4d ago

Carbon capture more costly than switching to renewables, researchers find

techxplore.com Carbon capture more costly than switching to renewables, researchers find

For most countries around the world, sourcing energy entirely from wind, solar, geothermal, and hydropower by 2050 would reduce their energy needs and costs, improve air quality, and help slow climate change, according to a study in Environmental Science & Technology.

cross-posted from: https://lemmit.online/post/5180379

This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/technology by /u/nimicdoareu on 2025-02-15 16:52:57+00:00.

20 comments

Well yeah that's like saying it's more costly to fix an oil spill in the ocean then just simply not use oil to begin with. Yeah obviously.
The point of carbon capture isn't to allow us to continue to use carbon producing fuels it's to undo the damage that's already being done. So this cost comparison is daft.
- It's being used to make fossil fuel plants "net zero"
  
  That doesn't fix the problem though. For one thing they're not net zero because they're not capturing 100% of the carbon and also that's like putting a bucket under a leaky pipe and claiming you fixed the pipe.
  The bucket will overfill and then you've still got water on the floor.
  Or you could fix the pipe.

Water is wet, researchers find
Like basic thermodynamics can tell you that carbon capture sucks efficiency wise. It's more work to pour water on the floor and then mopping it up and putting a back into the bottle, than just not not spilling the water in the first place.
- The problem is, spilling water on the floor is how the richest entities in the world keep their power, so that's kind of out of the question. I don't see a way to overthrow all the oil money. So either we sit there and hurumpf that the world is shit and unfair, or do something to make it ever so slightly better.
- And even more basic: renewables are consistently cheaper.
  It's not really rocket science that adding a costly postprocessing to an already more expensive solution makes that solution even morer expensiver.

I think the idea with carbon capture is mostly that you power it with the excess you're getting from renewables. Finland for example has so much wind turbines that when it's windy they produce much more energy than the country consumes. In moments like this it makes sense to put this energy into something like carbon capture or hydrogen production.

No shit it's more expensive. The point isn't to save money, it's to save the planet.
- The point is ALWAYS to save money. That's what got us here in the first place

I'm confused why this is even a question that needs to be answered.
We need renewables and carbon capture to even have a slight chance of having a barely livable planet.
There's no single solution out there that fixes things
- Yeah but stupid people are plentiful and overly confident that they can spitball a better idea for solving the problem than literal experts with decades of expertise can because "they're too close to the problem" or "they're paid off by big [fill in the blank] to gum up any progress" or whatever. They just don't believe in complicated solutions or complicated problems because most people aren't doing anything particularly complicated with their lives. Incurious people aren't interested in any explanations or nuance.
- True, though, we do need a quicker solution with a lower barrier to adoption ASAP. Carbon capture could be a good long-term approach to augment CO2 management, provided we figure out the details of CO2 solution "loads"/proportions, costs, maintenance, and capture locations.

Even if you're capturing carbon - the average American is producing ~14 tons of CO2 per year. That is quite a lot to store if you have captured it.
- There are industrial uses for it, so it doesn't have to be stored forever.

In this ~~house~~ planet we obey the laws of thermodynamics!

but then oil tycoons wouldnt make mo money

This makes sense. The cost of carbon capture would have to be less than the difference of installing new renewables and operating them, and operating existing fossil fuels.

New tech is always more expensive. So this is a dumb headline. Keep advancing it, selling it, and using it, and it will get better and cheaper over time. Removing carbon and the slew of chemicals that are too heavy to float off the earth is a requirement because they don't just go away...

But those rich fucks (causing most of it) who don't think climate change is made up, all think, it's not their problem.

20 comments