The Race to Upcycle CO2 Into Fuels, Concrete and More
30th March 2022
Companies are scrambling to turn the greenhouse gas into useful products — but will that slow climate change?
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Industrial CO2 emissions are warming the climate, and many countries are working on capturing the gas and storing it underground. But why not recycle it into products that are both virtuous and profitable? As long as the recycling process avoids creating more carbon emissions — by using renewable energy, or excess resources that would otherwise be wasted — it can reduce the CO2 that industry pumps into the atmosphere and lower the demand for fossil fuels used in manufacturing. That’s a double climate win, proponents say.
March 30th, 2022 at 07:16
This is all great if you believe that the Earth is a static ecology.
Clearly, it is not static; it is dynamic.
What happens if you feed more CO2 into a greenhouse? The plants affix more carbon and produce more oxygen. Globally, the biggest CO2 sink is not the forests, but rather the ocean – that blue stuff on the globe in the corner. It’s a lot bigger and more reactive. Wiping out CO2 would be stupid – if it actually could be done – but just as stupid is spending incredible amounts of money to make an almost negligible dent in the existing CO2.
The smart choice is in higher energy efficiency. We’re already seeing that with LEDs. Summer is coming (unless you are here in the southern part of Texas, where it is already summer), so look at air conditioning costs. Every watt used in a building results in a heat load that requires half a watt of air conditioning load. Moving to LEDs from CRTs and incandescent light bulbs (and even fluorescent lights) greatly reduces that load. Getting better results and lowering electrical usage makes huge gains possible and without the Left’s Universal Suffering. Move from traditional electric generation (@ 30% thermal efficiency) to cogeneration (@60-90% efficiency) and measurable benefits are easy. Trying to scrub CO2 and bury it in the bottom of the ocean? It’s a Democratic Party spending spree without the coke and hookers to show for the effort.
I actually worked for a plant that used CO2 for polymers. They’re not particularly hard to make, but you don’t really “sink” CO2 when you look at the whole process. Ethylene carbonate is used to make diapers and tampons (absorbs lots of water) and is used in certain batteries (e.g., cell phones). Propylene carbonate is used for making polycarbonate for eye glasses and bullet proof “glass”. I did the greenhouse gas reports to EPA. They wanted to calculate the CO2 from boilers and heaters. Methane from waste treatment was exempt if there was an aeration pond. (There’s always an aeration pond or else it stinks.) CO2 from the flares was exempt, as was CO2 from the haz waste incinerator and from the vents from the CO2 system for making carbonates. Likewise, the CO2 that did sink into the carbonate products is not counted as a reduction. So if the EPA is only interested in some parts of the entire CO2 system, what do the reported numbers actually mean? Those numbers are the process numbers that the government intends to (eventually) tax. TAX. This is about REVENUE, not climate. And all those projects EPA is encouraging are meant to divert attention from the real purpose of greenhouse gas emissions regulations.