The problem with carbon capture is it’s not pulling anywhere near the amount of carbon from the air as needed and it’s currently very expensive. And it’s an easy out for politicians. A lot of the plans seem to be “we’ll do the easy stuff to reduce CO2 emissions, so how much more is the net emissions come to? Ok then we will do that much carbon capture… someday… somehow…”
And a good amount of it is pumping CO2 into oil wells… to extract more oil.
We really don’t know how well carbon capture will work on the large scales needed to balance the books on the “easy mode” net zero policies. Given how expensive it is, is it the most economically viable solution?
Sure the cost may decrease… but by how much?
A lot of question marks with it in terms of economic viability.
I do think it’s needed but I’d prefer it being something that’s just used for fuel that’s extremely difficult to replace, like fuel for airplanes. It seems feasible to tack on a big enough carbon tax on jet fuel to cover the cost of the carbon capture of that fuel. Sure airline travel will get more expensive, but that should be fine. But the level of carbon tax needed to cover the costs for ground transport using fossil fuels seems like it would be prohibitive.
The problem with carbon capture is it’s not pulling anywhere near the amount of carbon from the air as needed and it’s currently very expensive. And it’s an easy out for politicians. A lot of the plans seem to be “we’ll do the easy stuff to reduce CO2 emissions, so how much more is the net emissions come to? Ok then we will do that much carbon capture… someday… somehow…”
And a good amount of it is pumping CO2 into oil wells… to extract more oil.
We really don’t know how well carbon capture will work on the large scales needed to balance the books on the “easy mode” net zero policies. Given how expensive it is, is it the most economically viable solution?
Sure the cost may decrease… but by how much?
A lot of question marks with it in terms of economic viability.
I do think it’s needed but I’d prefer it being something that’s just used for fuel that’s extremely difficult to replace, like fuel for airplanes. It seems feasible to tack on a big enough carbon tax on jet fuel to cover the cost of the carbon capture of that fuel. Sure airline travel will get more expensive, but that should be fine. But the level of carbon tax needed to cover the costs for ground transport using fossil fuels seems like it would be prohibitive.