the atmosphere if no LNG was extracted at all.

A negative tax wants carbon negative processes to exist. That clear direction is more important than whether these processes currently exist.

Experimental olivine based carbon capture looks promising to this uneducated bystander, but what do I know?

In any case, I'm not expecting climate action. Many either don't know how to even start fixing this mess. Others would rather have their own children boil than to potentially give up some material conveniences.

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