A few comments: 1. That’s a great way to get started on CDR, but don’t expect that as a cost model for 10’s of Gt per year… I suspect you’d run out of a market for CO2 at rather negligible fraction of the amount you need.
2. If you store CO2 as carbon fibre, then your storage cost is basically the cost of converting CO2 to carbon… what’s that cost per ton? You aren’t going to substitute carbon fibre for steel in any climate-relevant quantity unless the costs are essentially the same; I’m not sure this is even plausible since even if you gave people the fibres themselves, building something out of carbon fibre is going to be way more expensive than steel (the fibres just aren’t where the costs are coming from). And even if you solve that problem, you’d need to assume a vast increase in demand relative to today, and I’d still be skeptical because quite frankly, steel is a better material than carbon fibre in a lot of applications where weight doesn’t matter (it isn’t hygroscopic, for one thing, and it’s a lot easier to repair). So you might still have to pay people to take carbon fibre off of your hands if you’re making Gt of it per year. Basically, if you can suck CO2 out of the atmosphere, you have to put it somewhere. That isn’t going to be free, so to assess cost of DAC, one needs to estimate costs of storage. d From: geoengineering@googlegroups.com [mailto:geoengineering@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Peter Eisenberger Sent: Monday, November 13, 2017 4:58 AM To: Michael MacCracken <mmacc...@comcast.net> Cc: Douglas MacMartin <macma...@cds.caltech.edu>; Greg Rau <gh...@sbcglobal.net>; geoengineering <geoengineering@googlegroups.com> Subject: Re: [geo] Climate science foe Lamar Smith - geoengineering is ‘worth exploring.’ Hi Mike, The most important part of a plan to be verified by an assessment is the following : . 1 Because CO2 is a very valuable molecule one can develop the technology while the costs are higher and capacity is low and like solar today make money , stimulate the economy , create jobs . Mining our carbon from the sky is a vaible economic option that should be assessed - even if there was no climate threat - people today pay between $30 and $1600 a tonne for carbon dioxide 2 On going efforts to convert CO2 into building materials like cement and most important carbon fiber should be assessed of how their costs to convert will come down . Carbon fiber is really a great structural material and the capacity to store alot of carbon via converting to it over steel and aluminum and even in cement replacing rebar is very large . My analysis say it can be large enough if the global economy grows in the developing countires so they need like china alot of new infrastructure . The fact that carbon fiber is actually preferable on an economic basis should be assessed (note energy of production per mechanical strenght is less for Co2 based carbon fiber than for steel and aluminum ) 3 The most important step for mitigation is passing limits on carbon emissions . I have been infomed that China is going to announce a serious carbon market , and that other countries are moving to constrain the use of fossil fuels. This by far the most effective way to reduce our rate of fossil fuels - perhaps the china, canada and german examples could be assessed to see if this assertion is correct 4 I think locally for the most vulnerable places one should spend resources to mitigate the impact of climate change to address the risk of social destabilzation -these may happen naturally and the division of resources between CDR/DAC and mitigation will vary accordingly 5 Finally there needs to be a study of manufacturing - verifying the ability to use mass production and to determine scenarios for rate of scaleup achievable - supply chains , capital investment , training etc 6 I would suggest an on going effort to improve cost/assessment of underground sequestration(note DAC removes to some extent the damage of release ) but believe in the end we will find ways to use the CO2 so it adds value and is not just a cost -as part of this I would assess enhanced mineralization 7 No regret CDR approaches that do not produce CO2 that can be transformed into a product but add value such as in agriculture should be evaluated in terms of scalability as should improved agriculture practices generally 8 To connect to our previous discussions I would assess the hedging strategy of protection for vulnerable places and underground or mineral sequestration versus SRM . Now it is my belief that since the mining CO2 from the sky approach will stimulate the global economy (eg just like fossil fuels did ) the political and social feedbacks will be positive and most importantly when verified by an asessment would provide a basis for moving forward that all could endorse ( I think china understands this ) . The important concept I believe and should be stressed in an assessment is the positive feedbacks that are inherent to mining CO2 from the sky . . The biggest one is that one has transformed the negative feedback that now exists between economic development in the fossl fuel era and the environment to a positive one in the mining of CO2 from sky era -the more we develop the more carbon fiber we will need the more we address the climate threat - we are closing the carbon cycle . I have attached a paper that makes this point . I hope this is responsive and am willing to help in anyway I can . Peter On Sun, Nov 12, 2017 at 10:42 AM, Michael MacCracken <mmacc...@comcast.net <mailto:mmacc...@comcast.net> > wrote: Hi Peter--Interesting--a couple of questions that might be covered in the type of assessment that you suggest (and I agree) is worth doing: 1. Were the world to get serious enough to be taking on the issue in the way you suggest, what are the relative costs and benefits of investing the same amount of money and effort on mitigation, so not putting the materials into the atmosphere in the first place? Would it make more sense to just be investing in CDR research until the cost-benefit leans to CDR versus mitigation (and considering other effects, such as job creation, etc. (this point/plateau might vary a great deal by location, etc.)? 2. Once one captures the C, what does one do with it all? Where does one put all the captured CO2? What is the cost of disposal/storage/sequestration, etc. and what are the implications and risks of the various approaches? Best, Mike On 11/12/17 6:15 AM, Peter Eisenberger wrote: Hi Mike , The key issue is your sentence "While CDR can get started now, scaling up seems likely to take a bit of time, though this depends mainly on level of commitment." . A serious Manhatten Project Level Project or Going to the moon effort would make an assessment of the time versus commitment level for the only known solution at this time that can scale -DAC where the carbon is either stored in a material (carbon fiber or cement and sequestered or sequestered directly The number of units needed are comparable and less than many things we already mass produce by sigificant ratios - a shipping container sized unit of GT technology captures 2000 tpy and is amenable to mass production . :For 40 giga tonnes pyr capacity one would need 20 million units -there are currently 17 million shipping containers used in the world . Today GT has made two such units in a year say which is conservative estimate for installed capacity for the industry as a whole .To make the 20 million one would need would take 22 doublings of capacity. If one had a conservative 2 yr doubling time this would take 44 years and if it was a global emergency so one had a high doubling time of 1 year it would take us only 22 years to install 40 gigatonnes per year capacity with us making 4 million units per year at the end - we currently make 60 million new cars per year . The capital cost to make a DAC 2000 tpy unit is about $500,000 which in the end would cost 2 trillion dollars or close to 1 % of GGDP at that time and like solar it would create jobs. My only point is that these are not unreasonable numbers and most importantly no one has tried to do a serious assessment , yet many make statements as if it is obvious that the needed capacity cannot be reached in a timely fashion . But even more significant is that we seem content with a research effort rather than an implementation effort yet we claim we are in an emergency . As I am prone to say - the only barrier to CDR to remove the needed capacity (we know how to do it and that it is affordable) is to decide to do it. Peter On Sat, Nov 11, 2017 at 4:27 PM, Michael MacCracken <mmacc...@comcast.net <mailto:mmacc...@comcast.net> > wrote: Hi Peter--You might be interested that at the hearing Rep. Veasey (ranking Democratic member on one of the subcommittees at the hearing--see https://veasey.house.gov) indicated that he would soon be putting forward a bill pursuing CDR research/efforts. He has a Subcommittee on Energy minority staffer, Joe Flarida, working on this issue who sounds both quite well-informed and also interested in getting input (joe.flar...@mail.house.gov <mailto:joe.flar...@mail.house.gov> ). While there was discussion about might be done on SRM, I did not get the impression that a bill on that was as far along. On SRM & CDR issue, both are certainly needed. While CDR can get started now, scaling up seems likely to take a bit of time, though this depends mainly on level of commitment. SRM is indeed not a long-term approach, but it can be an approach that I think could be applied early in low deployment levels while mitigation and CDR are building up and getting emissions toward zero. I think this notion of waiting decades to get started makes little sense, because of the climate change and impacts that will occur in the interim, the shock that sudden and significant SRM deployment would induce, and that by that time it would be nice to have mitigation and CDR phased up a good bit (so CO2 emissions down, or at least no longer rising). Ultimately, we of course prefer having CDR be the dominant approach--for me the question is having a comprehensive effort that recognizes what needs to get done and what the capabilities are and deployments can be over time. Mike On 11/11/17 2:24 PM, Peter Eisenberger wrote: Hi Doug, I wish your statement was factually true but I can provide if you want many examples of people adovcating SRM using the status of CDR to justify its need . Furthermore with all respect even your statement that CDR is in the same state -eg need for research as CDR is just factually incorrect . CDR is ready to be implemented , it does not carry the risk of unintended consequences , and as opposed to SRM it can address the climate challenge whereas the best SRM can do is provide more time to address it. This is why I wrote that I too support research on SRM but do so making clear that CDR is both a higher priority and more advanced by far than SRM If we were as we should be all on the same team focussed on addressing the threat we all agree exists than all who support research on SRM would also make clear that it is a lower priority than CDR . Furthermore as i wrote the failure to do that will result in a diffusion of effort so that we will make incremental progress on many fronts without a commtted response on any single effort thus unwittingly delaying the critical large scale effort needed while we do research and thus losing precious time we can ill afford to do . Unfortunately this is not an academic issue and in the future experts will look at what we have done and what was really known at the time and come to their own conclusion. I hope we do not have to wait for that judgment and somehow develop the internal capability to develop a consensus on a prioritized plan to address the threat we face. At this time we need to go beyond letting a thousand flowers bloom which in itself is paradoxical with the argument that we have no time to waste . I of course am willing to be shown that my logic is flawed and engage in respecful dialogue with you or anyone that would argue against 1 that CDR is higher priority than SRM , and 2 we need to have an internal effort to develop a prioritized program for addressing the threat we face. <https://ssl.gstatic.com/ui/v1/icons/mail/images/cleardot.gif> Peter On Sat, Nov 11, 2017 at 10:02 AM, Douglas MacMartin <macma...@cds.caltech.edu <mailto:macma...@cds.caltech.edu> > wrote: Peter - I think that the risks of future climate change are sufficiently concerning that it would be premature to stop all research on some options on the assumption that other options are 100% guaranteed to suffice. I think that pretty much everyone who thinks we need to research SRM also thinks we need to research CDR quite aggressively. So when you try to set things up as an “us vs them” framing, I don’t think you are doing justice to anyone’s perspective that I know (and I think I can safely say that I know pretty much everyone who works on SRM). Relax; we’re all on the same team, and this isn’t a competition. Doug From: geoengineering@googlegroups.com <mailto:geoengineering@googlegroups.com> [mailto:geoengineering@googlegroups.com <mailto:geoengineering@googlegroups.com> ] On Behalf Of Peter Eisenberger Sent: Saturday, November 11, 2017 12:46 PM To: Greg Rau <gh...@sbcglobal.net <mailto:gh...@sbcglobal.net> > Cc: geoengineering@googlegroups.com <mailto:geoengineering@googlegroups.com> Subject: Re: [geo] Climate science foe Lamar Smith - geoengineering is ‘worth exploring.’ The sophisticated opposition to climate change initiated by George Bush Senior is to appease by supporting imcreased knowledge and thus avoid the need to act. This is just the most awkward and least nunanced of this pattern -or may I say another example of how far from knowledge based our political dialoque has become . I have stated my view that those who make the case for SRM by diminishing the status and potential for CDR to address the challenge of climate change are unwittingly playing into the hands of those opposed to action. A coordinated community focussed on the threat and not their individual idea would insist that CDR be funded and aggressively pursued before pursuing SRM - or at least would begin every interaction with the statement that CDR is a much higher priority. On Sat, Nov 11, 2017 at 9:21 AM, Greg Rau <gh...@sbcglobal.net <mailto:gh...@sbcglobal.net> > wrote: > > http://grist.org/briefly/climate-science-foe-lamar-smith-says-geoengineering-is-worth-exploring/ > > “Despite Smith’s endorsement of geoengineering, his opening statement made it clear that he’s still unwilling to talk about the reasons why the technology is being researched in the first place: “The purpose of this hearing is to discuss the viability of geoengineering … The hearing is not a platform to further the debate about climate change.” GR Just in case the climate change hoax is a hoax? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com <mailto:geoengineering%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com> . 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