The article in the url below reports renewed interest from venture capitalists in carbon capture technology. The same article, however, also reveals how difficult it can be to produce such innovation and, perhaps what matters most, scale it for meaningful impact:
"More than 80% of proposed commercial carbon-capture efforts around the world have failed, primarily because the technology didn't work as expected or the projects proved too expensive to operate, according to a 2020 study."
These projects are generally not super expensive (in the larger scheme of things) and, of course, are well-worth the effort, but the overall record is not encouraging:
"The U.S. has spent $1.1 billion on carbon-capture demonstration projects since 2009, with uneven results, according to a December report from the Government Accountability Office. None of the eight coal projects selected for $684 million of the funding during that time is operating, the researchers found. Projects to capture carbon from heavy industries met with some success."
One challenge that I had not considered is the market value of the carbon that is being captured. To the extent that it is a useful material, it would encourage greater effort to innovate. Unfortunately, that does not seem to be the case:
"While some early projects have demonstrated that it is technologically possible to collect carbon from power plants and industrial sites—or even directly out of the air—they have generally been very expensive. Many face a fundamental problem: there is no economic use for the carbon they capture."
Let's hope we are willing to alter our collective behavior and not rely 100 percent on science/technological innovation to bail us out of this mess.
Take care
David
David Chandler
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Carbon-Capture Efforts Resurface
By Jennifer Hiller and Collin Eaton
February 7, 2022
The Wall Street Journal
Late Edition – Final
B2
