Carbon capture is necessary in the long term, for particular emissions that are hard to avoid (like specific industrial processes and parts of agriculture). But while we're still pumping out emissions that can be easily and cheaply displaced today, like coal and gas fired grid electricity, then the money being spent on carbon capture is being spent terribly ineffectively. And globally, we don't have the time or money to waste.
For example, most electricity grids are still partially carbon-intensive, despite renewable sources being cheap and available and in use. Simply buying some more solar panels and hooking them to a carbon-intensive grid will displace coal or gas emissions by the following lunchtime, far more cost-effectively than any form of carbon capture.
I understand the principle on working on research projects that have a long lead time. But Stripe should treat carbon capture as such, and could have a more cost-efficient climate strategy: put most of this money today into the most cost-efficient solutions available today, rather than putting its entire budget into the least cost-efficient solution.
> But while we're still pumping out emissions that can be easily and cheaply displaced today, like coal and gas fired grid electricity
Coal and gas fired electricity can be easily and cheaply displaced today? Then why isn't it? I was under the impression that we needed coal + gas still because it wasn't easy or cheap to meet the energy level needs of today with alternatives.
We could have displaced them almost entirely in the 60s and 70s with nuclear, and we can do so today with renewables and nuclear. We haven't yet because it turns out oil and gas are pretty profitable, and climate change became a recognized issue just as the US was moving toward a more laissez-faire style of governance.
We can't currently displace oil usage for certain fuels, but we can start creating it from renewable sources using the carbon-free energy sources to power the process. Basically convert nuclear energy (via uranium or the Sun) into chemical energy.
The price of wind and solar is coming down so fast that what didn't work in 2015 is perfectly feasible in 2020. My town's sustainability plan was developed in 2014, passed in 2020 and it's already obsolete. Many organizations are planning today based on data that is already out of date.
Well, it can easily be displaced at low market penetration for wind/solar. At high levels, like well over 50%, storage cost starts to be a serious issue.
When it comes to long-term technologies, they just don't become ready when you need them. We need to start investing in them today so they're ready when we need them to operate at scale.
One thing to consider is that "carbon capture" can be a good stopgap approach to long-term energy storage. For example, use the extra sunlight in the summer to run carbon capture, and then on shorter winter days burn fossil fuels.
Carbon capture methods already exist, they're just not sexy, profit-generating, or tech-based.
Example: Raise fast-growing forestry (e.g. pine), harvest it, then bury in deep pits. Repeat. The buried carbon will release just ~3% back to the atmosphere in a decade. The sequestration potential of this technique alone is significant, of the kind of scale we need to tackle the issue. All of the fields of knowledge we need to execute on it (forestry, landfill, mining) are well-developed today.
Pretending it's a problem with no existing solutions is a ploy to secure investments and diverts attention from action that could be taken today. But, of course, there's no money in that.
You're right, but it's a lot harder to account for emission reduction, and offsets based on those are often illusory. For example, you might award carbon offsets for replacing a coal plant with solar, when that would have happened anyway just because the economics worked out better. If you're actually removing carbon from the atmosphere, that's not an issue.
As a matter of government policy, we definitely need to focus on reducing emissions, and a simple way to do that is with a carbon fee. But for voluntary contributions right now, it's not so clearcut.
> you might award carbon offsets for replacing a coal plant with solar, when that would have happened anyway just because the economics worked out better
It depends on which organisation verifies your offset, but the big three (Gold Standard, Verra VCS, and United Nations), all require _additionality_. That is where you have to prove that the offset financing is making the project happen, rather than market forces.
It’s not a flawless process, but in many cases offsetting is helping to accelerate the transition away from carbon intensive emitters.
For example, most electricity grids are still partially carbon-intensive, despite renewable sources being cheap and available and in use. Simply buying some more solar panels and hooking them to a carbon-intensive grid will displace coal or gas emissions by the following lunchtime, far more cost-effectively than any form of carbon capture.
I understand the principle on working on research projects that have a long lead time. But Stripe should treat carbon capture as such, and could have a more cost-efficient climate strategy: put most of this money today into the most cost-efficient solutions available today, rather than putting its entire budget into the least cost-efficient solution.