this post was submitted on 13 Nov 2023
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A company says that it has found a way to remove CO2 from the air for less than $100 per ton (wapo.st)
submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Graphyte, a new company incubated by Bill Gates’s investment group Breakthrough Energy Ventures, announced Monday that it has created a method for turning bits of wood chips and rice hulls into low-cost, dehydrated chunks of plant matter. Those blocks of carbon-laden plant matter — which look a bit like shoe-box sized Lego blocks — can then be buried deep underground for hundreds of years.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 11 months ago (2 children)

This isn't really a method for extracting CO2 from the air so much as a method to make sure that plant matter which has already extracted it from the air doesn't return it via burning or decomposition. It makes plants carbon negative instead of carbon neutral.

I don't really see the point of burying it when turning it into building materials would be much more effective, by replacing carbon-generating building materials (and being a great insulator). It might be a bit more expensive but building materials have value so it would be more cost-effective? Wood chip is already used to insulate buildings. I don't get why they just want to bury this stuff instead of making good use of it.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 11 months ago (2 children)

If you've ever been around a logging operation, you'd see how much (half?) of the plant matter extracted doesn't make it into a logging truck, but is instead piled unto 3-story high heaps and then burned. Being able to sequester that material instead would be amazing

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Sure. But turning it into building material would be even more amazing?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Be nice, but we're talking about remote locations with a high cost of transport. It's unlikely to be cost-effective

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

Even when it is bury for no value vs sell to replace carbon-producing materials? I don't buy it. Very few places are so remote that there is zero local-ish demand for building materials and they have to build facilities and support workers in those remote places instead.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Coal mines in Appalachia fit multiple criteria for this to be effective.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

The older ones, sure. Mountaintop removal ones, probably not so much.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Burying it deep underground instead is likely to impose a high cost of transport as well.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

They're proposing about 10 feet, which isn't that far.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 months ago

Agreed. However, burying it ten foot underground in a remote location, sealing it to keep moisture out, and then continuing to monitor it for hundreds of years is not trivial.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago

Typically i believe that it tends to be about twenty to forty percent of the tree by mass, but that’s still nearly doubling the about of carbon we sequester if we can sequester it.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago

Sounds like the blocks are sealed to stop decomposition.. so I guess the bricks would rot if the seal is compromised? That wouldn't be good for a building. And it would let the carbon out.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Huge scale carbon sequestration is the only direct answer to the situation, anything else is just dealing with the symptoms or buying some time. It's quite possible that even if we could drop to below 300ppm overnight we'd still have to ride out the climate inertia that's already in play, big things don't just stop on a dime.

The comments in this article list a lot of problems though, with the biggest one being the lack of any numbers to even evaluate anything. Can it scale? What's the side effects of taking that biomass out of the cycle (and not just pure carbon blocks)? What's the net energy usage per ton sequestered? What other finite resources will be needed instead of somewhere else?

I mean, sure...doing something is better than not, but only if it makes some difference. And I haven't seen anything that begins to make a dent in the problem, especially when we aren't even fixing the emissions themself, something we do have more control over. We should be doing everything that has a factor, but we're so reluctant to change because we still think we have time to do it later.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Even at their price, it's almost always cheaper to not emit in the first place. Once we've got emissions down near zero, tools like this can help to slowly get things back near where they were

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Yes and get emissions down to zero needs to capture carbon at the emitters.

Can then be sequestrated. Or stored, a better term for large scale sequestration.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 11 months ago (1 children)

No, it means not burning stuff in the first place which is what's far cheaper.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

This is what utopia calls for.

But it will not happen anywhere near a timeline to conduct climate crisis changes.

Period.

Thats the same delusional argument as "take down half of humanity - problem solved"

Edit: it reads far more aggressive than I meant it. Ill apologize in advance.

I agree obsiously on the port if not burning stuff for nee things. But existing industry wont got away anytime soon.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago (1 children)

The high cost of CCS means that almost all for-profit business faced with a choice between installing it and replacing their facilities with new ones which don't burn stuff is going to end up doing the latter. There are a handful of exceptions where the high operating cost of CCS might make it worthwhile, but they're a minority of what needs doing.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

To be fair, there are things like concrete production where the process itself inherently produces large amounts of carbon where capture might help, but yes, in general if there is a choice between a process that produces carbon and a more expensive one that doesn’t the one that doesn’t will still be cheaper than capture.