Carbon Capture and Sequestration – CCS
Gerald RatzerMay 20, 2024
Carbon Capture is an important process to an overall understanding of climate change. If you can follow the line of thinking below and the many references – then it will be crystal clear that CCS is a complete waste of a valuable resource that is vital to all life on Earth. The resource in question is CO2 and is an essential part of photosynthesis. All life on Earth, whether in the oceans, on the land or in the atmosphere, depends on CO2 to grow and thrive. Trying to capture and bury CO2 is totally counterproductive.
Here is one paragraph from the World Climate Declaration (WCD) -
“CO2 is plant food, the basis of all life on Earth
CO2 is not a pollutant. It is essential to all life on Earth. Photosynthesis is a blessing. More CO2 is beneficial for nature, greening the Earth: additional CO2 in the air has promoted growth in global plant biomass. It is also good for agriculture, increasing the yields of crops worldwide.”
The WCD has been signed by almost 2,000 professionals, including a Nobel Laureate. It contains some six other paragraphs, and fits on a single page. If you have not read it, please follow this link.
The CO2 Coalition has similar material including these – Plants love CO2 We are CO2 impoverished More CO2 means more plant growth
One simple explanation which is missing from the CCS literature is a full cost/benefit analysis. Here is a simple explanation of this process which reduces the calculation to just two numbers.
These two numbers for a CCS project are 1. The total cost and 2. The benefits. Ideally, these two numbers should be in the same units – US dollars. Unfortunately for many projects these numbers are not available or kept confidential. So, this article will give a rough estimate for the costs and benefits, using what data is available. If the estimates are out by a wide margin, we hope that the manufacturer or their clients will come forward with more accurate numbers.
For the benefit number, we are proposing two different metrics, where some data values are known. These metrics will be the actual or expected increase in global temperature, measured as a single number in degrees Celsius; and the fraction or percentage of the CO2 that is removed from the Earth’s atmosphere, by example. This article shines some light on both numbers, so that the public will understand better that the benefits are miniscule, whatever units are used.
A leading example of CCS was opened this month in Iceland. CNN has this link to describe the background of the new “Mammoth” project from Swiss firm Climeworks. A search on the Internet does not give an exact amount for this project, but there are quotes of US$600 to $800 per metric tonne of CO2 removed. Climeworks are expected to be below the lower range by 2030. Mammoth is designed to clear and remove 36,000 tonnes of CO2 per year (under ideal conditions –the nameplate removal) – the approximate operating cost will be $20 million/year. While specific contract cost is not available from Climeworks, we can estimate the project cost by taking a 10-year life cycle expectation. Namely, the capex cost (Capital expense) will approximately match the operating cost over 10 years.
The estimated cost of the total project over its life cycle would be about US$400 million and would extract 36,000 x 10 (360,000) tonnes of CO2. Even if this estimate is out by a factor of two or three, the following impact of this operation will have an immeasurable reduction in global temperature.
This assertion is based on the research of my colleague Douglas Lightfoot. Together we have some six papers which have been peer reviewed. The research methodology is based on being able to find the enthalpy of an air sample, by measuring the temperature and humidity at several locations and entering these into a Psychrometric chart. This chart is based on the Ideal Gas laws, which have stood the test of time for
over a century. This technique and climate results are available in the references below. This research is technical and uses the enthalpy of greenhouse gases and the Laws of Thermodynamics. We invite readers to review the papers and respond with any issues they raise.
For the second number of this example, we can give you a very good estimate of the heat contained in 360,000 tonnes of CO2, and the impact this will have on the global temperature. The following estimate of the mass of our Atmosphere and global CO2 (according to CoPilot) is –
Which results in 3276. x 109 Megatonnes or 3.276 x 1012 so we are now talking of three trillion tonnes.
The 360,000 tonnes removed over 10 years is 0.36 x 106 - the important issue here is one of scale. You can ignore the first one or two decimal digits – the only important number is the power of ten – the scaling factor. The mass of CO2 in the global atmosphere is 106 larger than what Mammoth would remove in 10 years. This is a factor of a million times greater. In case you did not know, in 2023 the global addition of CO2 to our atmosphere was 36.6 gigatonnes (36.6 x 109 tonnes).
Now we can convert this tiny amount of heat to degrees Celsius, based on our research, and the outcome is “too small to measure”. This means it is less than 0.01°C or a hundredth of a degree.
Even though this calculation is based on best estimates, the same result would be the outcome if the error bars on the estimates are +/- 100%, namely two or three times bigger or smaller.
So, if the total capex and operating expenses are in the range of $300 to $400 million over ten years, and the benefits are “too small to measure” is this a viable project for a government to foist on their taxpayers?
Apart from the cost, there is a position taken by many people that CCS is anti-human. Alex Epstein has a set of questions and answers on energy and climate. Here is the first bullet point (out of 20) –
Q: What should the government do about carbon capture?
A: Government should eliminate all special preferences and all special punishments for carbon capture. This will allow innovators to explore the field’s potential for profitability and scalability—at no taxpayer expense.
Carbon capture involves capturing fossil fuels’ CO2 emissions directly (from exhaust) or indirectly (from the air).
It has garnered interest as a way of utilizing low-cost, reliable, versatile fossil fuel energy without the climate impacts.
There are considerably more of these points and other questions and responses at the link above.
All this is to say that CCS cannot be justified in cost when this is compared to the immeasurable small (if any) benefits. Readers are reminded that the UN Sustainable goals are a set of 17 goals – the first one is “No poverty”, while climate is way down the list at number 13.
The funds saved by a government by avoiding carbon capture, and higher goals like Net Zero, would be much better spent on reducing poverty in their country.
Gerald Ratzer
Professor Emeritus
McGill, Montreal, Canada
Email: gerald.ratzer@mcgill.ca
References:
Lightfoot H D and Ratzer G, Reliable Physics Demand Revision of the IPCC Global Warming Potentials. Available at: https://setpublisher.com/index.php/jbas/article/view/2509 and https://doi.org/10.29169/1927-5129.2024.20.05
Lightfoot H D and Ratzer G, The Sun and the Troposphere control the Earth’s temperature. Available at: https://doi.org/10.29169/1927-5129.2023.19.14