How to UNDO Climate Change: Bioenergy with Carbon Capture (BECCS)
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- čas přidán 1. 06. 2024
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In this video we’re going to look at nature’s emissions reduction technology: trees. We’re going to see whether that is actually the simple solution that so many people think it is (spoiler alert, it’s not enough). And then we’re going to go beyond just planting trees and look at a technology that can kind of turbocharge what trees alone can do. It’s called bioenergy with carbon capture aka BECCS. It’s a technology thought by many to be our saviour, and by many others, hated with a passion. What elicits such strong reactions? In this video we’ll find out how it works, where it’s already being done, and what it brings to the table that nature-based solutions like tree planting don’t. And with that information you can make up your own mind where you stand on this controversial technology.
The Engineering with Rosie team is:
Rosemary Barnes: presenter, producer, writer
Kevin Irman: research, calculations, assistant editor
Javi Diez: editor www.linkedin.com/in/javierdie...
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Bookmarks:
00:00 Intro
01:19 Tree Planting for Carbon Capture
05:30 Thanks Aura Health for Supporting this video!
06:41 Where does BECCS fit in
08:51 Advantages of BECCS
11:51 Why isn’t BECCS more widespread
14:19 Outro
Sources:
To be added - Věda a technologie
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APOLOGIES NOW for what will feel like a lecture.
You are quite right about the volume of the CO2 we have emitted. I just downloaded the data for 1940-2022 and that makes for some serious discussion.
It took 44 years from 1940 to 1984 to pump 500 Billion tons into the atmosphere.
It took only 21 years 2005 for the next 500 Billion tons
It took only 15 years 2020 for the next 500 Billion tons making it 1.5 Trillion tons
And we'll go past 2 Trillion tons at the current rate around 2033.
That of course doesn't include the billions of tons from badly managed coal mines in places like China or what happened pre-1940 or lots of human activities that aren't counted.
So the real problem going forward isn't Net-Zero. Its how we get to Net-Subzero and NOT bankrupt the World's economy or destroy modern civilisation getting there. Because if we do either of those things we really will have an apocalypse.
FYI - I did my degree in America and we once had a NASA engineer do a special guest lecture on terraforming Mars. He very simply said "It's Impossible" and then explained WHY. He introduced us to 2 subjects I know call planetary mechanics and planetary dynamics. *Planetary mechanics* are just the raw amounts like we have 2.5 Trillion tons of CO2 in the atmosphere and it takes X Joules to raise Y cubic kilometers so many degrees. *Planetary dynamics* are things like gas cycles, water cycles, thermal cycles (like the AMOC). On simple planetary mechanics Mars is impossible to terraform. It ends the discussion when you realise that it takes 178 Trillion tons of air just to make a 1km thick layer of Earth normal air around a body that large. You don't even get to the subject of how to keep it attached to the planet. Its just where do we get that much air in the first place.
Here's the problem we have with CO2. I have seen plenty promotion, neutral and debunk videos on both carbon capture & storage (CCS) and direct air capture (DAC). Even if we could use one of the technical solutions the problem is ENERGY. Where do we simply get enough energy to run those systems?
If we did try one of those DAC systems you then have to ask how we process that many cubic kilometers to get at those 400 parts per million of CO2 to extract 2.5 Trillion tons.
This is the problem the guy from NASA when trying to explain what he found to other people. *The numbers are so large that people can't conceive of what those numbers mean.* If the Earths surface is 510,072,000km² then that basically equates to 1/2 Billion cubic kilometers of air just in the first kilometer of 100 above the Earths surface. *How does anyone actually think they are going to feed volume that through a bunch of factory built units?*
How much energy and materials will it take and how much CO2 will be produced building all those units?
Sorry the only way it can actually be done is with TREES?
The question is how do we convince every person on the planet they have to plant (on average) about 1,000 trees. That's about 8 Trillion trees and we need 1 in 10 to grow to maturity and suck in and CAPTURE about 1.5 tons of CO2 each. Sorry but we are going to have to do things like plant tree lines along very fence line on every farm on the planet.
AND YES you make an incredibly important point we just can't go throwing trees in the ground we have to actually do some PLANNING. You can't just throw pine trees into the Sahara, but with the right plan we can plant staggering numbers of date palms, olive trees, cedars and other suitable varieties across all that open space of North Africa.
YES we'd have to supply staggering amounts of water until they generate their own weather, but there are low energy options there. I worked on the Ravensthorpe Nickel Project back in the mid 2000s and that has an interesting desal plant. Its NOT reverse osmosis which long term has too high maintenance costs. Because I'd worked on another Wier project they gave me the FAT for the desal plant. Weir called it vapour compression but from memory it was built more like a Multi-stage flash distillation system and may well have combined those 2 technologies. Either way it used only a fraction of the power an RO plant of the same size. The reason such plants aren't used a lot is they can be tricky to start-up and they only have 1 speed (flow rate). You can't just turn them on and off at will like you can RO *AND YES* I have done RO systems one of which was quite complex.
So yes it sound crazy to tell everyone we need to plant 8 Trillion trees. But I am sorry but there is no other feasible way to do it. Everything else either relies on a technology we can't build enough of or a technology we can't power or some ridiculous seeding fantasy of the sky or the oceans.
If you look at some of the ideas being proposed for seeding the sky to let in less light or seeding the ocean to have more oceanic algae plankton to consume the C02 are so absurd they are only worth considering to see how absurd they are. Nobody knows if they would work, or how much we'd need let alone what happens if it gets out of control and needs shutting down. We can shut down even the most complex plants we build but *how would you shut down the SO2 seeding in the upper atmosphere I have seen proposed?* Likewise if the iron seeding of the ocean to promote algae growth goes haywire. What's the contingency for that?
As an aerospace engineer placing a giant sun shield out at the L1 Lagrange Point makes better sense. We could build it with louvres and control what heat comes in. You just need to get me something like US$50 Trillion and hand me control of the entire engineering infrastructure of the planet. before you ask if it cost US$200 Billion to build the ISS with a weight of 450t in LEO. What do you think it would cost to build something at L1 that weighs on the order of a million tons and needs constant onsite maintenance to keep it orientated and in position.
Plus we'd need a fleet of satellites monitoring the entire Earth's surface at 10m resolution or better to watch the effects. Actually we'll need those whatever we do. That's one of the few things we can do. the question is will we do it to save the planet or watch it die.
I think it's important to distinguish between "planting trees" as part of nature-based solutions (restoring ecosystems such as mangrove forests & reforestation (excluding aforestation)) and using tree plantations as part of a BECCS process - these don't restore ecosystems or biodiversity but can have many adverse impacts if not managed properly.
In nature trees perform many critical tasks, such as regulating local climates & as part of the water cycle & purification, stabilising soil, providing habitat for many many species, protecting the land during storms (especially from the action of the sea), provide food awa contruction & other material (must be harvested sustainably) etc etc. Trees help with human physical & mental well-being, especially kids. In cities trees help filter the air, manage water, provide shade & calm traffic. When a tree dies and falls to the ground it regenerates the soil, provides a safe enviro for seeds and provides habitats for all sorts of creatures.
Trees are most useful within a natural context as part of ecological systems, processes & services whilst also providing goods construction material, fibres, food & medicine etc for animals & humand. Planting trees for BECCS provides none of these benefits, but may compete for land for other land uses such as crops (unless planted on already degraded land such as an old mine site) and strip the land of important nutrients & ground water. All BECCS can do is make a private company very rich (+ their investors) via gov subsidies, i.e. tax payer money.
Tx for another awesome video topic. Tackling the ecological, biodiversity & climate crises - they are the same thing - requires multiple actions & solutions... there is no "one thing fixes everything" solution (if only it was that easy)!
BECCS seems bad, but what's a good alternative? Air source CCS seems even worse.
Now that Fungi has been added to Flora and Fauna in at least one country and with the irrational ban on Fungi research in the US being eased, if not removed, maybe we get to find Fungi full potential. Do we really understand mycelium networks? Do we really understand forests as a whole thing, empiricism breaks everything down and is a useful tool, but to truly understand the myriad complex relationships is something else.
actually there is a silver bullet. It's the Rhizosphere. More specifically, reforming our Agricultural system around a single unified purpose. Restoring the global Rhizosphere, sustaining it with organic waste, and achieving a scarcity free agricultural model that is not governed by the religion of economics.
And not only is this a silver bullet for both ecological conservation and atmospheric carbon reduction, it's also a sociopolitical silver bullet because the labor required is unskilled, and the career path is Dirt Farming. Literally any able bodied human being over the age of 11 can participate in the process of turning organic waste into thriving Rhizosphere.
That means all homeless, unemployed, and their families could be given a stable life long career as a small family farm tasked with the sole purpose of rehabilitating the Rhizosphere. If the napkin math holds up, is would require about 5 million people per continent actively employed year round as Dirt Farmers.
And that job can be used to redefine global poverty and rather than spending more money on a social safety system to compensate for how tall the billionaire's towers have gotten, we just raise the floor up to a safe level. The level of a Dirt Farm that brings in enough revenue to support a thriving family of 3 to 5 per hectare.
Then whatever we pay them becomes the new minimum wage. No more corporate stranglehold on human labor. No more homelessness. No more unemployed. There will always be room for 5 million people per continent to sustain and repair the harm human activity has on global ecosystems.
We just have to enable them to be the ones who do it rather than pretending a blank check to the same people who caused this crisis is somehow going to solve it.
So yeah, there's a real big fkin silver bullet that can and will cascade into many different sociopolitical and economic solutions.
@@ZennExile even if all best practices regarding small farming hold, I see two big problems with your thesis. (1) corporate interests consume quite a lot of the land in many countries. (2) 5 million per continent isn't even close to enough jobs to guarantee full employment. Besides, there are already labor shortages on many farms in the West. If the homeless in the West really wanted to, many could probably become farmers (many others have disabilities). But you can't force them to basically leave their communities to go farm.
@@ZennExile Exellent point, exept humans love to bury healthy soils under layers of hard cement, steel & asphalt whenever they get the chance. I assume you are aware of the depave & permaculture movements, and are a fan of fungi?!
Yes, we do need to restore soils for both renenerative farming and ecosystem restoration - many cities are implementing excellent community composting projects (not everyone lives on a plot of land) and urban development strategies like LIUDD, SUDS, WSUD & Sponge Cities look to nature & soils to absorb excess rainfall to replenish ground water - all these techniques require healthy soils.
Only a few humans are actually aware how critically important healthy soils are, and yet our lives literally depend on it! Unfortunately the vast majority of people live in urban centres and most of us are becoming further & further disconnected from the natural world.
Tx for the info; I am going to research this topic.
And another point, We have given billions of dollars in subsidies or grants to oil and gas producers to develop their Carbon Capture systems and to date the results are awful. Now is that because you can't scale the systems up easily or is it because they are not really trying too hard? I think it might be both.
I would say it is a little bit of both. Also carbon capture can look like a silver bullet solution, which is very convenient for big oil&gas companies image. They will most likely keep doing that for a long time, because this technology does not seem to make any substantial progress.
I think it might be that they can't figure out how to make enough money on the CCS's. Plus, so far they are too dangerous in terms of the chemicals needed in the processes, as well as need tons of energy in the processes which would look foolish to proceed with. 95% of the carbon captured today is used for enhanced oil recovery projects. Not to mention that the storage of liquid CO2 is a big dangerous and unsolvable problem.
Forestry for wood used in construction is much better than BECCS in the short term, as that carbon stays fixed for the lifetime of that structure. BECCS is a good option for agricultural waste products but for a managed plantation, that wood should go to construction.
Indeed, the emission-benefits of construction wood is even more than the contained carbon since it typically displaces the use of steel or concrete and that displaced emission also has to be taken into account. All in all a massive opportunity for a regenerative timber industry to become a big ally in combating climate change.
Wood can be a great low energy building material. But, wood construction is not a good way to store carbon. Wood buildings may last hundreds of years and store carbon during that time. But, they will at the end of that time burn or decompose in a landfill and release their carbon back into the atmosphere. That several hundreds of years of storage is insignificant compared to the 300 million years of storage provided by fossil fuels.
@@jeffsweeney312 Great remark! However, climate change is in many ways an acute crisis, with a decadal timescale in stead of a century or millenia time-scale. Ecosystems can more easily adapt if the changes are spread out from decades to centuries. The deep ocean ocean (as opposed to the ocean surface) can start to play a role in absorbing carbon in the century-to-millenia timescale. So in that regard, wood as timber remains nearly undiminished as a paradigm to combat climate change.
@@jeffsweeney312 Can't you just boil the old construction wood to make it heavier than water and dump it in anoxic waters? I mean, we still have to massively reduce carbon exhaust, but this might improve the storage time of the carbon.
Peat Bogs
The Ugly duckling of natural carbon capture. Better than trees, because the carbon is locked away in the bog (unlike trees, where the wood will decay, releasing the carbon).
However, peat bogs are only viable in very specific locations and environments.
They aren't a solution, but should be protected and appreciated just as much as we celebrate forests.
And yet in the UK, companies are rushing to buy up and plant large areas of peat moorland with trees - it's cheap, and with the hunting interests that traditionally maintained such areas having become an easy political target, it comes with a social caché too that makes it politically easy. The scale of this is massive, and speaking to many investors in the space, they don't actually care about the carbon balance, as as soon as they've bundled the certified 'saved' carbon and sold it on, it's no longer their problem.
Wouldn't any anoxic water be usable for this? Just boil the wood to make it heavier than water and then dump it in the anoxic waters.
7:32 THIS is where the real potential of using trees for Carbon Capture is. Stop at the torrefaction step, take that torrefied biomass (aka Biochar) and use it as a soil amendment, to grow more trees, faster. That's the real solution, IMO.
it would be great to see you do a deeper dive into pyrolysis, if you haven't already (need to scour the channel's backlog of videos!)
Soil organizms may digest this and produce methane (worse), but maybe just put it back into the coal mine where it came from...
@MediumPointBallPoint nope, biochar is stable in the soil for thousands of years. Because the carbon is ss recalcitrant, microorganisms cannot use it as a food source, instead it is habitat space. There are biogenic (ie human made) soils in the Amazon that were created by biochar. The Amazon has some of the most biologically active and erosive conditions in the world yet biochar made by ancient human civilizations there created these pockets of fertile, high carbon soils that are still around to this day. Terra praeta, look it up
@@tonydeveyra4611 Excellent. I assumed incorrectly from her statement about the old growth forests that the carbon would still be bio-available and subject to reintroduction. Knowing this, I may stop composting and start torreing my organic waste.
I’m personally very interested in biochar/pyrolysis based carbon capture. In this method you take biomass and expose it to high temperatures on a low oxygen environment (typically a kiln) this releases a modest amount of energy and produces a charcoal which, if used as a soil additive, can sequester carbon for centuries on the surface.
I live off grid and have excess solar and biomass. I'm working on making an "oven" to capture syngas and make char.
Ii got into Biochar experiments about 15 years ago and all I can say is the poorer the soil the better the results. I swear to God I had a pear tree that when a pear fell it was so heavy it broke my wife's toe! Biochar works!
This is super silly unless the kiln is able to provide the heat without offsetting any good from pyrolysis. Is the kiln from concentrated sunlight? If not, why do this?
You wouldn't believe how many people over the decades have said to me, " We gotta plant TREEEEZZZZ!!!"...and guess what? None of them ever planted a single tree.......
I could be wrong but I feel that in these biomass initiatives, no one ever talks about the fact that nutrients are being extracted from the soils that the plants are being grown on, and those end up being either stored "forever" or emitted into the atmosphere or turned into a bio incompatible form through burning.
No you are exactly right. There are areas om earth where nutrients replenish automatically by volcnaic ash occasionally "raining" down, but this is not true for most of the planet where nutrients replenish exceptionally slow, and thus fertilizer is used. Trees are better with handling this and the ground will only be nutrients scarce after a long time, so if anyone wants to do something loke this, waste wood that have to be dealt with anyways would be a good source.
But there is just very little wood left. I know in germany likely not a single ton of waste wood is avaible for that, as already everything is used for regular pelets in home heating.
As far CCS goes there are more promising methods as extracting it from water as half the total global emitted co2 was solved into the oceans, and thus the concentration to work with is much better in seawater than in air. But indeed this method also uses energy, instead of producing it.
Burning wood to make ash is one ingredient in terra preta, the most fertile soil in the world
@@justinelliott3529 That would be biochar, not ash.
@@5th_decile burnt wood is still part of the process, though I admit, upon research , it is indeed biochar as you state which retains the carbon dioxide
@@5th_decile yeahh !
Only recently learned about that.
Seems quite rad!
If only we could turn massive amounts of environmental/atmospheric co2 into biochar efficiently. IT'D BE EVEN MORE RAD!
Another great explainer video, Rosie, Thanks. BTW, another issue (among many) with BECCS is even if you capture & store the CO2 they still emit the remaining flue gas which is full of particulates and harmful gases.
Hi Rosie.
What about doing an article on growing columns of kelp in the Pacific,
which is released every year to accumulate in the depths of the Pacific seabed?
As a resident of Treelandia, also known as Canada, I can say that I have seen wildfires of epic proportions. Every time I see or taste it in the air, I just think of how all that immense amount of energy could have been heating peoples homes, cooking food or making heat and power for towns and cities in a combined heat and power plant way. Our destructive, world ending problem has a solution and that is to cut and burn the deadwood continuously, we would save so much on fire hazards on the one hand and save energy from dams, nuclear power plants, and we could use the wood as a battery of sorts to provide peaker power for wind and solar lulls. It is such an important part of the puzzle here where I live. My forest goes unbroken for millions of square kilometers. It is like a volcano that has preventable eruptions.
Also every hunter here knows forest fire sites are the best hunting grounds for the next few years after a fire, the ground is so fertile and the plants and animals really respond to it afterwards, much like in volcanic soils
Again, thanks for your sane perspective. You did have me worried a bit about promoting BECCS, thanks for bringing it back to a more realistic place. You're probably more overwhelmed by the extent of hype over single answer solutions than I am. Right now there is a series of op-eds running in our local paper extolling hydrogen as THE answer. In fact I'm in the process of getting a rebuttal piece together. I'm sure some of the information will be gleaned from your videos. I find that the information, especially references and links to deeper dives, that I get from you and Dave Borlace among others invaluable in crafting responses to these bits of misinformation.
I know you gotta edit, but there are many 'tree' oriented ideas, between just letting them re-forest without any management and growing them to burn. Wood as a building material (most turbine masts could be cross-laminated timber) could lock the carbon up for a century, post felling and even then, it could be converted to biochar etc. Re Available land- an agricultural/food production revolution is beginning to happen, I sincerely believe, which will, within thirty years, free up the majority of currently farmed land, for whatever better use we can put it to...yes, I'm a 'ReThinkx' fan, but I'd been coming to that conclusion for a few yaers before, I heard of them.
My family and I have planted trees over the years more for giving back to nature. Unfortunately out of about 300 planted only about 25 trees have survived. I get really annoyed hearing people say plant trees because they're renewable. That maybe true in higher rainfall regions of the world but in Canada that's not necessarily the case. I've seen trees regenerated naturally on the same land grow more prolifically than planted ones.
Fantastic video. Great explanations and comments. Kudos to your sound engineer for making the forest a lovely soundstage!
I'm glad you mentioned the small scale use of wood for heating being roughly carbon neutral. Where I live, heating is a huge deal all winter. It is also a problem that wind and solar locally go pretty much to zero as soon as winter starts. I basically have two choices, wood or propane. Every time I stoke up the wood burner I am glad I am doing a tiny sliver of progress by not burning the propane that day. BTW, I disagree with your objection to whole trees being designated waste wood. When logging, only the economically viable trees are dealt with, all of the rest is "waste wood" and will be simply left to rot, so if it is used in BECCS that is incrementally better than the current situation.
Well, here is another anxiety producing bit of information, those old growth forests that were doing a good job of storing Co2 are being logged at rates that are increasing not decreasing. Getting to nitty gritty of this harvesting is almost impossible because of the information roadblocks put in the way by governments that promised to be more transparent if elected. I have to wonder who runs our governments in Australia, the people we elected or the people who donate money to the people we elected? As they say, follow the money and you will find the answer.
Clever use of special effects to make your video more visually stimulating. Another excellent dive into an area of growing significance and where the carbon "balance sheet" needs critical evaluation. Love your work Rosie.
I feel this falls in the category of greenwashing BS now, but worth revisiting at some point. If your really careful about location and fastidious about your supply chain, perhaps it could play a small part in helping with that expensive storage heavy last 20% of abatement. With the usual caveat of CCS needing to become a real thing. BECCS Peaker Plants as seasonal storage. Using it as baseline power is silly... I wince every time i see Drax on that otherwise inspiring UK live power grid chart.
I don't think you can run BECCS (or coal for that matter) very well as a peaker plant. Probably just turn on when it starts getting cold and off when it stops.
@@szurketaltos2693exactly. They’re like coal plants: they’re not easy to turn ON/OFF without significant costs.
Can you explain more about why you have an aversion to Drax? The place I work for is considering partnering with them but still doing our diligence to decide.
@@pajarobobo because Drax is a former coal-fire plant massively subsidised by the UK tax payer to be repurposed into BECCS. They don’t source their trees to burn from the UK, they get them from North America, have them shipped to their plant in the UK by fossil fuel-powered boats, to then burn them to produce electricity with an efficiency of ~ 30%… absolutely scandalous. They have also said for over 10 years that they would invest in carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology to capture the CO2 emissions they produce by burning wood and they never have. They keep delaying it, pausing, saying that they don’t have enough money or that they have “on-going” CCS trials. Terrible activity.
Yeah yeah exactly use it as reserve power seasonally like Rosie said.
As always, great content. Thanks for sharing!
As always informative and balanced.
Thank you Rosie!
Drax, yeah. It shops pellets from Canada to burn in the UK. Not exactly green.
most carbon emissions are from last mile delivery by truck, container ships are surprisingly efficient per unit weight
But the longer distance makes accountability harder
I watch the train as it regularly passes through the Calder valley and I see it when I am at my veganic food forest. I can't see how it makes sense and I can't see how they can possibly be planting enough to really replace what the are burning.
The pellets likely need energy to dry and produce, so you wonder how much energy yield there actually is.
I think it's an easy way for UK government to declare several GW of carbon neutral energy. Green-washing? Given that it's not carbon neutral it would be interesting to understand more about how it compares with the original coal fuel
What might be a more effective approach to negating the effect of the already existing greenhouse gases is to reduce the amount of longwave/heat radiating in to the atmosphere. We have seen how the lose of sea ice at the poles has both reduced the amount of sunlight relecting back as short waves and the heating of the now exposed dark sea has generated long waves that heat the greenhouse gases as it travel through the atmosphere.
Low emissivity paint and recently, sheeting are available at an economical cost. The paints range from being highly reflective to being able to maintain a temperature less than its surroundings. Millions of building surfaces and pavements in warm regions exist which these materials can be easily applied.
A combination of tree plantings where practical and the application of reflective materials on existing surfaces could make for a better solution than carbon capture.
Why do people always say vs this vs that when it comes to climate solutions. We need to do EVERYTHING. Thank you for the video
I saw a TV documentary about a study in Oregon that came to the conclusion that old growth forest continuously captured carbon and incorporated it into the soil. New plantations of trees were said to be emitters of carbon until they became well established. With all these competing claims it's incredibly difficult to know what to do for the best.
Rosie I love your work. Recent research papers have shown old growth forests store more carbon than young forests. Not just in total but actively, because earlier papers were not factoring in the full extent of on going soil carbon increases. Again I have seen a well-touted paper that says there is ample reforestation space and it is the main options for effective carbon capture. Grasslands should be preserved and you are thoroughly read up on the rebuttals. :) Follow up studies only added a few trees to pasture land as shade and still found ample reforestation space and that this was the most viable option at scale.
Your later video has completely trashed CCS & DCCS, I even quote your conclusions to others.
BECCS of forest land and Biomass from forests for energy in general is counterproductive. It is habitat destruction incarnate and generally tantamount to evil as a bad idea can get. Mass 'economy of scale' power plants are voracious destroyers of forests that don't grow that fast, and should be restored habitats left to their own for 200+ years. So forest based biomass is inane. It is a rich man's way of fooling people to agree to make them richer while increasing the global destruction.
Tree planting misses the point; we need forest restoration. The land given back to nature, disavowed thereafter, and left undisturbed for a millennia.
There is also regenerative agriculture, which at least for pasture land does increase soil carbon storage and improve range health and plant diversity as well.
Literally rejecting money and business as the basis of the calculation is the only way to solve any of this ecological peril and climate change. Economics has no other objective than making money. It put on sheep's clothing to greenwash itself, but is sneaking a profit motive into every decision. Therefore it never solves anything.
We must value nature as part of us, that which makes our mind and sanity, gives us an understanding of life, puts our transitoriness in perspective. Then we must choose life around us over things we are advertised to need for our status. Essentially, political and business leaders, the wealthy, worthy, powerful, are all delusional poisoned minds, that we should regard as sad hoarders, of money, or possessions, and treat with measured pity and try to rehabilitate. At least these voices should be ignored in important decisions going forward. We need to find our sanity in the community of life around us. Meaning forests stay intact a millennia and we don't need to be sold commoditized substitutes for really living.
I think that the fact that biomass represents stored energy is of great importance. It can be used to fill the gaps when the sun isn't shining and the wind isn't blowing. Using biomass with CCS, as backup for intermittent renewables, is what tips the balance for me.
Thankyou for yet another interesting and informative video. Including trees in our cities may only capture a small amount of CO2 for a limited amount of time but has advantages for climate moderation keeping summers a little cooler, improving quality of life and mental health. Small steps in the right direction are worthwhile if they have other advantages too.
One thing about emissions from farming is that many of them aren't actually fossil carbon but instead things like methane or nitrogen oxides that are relatively short-lived and are synthesized from atmospheric gasses to begin with. That means if we had atmospheric carbon low enough we could in principle just ingnore them and accept relatively low warming they produce.
Then there's also emissions from land use change. These ones in large part happen only once because they basically are a loss of carbon in the soil that used to be some ecosystem before becoming farmland. Most of these, IIRC, come from developing countries where modern agriculture has not matured yet and populations are still growing. They can also be partially offset by switching to more sustainable farming practices that retain and capture more carbon than the current ones.
Regarding decreasing meat consumption as a strategy. I live in the far west near Yellowstone. The land has had its buffalo, elk, and pronghorn antelope, to a large degree, replaced with cattle. At Yellowstone, overgrazing by traditional herbivores is extreme. The introduction of wolves 30 years ago helped a bit, but only a bit. So, stopping cattle ranching would result in a resurgence of huge herds of native herbivores. So it would probably make little difference.
This is an issue overlooked in discussions about the substitution of human carnivorous diets with plant-based alternatives.
Also, evolution has designed the human gut to be carnivorous and omnivorous. A fact I was taught in medical school.Also, a human plant-based diet results in humans producing methane rather than cattle.
ANOTHER! outstanding explainer by Rosie. Thanks! Now if someone can tell the folks in BC that shipping pellets to the UK to burn and capture is probably the other side of the carbon leger after you've done everything to harvest, process, and ship.
I would suggest that Biochar would be a great stopping point for BECCS as has the following advantages. You know exactly how much CO2 is being stored. It is effective as a soil additive and can increase crop yields by 20% or more. It is stable in the soil for 1000-10000 years. I would just love it is you would do a video on this subject as I know you would do a great job.
Another fantastic video, good job mate
Thanks Rosie, very informative review.
As you mention, we have emitted 2.5 trillion tons of CO2. It follows that we need to remove around 1 trillion tons of Carbon from the atmosphere to get back to pre industrial levels.
The minimum energy that process of de-carbonising our atmosphere will be, I presume, is the energy one gets by burning 1 trillion tons of coal at a minimum.
It a daunting thought. That's a lot of solar panels and wind turbines that will be needed on top of the energy we use to achieve this.
Yes additional planted trees could burn down, especially lately, but they could also be used to build houses out of on a large scale. Significantly reducing the amount of cement and bricks needed (a very CO2 intensive production process) and storing carbon for a long time. And at the end of the life cycle the wood can be easily recycled. How about that?
Great video Rosie
Hope I don't sound patronising but you are getting better and better your narration sounds more natural every week
Cheers
Another excellent report! Next time, you might want to explain the difference between BECCS and BICRS, 😊
How long does it take for a carbon capture plant to capture the amount of carbon emission associated with setting up the plant?
Great to see a realistic video on trees; everyone else seems to ignore everything that happens after planting, including, how to permanently store the captured CO2. I always cut my trees down again to make firewood, which then releases all the captured CO2, but if I don't cut them down then they eventually die and release the CO2 anyway! Can you make a video on Marine Biomass sometime, don't see much information on it, but a few people seem very excited by the possibilities of kelp farming being far more productive than tree forests, and most of our world is ocean.
Most of the world is ocean, but most of the ocean is to deep for any kind of anything to do with it ;)
I don't know the numbers, but i bet, there is more usable land there there is usable ocean floor.
One of the best ever natural carbon sinks are btw moore and Swamp. Biomass saturated with water cant decompose as there is no oxygen for the microbes eating it. And so it stays there.
You should watch RethinkX idea of absorbing CO2 from the ocean with what essentially is adding dirt to the seas to fix the CO2 already dissolved in the water. If true it would be the cheapest way and quickest too. Several decades to bring us to preindustrial levels as opposed to centuries.
@@tami6867 You say the ocean is too deep, but I remember being in the Sargasso Sea, Seaweed everywhere, and 7Km deep in places! A bigger issue is that a lot of the ocean doesn't have enough nutrients, but the ocean is a big place, there may be plenty that can be used.
@@tami6867 Yes, here we are busy restoring our peat bogs that had trees planted all over them last century, the trees are now being cut down because peat is better storage than trees! Trouble is that peat grows far too slowly, but everyone is ignoring that!
@@nigels.6051 Yes sure there are "plants" living down there. plants in quotes as those dont do photosyntesis, and therefor dont eat carbon, but instead must somehow eat detrius or whatever. BTW cool that you've made such a submarine experience. Are you marine ecologist or something? :)
And therefore only the shallow areas of the ocean with light in them could be used for seaweed etc. Sure there is algee that just floats around, but it was already shown, that promoting algee growth by fertilizing the ocean will emmit more CO2 than the algee will consume. And removing tiny algee from millions of km³ water to remove them from the biological cycle is not a easy thing you just do.
Thats why i think, if one want to carbon capture, removing it from the ocean water with lots of CO2 in it with some stationary osmosis technology that is already in development is way more promissing than building on plants for that. You always must keep in mind, that plantmatter has relatively low carbon content, and thus storing it for CS is crazy inefficient. Therefor you must somehow separate the carbon, by some burning process or idealy a pyrolyse process as there pure C can be produced. To be fair, such technology is under development, but i woulndt bet on it, as its far from beeing safe that it will be scaleable. Any and "solution" that cant be scaled is not a solution, easy and sad as that.
Remember that when you look at a tree, you only see the carbon that is above ground while there can be even more underground that you don't see in the root mass. When a tree burns or dies, it takes much longer for the underground carbon to get back into the atmosphere. Research is underway to modify plants to cause them to form carbon nodules in their root systems that would enable agricultural crops to directly sequester carbon in the soil.
I am really curious. Can you give an order of magnitude estimate for the storage times of carbon in soils? Maybe some references that I can read?
@@jeffsweeney312 There are many different forms. You can find plenty of information if you search on "soil carbon sequestration." Work is going on in picking plants and trees that do this well, and in modifying plants to do it better. I am interested in modifications that result in carbon that is harder for microorganisms to breakdown so it stays in the ground for very long times. This kind of approach does not require building machines or transporting wood or processing, just changes to seeds.
Thanks for the video, really interesting and informative and I didn't realise just how short of the target we would fall if we leave C sequestration to trees. One beef (pun intended!) I have though is with the land area required for livestock. As an Aussie, you will be aware more than most of the land used for grazing cattle in the interior of your great country. Most of it is just not suitable for cropping (or growing trees for that matter) and if it is to produce any food it is only in the form of meat, fibre and possibly dairy. I say possibly dairy because most land used for dairy farming is of better quality.
Another oft repeated trope is the amount of land used for grazing vs. crop land. Two factors which complicate this are 1. land used for grazing is often vastly less productive so will never grow as many calories as good cropping land. 2. This poor grazing land grows very high quality protein rich food, i.e. meat, which is very valuable to many people.
BTW, before anybody says it, I am not talking about the feedlot system of beef production where crops are fed to cattle, just extensive grazing.
Sorry for the essay!
The hypothesis regarding the point that there's not enough land to grow enough trees is related to the current way we do agriculture. If we consider agro-forestry as an alternative, then there's better chances to succesfully capture more carbon. I'm very spectical regarding BECCS because it still relies on large scale monoculture which is causing many side problems with biodiversity. BECCS is a way to sell twice the carbon that caused the problem in the first place...
Have you looked into OTEC, or Oceanic Thermal Energy Conversion? One of the stated benefits with OTEC is they bring up cold nutrient rich water from the deep and use it to feed and maintain fish farms. Instead of producing fish I always wondered if the cold nutrient rich water could be used to produce algae possibly for fuel or released into the ocean to feed on the Carbonic Acid and sink when their life cycle is complete. I would love to know your opinion.
To keep the forestry carbon captured stored for longer we should keep it from oxidizing. And to increase the amount that can be stored we should remove it from the grow site. So why not just bury the wood somewhere where it doesn't rot? A good place for this is in anoxic waters since the other oxidizers are rarer and will quickly deplete in the presence of that much carbon, so adding more carbon would improve the site's ability to retain carbon. All we need to figure out is how to make wood sink. Which I think is an already solved problem.
The just grow plants, harvest plants, process them to make low in oxygen and denser than water, and dump them in anoxic waters. Presto, the the problems with using plants for carbon capture (lack of space and lack of permanence) are solved.
Or if you to go the cooler but more expensive route: Press them all into diamonds, so we can all get diamond windows.
In my area Wetlands promoted as a carbon capture method. I am not convinced, can you please make a video showing the short-term and long-term benefits and cons. Thanks
Good video thanks for sharing your hard work 👍
Wetlands and peat lands do act as major carbon sinks. Hence the importance of protecting or restoring them. Look it up.
Wetlands peat lands and mangroves are what eventually turned into the coal that is such a problem today. So they are excellent at trapping carbon as long as you don't dig it up and burn it.
Good to know how ever I was wondering how long until they saturate and release more methane then carbon capture seems like replacing one green house gas for a worse won. That's why I am curious to see some actual numbers.
I've been thinking about for a while, and I've come up with a plan: Grow massive amounts of algae in a manmade lake in the Sahara. Use the sun distill Red Sea water (or draw from the Nile), use the sun to power machinery, and use the sun to dry the algae before burying it in the desert to prevent decomposition.
Algae grows wicked fast in sunny, hot conditions. We can feed it with wastewater. By mummifying the carbon in the desert we can lock it up, or even bury it in salt mines, etc.
The EROI of biofuels is close to 1:1 i.e. not worth the trouble. This applies in northern countries to crops - ethanol as well as forests.
Grow Bamboo!!! Fastest growing plant on the planet! Negatives need lots of water, good drainage and good soil. Can you do an article about bamboo?
Thanks for giving this some time and analysis. In the time you had available to capture attention I think it was useful overview and thank you for it. I had a drill sargent that said the mind can only absorb what the butt can endure so while hour long or longer documentaries can be exhaustive in their coverage. They also can be well exhausting... You have to catch the attention first and then we can look for deeper dives. I like the ideas in Permaculture (another export of your crafty aussies) which layers productive plantings that focus on perennial plants so the carbon gets grabbed for a period of time not just the crop cycle of a corn plant which should probably be left to rot and regenerate the soil the crop grew in. Individual level application is what I am looking for. I won't pass up an opportunity to try to get xyz corporation to do something. But I feel I am so much more persuasive when I am walking the talk first...Thanks as always.
Thanks for the helpful videos, can you go into pyrolysis and biochar for agriculture as a means to process biomass from many sources and qualities towards soil carbon and reduced N and C emissions in agriculture?
Lets not forget that a lot of countries like Germany probably can't do the energy transition without long term (seasonal) energy storage. The reason is that in the winter germany can't get enough energy from solar and wind i.e. there are gaps when renewables just don't produce the power that is needed. Lets also remind ourselves that wood (and other biomass) is an energy storage device that can easily store energy for months and even years.
So biomass (not just wood) can help in that regard. Yet, it probably won't be enough. We'll still need some hydrogen or other e-fuels.
Great analysis, thanks
Rosie I think you also need to factor in another huge advantage of tree cover added to the planet over other forms of carbon sinks. As we are in the end trying to reduce/stop global warming ,we need to look at other factors of temperature increase. The urban heat island effect is real and measurable. High density urban areas are really bad for this, really really bad. Lower density is only good for the improvement of lifestyle and mental health, but physically cooler, often directly due to more urban tree cover with good planning. But the usually ignored factor is that forests themselves are a physically cooler places, than for example a farmed field of wheat. So more forests directly drops the temperature of the land on which it sits and in the calculation of how to reduce global warming, this should be included into the calculation.
It's an interesting topic and one that I would love you to follow u on.
I can't remember the details but there was a suggestion of growing trees and chopping them down and shrink wrapping them before burial to prevent them from decomposing. Also there's the idea of using bacteria to capture carbon quickly and then bury it. How practical these are I don't know but it seems more likely to succeed than sucking CO2 directly out of the air which must be hugely energy expensive.
Reduce plowing, plant cover crops.
What was the carbon content of soils before plowing?
What is the excess carbon content in the atmosphere?
What is the major carbon sink?
I remember reading an article that say that Japan is responsible for the deforestation in Indonesia bc instead of using their own forests for wood they import it from there
while most japan forests were artificially planted and arn't native, so forest conservation could harm the environment.
Good job. Thx for facts.
There is just one problem with BECCS, there is just no way it can burn the wood and gain enough energy to capture all the CO2 emitted. A ton of wood can release about 4,000kWh of thermal energy. A typical thermoelctric generator has not more than 30% efficiency to convert that heat energy into electric energy (just for comparison, even nuclear power plants barely manage to get over 35% efficiency). This means that at best, a ton of wood burned can get you about 1,200kWh of electricity.
The problem here is that one tonne of CO2 required 1,400kWh of electric energy to be removed from the air, and wood releases about 1.8 tonnes of CO2 per tonne burned. This means that you would require somewhere about 2,100 to 2,200kWh of electricity to capture the emissions of that one burned tonne.
Sure, we could argue that the carbon concentration at the source is much bigger, so capturing the CO2 would be more energy efficient, but even if this system managed to capture 1 tonne of CO2 with only 700kWh, the system would barely make enough energy to capture that CO2. And we wouldn't have accounted the energy needed to compress that CO2 and pump it deep underground. In other words, there is no way to make a profit out of this, unless you can sell carbon credits. But carbon credits only allow oil companies to maintain their status quo, and therein lies the problem...
What about biochar which can be used to restore degraded land or, instead of growing trees, maybe growing hemp or bamboo?
I heard about biochar production using microwave. I would like to learn more about this.
Right you are, Rosie!
Hi Rosie! Thanks for the video. I've got questions that may be relevant: what happens to the carbon in tree trunks when we use techniques like hugelkultur (in which we bury the biomass)? Does all the carbon end up back in the atmosphere eventually? Or does part of the carbon stays in the soil? Or even does part of the carbon stays in the soil and is eventually used by plants and ends up as part of the carbon captured by them?
Also, I may have found a slight mistake: around 3:20 on the video, you present a paper that says planting trees could capture "200 gigatonnes of additional carbon" (200 billion tonnes you say right after, 2 x 10^8 tonnes), and then you say that over the course of human history we've put 2 and a half trillion (2.5 x 10^9 ) tonnes in the atmosphere. Then you say that's over a hundred times what we could sequester with tress. Didn't you mean over ten times (2.5 x 10^9 / 2 x 10^8)?
The Point about process and transport emissions for bio-energy is a red herring as all these could be replaced with zero carbon sources. It's like saying EVs aren't zero emission because some of the power used to charge them currently is produced with fossil fuels, but that will change. This is what a transition to net zero looks like!
What about BECCS with algae? I'd love to hear your take on it. Algae for biodiesel has faltered but burning the algae itself seems like a KISS approach
Algae is great and if you compost the algae, the resultant product will boost soils on a huge scale.
Does greenhouse gas only affect temperature when it is in the air? Carbon dioxide absorbs heat. My thinking is even if it is sequestered underground it would still absorb heat which in itself doesn't solve the greenhouse effect since the sequestered CO2 would still be absorbing and re-emiting heat. Just a thought. Not sure if my thinking is wrong or not
Greenhouse gas only affects temperatures when it is in the atmosphere. When it is sequestered underground, it does not contribute to global warming. "Absorbs heat" is a simplification of the process, as when CO2 "absorbs heat" in the atmosphere, it very rapidly re-emits that heat, but in a random direction. This means it takes a lot longer for that heat to escape the atmosphere into space.
I hope that helped you understand, thanks for asking the question : )
Trees are a solution to capturing emissions, but only a very temporary one, something that most people fail to think through.
Working on the plan to grow bamboo (not trees) dry it and permanently depositing it in underground mines.
How about growing plants like bamboo and hemp (building materials, paper, textile, industrial fibres)? Not for power generation, but use as permanent material.
As allways informative, accurate unbiased 🙂
Bamboo and hemp remove a lot more carbon from our atmosphere than trees and using these materials to build homes will lock up the carbon for hundreds of years especially in hempcrete walls. We would need to Produce the lime binder in electric kilns powered by renewables and then capturing the CO2 and storing it underground. Hempcrete walls absorb CO2 as the lime turns back into limestone. Calcium oxide to calcium carbonate.
In Scotland, as in many similar places, the landscape naturally was covered in trees, the West Coast being a temperate rain forest, which is hard to beat in carbon capture and biodiversity. Now it is largely open moorland. Kept so either by subsidised sheep farming. Or deer shooting or grouse shooting, the later being the worse as they burn the Heather….all so a very very very rich folk can shoot things.
It does occur to me, every time we go on about the Amazon etc, we should put our own house in order first.
Brazilian sugarcane is the most "land efficient" bioenergy source. A green H2 industrial plant could provides O2 to an ethanol (2nd gen) turbine power plant (combined cycle) for an efficient carbon capture and storage (no N2 involved).
Unfortunately, regenerative agriculture was not a comparison element in this piece. Conservation tillage and the use of nitrogen and carbon-fixing cover crops have great potential in achieving negative carbon results over vast areas over time, using only photosynthesis. This was researched in a project involving several hundred farms over hundreds of hectares on the Canadian Prairies overseen by researchers at the University of Saskatchewan for over a decade. They found that the amount of carbon sequestered in the soil was equivalent to the average emissions from 3.4 million petrol burning cars. The Rodale Institute in the US has done similar research at smaller scales and has published well-referenced reports on the topic. Australia also has a strong regenerative agriculture movement. One of the emerging key considerations in agriculture and forestry is soil disturbances through tillage and clear cut logging, which releases CO2 and methane while disrupting the living soil microcosm (mainly beneficial fungus) and soil structure, leading to further loss of nutrient transfer capability and moisture, and poor drainage. "No till" and regenerative forestry (as well as preserving and building new wetlands where applicable) should now be moved to near the top of the list of climate solutions and ecological systems preservation methods. Engineering solutions cannot do it alone.
I agree with your skepticism, when it comes to burning biofuels, when you cut down a tree and burn it, just because you did not wait 60,000,000 years for it to become a fossil fuel,
does not mean it is any cleaner, a large amount of CO2 will still be released, even if you plant a replacement tree, it could take half a century to absorb as much CO2 as the original.
I could see a justification for burning wood, in countries that do not get sufficient wind or Solar energy though out the year, to be able to build a winter reserve of stored Green
chemical energy, (probably as Green Hydrogen) burning biofuels for the coldest 3 months of the winter would give 9 months for the CO2 released to be reabsorbed, but this should not
be done on a continuous basis, because I do not believe that nature could reabsorb it all, especially as the world continues to suffer from an alarming increase in forest fires.
Of course, when it comes to burning biofuels, you come back to the same disadvantage you get with burning fossil fuels, not only do you have to pay to build the boiler and generating
plant, but every day you must pay for the fuel to run it, at least with real renewables, wind wave, solar or tidal, you only have to build the generating plant, the fuel to run it is free, ok
you must build an energy storage plant as well, but that is still going to be cheaper than buying fuel every day, and of course land used for biofuels can not be used for food
production or wildlife.
Drax claims that it only uses waste wood from the timber industry, I work in night transport which requires me to make nightly visits to Liverpool docks, which is where the wood pellets
for America come ashore, stored in 3 huge silos, which feed into the Drax train, which consists of approximately 30 rail trucks of the type you might be familiar from the mining
industry, each truck holds much more than its road equivalent I would estimate that each rail truck could carry 50 tons, multiplied by 30 would mean 1,500 tons of wood pellets each
trip, the train leaves at approximately 8 P.M. each evening and returns at 5 A.M. each morning which makes it perfectly possible for there to be a daytime run as well, but that I
cannot confirm. That quantity of wood pellets on a daily basis leaves me skeptical about their definition of waste wood.
Hi Rosie. What about BECCS using RMIT's work on splitting CO2 into solid carbon as permanent storage?
CO2 exists in nature because it has lower energy than C + O2 separately. The term you want to research is called "heat of formation", which in the case of CO2 is negative-- meaning that heat energy comes out when C is oxidized by O2. Put the heat energy in to the CO2 or put the heat energy in to processes that replace the combustion of C. The result is the same. Electrify the world using renewable sources and you can skip the step of capturing the CO2.
Good video Rosie. You conclude that BECCS is not a useful idea. I think the key issue is that all nature-based GHG reduction methods ultimately rely upon photosynthesis to use sunlight to turn CO2 into biomass, but this process is appallingly inefficient (1% or less). This means that there is no value in doing this (growing trees, algae etc) as storage and certainly not for any energy production (you point out the energy using steps in the fuel production).
When people start talking about the other benefits of nature-based solutions, such as biodiversity, rewilding etc it is irrational greenies trying to exploit a worthless mechanism for ulterior motives.
The only reason BECCS use is increasing is to allow the fossil fuel industry to continue their pollution of our atmosphere, the direction should be in technological advancement of geothermal energy and improvements in solar capture, they’re free power, the current position we find ourselves in where power companies are boasting they are using 100% renewable sources, which cost them much less than old fossil fuel plants but we still pay much much more for the power we use in our homes is indefensible.
Geothermal is nice, but keep in mind, if you produce 1TWh energy from it, then you will have addet one TWh of extra energy into the atmosphere which then gets trapped bc of the CO2. So geothermal also conteibutes to climate change. When it comes to Climate Change, Geothermal is only better on the CO2 side compared to fossil fuel. But both add energy to the climate system heating it up.
Thats why we should focus only on sun driven formes of power generation. Wind, Solar, Waves, Hydro. Geothermal is good for extreme areas like Iceland, but also they should start building some GW of Windpower so they can use their Geothermal less. Also its great for reserve energy as the "battery" is already included.
@@tami6867from the geothermal that I’ve seen your not adding, you’re just using what is already happening to make power.
The Earth is a cooling planet that constantly radiates heat energy (secular cooling). Geothermal moves or transforms that heat energy. Are you suggesting that geothermal will measurably increase the rate of secular cooling? That would be bad, but you really have to put some numbers on these cooling rates before you make claims like this.
All plants feed the soil carbon. That is they feed microbes that feed on each other and also digest inanimate minerals from the sands, silts and clays to eventually be released as nutrients to plants when eaten by predator microbes that release as plant available. Biological sequestration has cooling benefits beyond removal of CO2, such as increasing fertility, water infiltration, water retention. Transpiration from leaves has a latent heat cooling impact in the immediate surroundings. Shade prevents sunlight from turning into heat where it hits bare or dark surfaces on the ground. Microbes ride the water vapor from transpiration to become nuclei for cloud formation at a lower temperature than dry air. This forms clouds that reflect light back into space that avoids becoming heat. Farming practices can achieve net increases in organic content that achieves these great results. I hope this potential will be widely recognized in order to scale up to a meaningful impact.
Great review, congratulations Rosie! However, I think that energy can also be produced by pyrolyzing biomass, but biochar, which in principle binds 20-30% less CO2 than CCS, when returned to the earth greatly increases its productivity and accelerates biomass production, even for industrial or even food production purposes! Also, if we do not burn, but store the CO2 absorbed in the wood in buildings and furniture, then by temporarily storing it for 30-100 years, we give the technology enough time for a real green transition! Only this temporary storage should be supported and recognized with voluntary market credits to some extent, so that it is worth reducing the level of atmospheric CO2. The totalitarian idea that only permanent CO2 storage is the recognized and accountable method is completely wrong and self-destructive. Humanity is physically incapable of this! But we can reach the goal in several steps, think of the several stages of space rockets, Armstrong would never have taken that "small step" in one stage!
There seems to be a lot of potential for wooden buildings. Unlike carbon capture, I see some tangible progress in this area.
Role of trees in capturing CO2 world-wide is essential. But it is true they have also (mainly?) a major role in mitigating the effects of climate change (cooling/shading, biodiversity, O2 production,etc). In this respect, we do need to restore forests as they used to be where they used to be and limit deforestation. The oceans are indeed the biggest players in capturing CO2, but worryingly they might start to fail as water temperature rise…
I wonder if we grow fast growing plants like bamboo that is then fed into thermal solar oxygen-free furnaces to produce biochar for soil amendment or bury it in old mines
Great explanation, and agreed that its viability will be very limited and only in localized forest areas, and must include sequestration of the emitted carbon. Sadly the big negative is it acts as a greenwashing, gaslighting distraction for many unscrupulous carbon emitting industries.
Spent corn fields are not a waste. The dead stalks and leaves from the corn plant can and should be used as a mulch material which is how nature uses leaves, dead plants, etc. This is how soil is made by nature. No matter how hard humans try they will never be able to undo climate change because change is a basic law of life. What can be changed is how humans live on the earth.
Dear Rosie, PLEASE do a video, or short series of vids on 'Carbon Capture and Storage' technologies. What is the state of the art? Are they improving? Does ANYONE actually want them to work? They are generally only ever raised as a 'fossil-fuel-fantasy' bogeyman in 'Greenie' videos, wherein the cost and, it appears, the basic lack of, finished, engineered, scalable tech is rendering the idea unfeasible, if not a scam, but here, you present it as choice, not an engineering challenge, so I'd love to know what's goin' on. Thanks.
Application (firing) of biomass in a slighty-converted conventional coal powerplant with added CCS means approx. 2/3 of the primairy energy in de biomass gets lost due to conversion efficiency of the steam cycle. CHP Combined Heat and Power basically has a better overall efficiency, but there is usually not enough heat demand close to a 400...1200 MW (electrical output) power plant (i.e. roughly 800.000 ... 2.400.000 kW thermal output) with the electric power demand. CHP based on on lower power district heating powerplant with electric power generation and CCS is more energy effective.
SYNC between heat demand and power demand will always be an issue: storage will be needed to have balance demand and supply.
First, any crops or similar plants require water and probably fertiliser, while requiring similar heavy machinery for harvesting and transport. In other words: similar emissions to crop agriculture, with a corresponding high cost in water and fertiliser if farmed intensively. And then there's the other sources of emissions Rosie mentioned, like transport, so whether CCS would be able to even negate the production side of bioenergy is debatable.
Secondly, crops grow slowly over significant land areas, so people will be motivated to farm intensively (which is unsustainable and destroys the soil) microbiome) and, as mentioned by Risie, cut down natural habitats to use the land for crops. We are already seeing the environment-destroying results of this in countries where bioenergy is sourced on a large scale, particularly with habitat destruction. Bioenergy can simply never keep up with our civilisation's intensifying electricity uses, providing far too little energy for the corresponding land use.
Bioenergy itself only really works sustainably on large scales when it's an added process to normal crop and tree production, using waste parts of the plant as fuel. Just bolting on CCS to this process would be helpful (if CCS lives up to its technological promise)l, but how much impact would this have on global atmospheric carbon?
Great video, you managed to damp my optimism on this technology. Just one small note 4:48 please don't compare food on a per-calorie basis. People don't eat meat to get energy, on the contrary. We are flooded with high-calorie, low nutrient food, and this is the root cause of the obesity epidemic. Meat offers one of the easiest way to get the essential aminoacids and satiation whitout eating too many calories. I'm perfectly aware of the impact of industrial meat production, but we need more nuance if we want to understand the problem and find the correct solutions.
Well done. A bit confusing how capturing CO2 from fermenting corn for methanol is better than just not growing or harvesting the corn in the first place. Not using methanol in fuel in the US would free up 33 million acres. The size of all of the cropland in Iowa or 60% of all of the land in Victoria state in Australia. Or ttwo whole Tasmanias.
Corn-->ethanol to feed cars is little more than a subsidy to the corn industry in the US. Our government spends gigantic money propping up King Corn, making up the $2 USD (or so) difference between the cost to produce a bushel of corn (~26kg) and its selling price. If the subsidy given to the corn industry was reduced, production would be reduced and we would not need to use up the surplus by feeding it to our cars.
In Sweden we have a lot of heat and cogeneration plants. Previously they burned both fossil and biogenic carbon but they switched to mostly garbage and biogenic sources. In Sweden there are industries that have contributed to transform our forests to become tree plantations and clear cutting important biodiversity old growth forests for satisfying the industries need for steady supply of wood and pulp.
So even though Sweden get a lot of matter from these industries to the burning plants we still need to import garbage, left over wood products.
So I think maybe CSS will increase that need to supply the burning plants?
And it will contribute to the pressure of industries demand in Swedish old growth biodiversity?
But still if we’re keeping these plants maybe it should be mandatory with CCS on them anyway?
Just plant trees . Yes that has been my comment . While i might not agree with all you say I do appreciate your efforts to care for the planet . Trees can do more than you have mentioned . Net zero is bad policy
Is the natural emissions technology or simply the tree "not enough", or is it rather something else that is too much?
What if, instead of burning it and doing CCS with the CO2 released, we converted the biomass into charcoal, and buried it? Charcoal should degrade extremely slowly underground, and it usually helps with soil structure. Could it be a thing?
Oh, you want to invent coal? I agree with your idea After we are no longer mining and using coal. That is already happening, witness the rate that coal mining and use is dying in the US.
Have to agree with Rosie on this one. But that does not meen we should not plant and nurture both trees and forests. Tree removal and forest fires are happening at a faster rate than planting can happen. Savannah land best use is livestock.
Using underwater grown plants would remove the risk of fire and therefore the cyclic return of carbon. Just let the plant sink to the bottom, providing fresh feed for all the organism at the sea floor and removing the carbon. Rinse and repeat.
I wonder if we would do this on scale, if it would even provide some benefits - e.g. farm parts of the plants for livestock or direct human consumption.
Also, accelerated aging of rocks might be more effective than BECCS - I don't really fancy the tree planting, we were horrible at it so far (monocultures, pest-sensitive forests, forest fires, ...), so I don't think it's the way to go.
Yes, and the vegetation provides shelter for young fish, which would be good for nutririous food supplies. Sea grass is easilly nurtured in near shore areas and can be cultivated for construction and furnishing material.
Could we see in the future huge Wind Farms built purely to pull CO2 from the sea?
The CO2 could be then used to make things or buried.
In the very long term pulling the CO2 out of the sea might help calm it's temperatures and increase sea life.
Replace the burners to burn powdered iron where the the byproduct is rust that can be converted back powdered iron using hydrogen from renewable energy and leave the trees to grow up to really productive carbon capture with intensive Silva culture and use hemp for fiber and paper.
...and hemp has additional bonuses like food and oil from hemp seeds, and fibre for paper making, hempcrete, and um, other recreational activities 😂
If we take degraded highly grazed land that has poor soil quality (low humus = low carbon + low water retention and low productivity) which we have heaps of all over the world, and use permaculture practices to create food forests that is low maintenance high productivity, high carbon storage and high water retention. Things like chop and drop, swales and dams, high biodiversity, high level of productive/useful plants (tree, bushes, shrubs and herbaceous) all increase carbon captured in the soil and in the plants. This system often spontaneously creates new permanent creeks and streams due to the slowing of water moving through the environment and also creating microclimates with localised cooling and increased humidity in previously hot and dry climates. Being more damp makes it more resistant to fire. Planting useful and food producing plants solves the problem of taking up farmland, it reduces localised flooding, drought and heatwaves and it stores carbon as the soils increase in humus. The soil stores more carbon than just planting trees. The only issue is it’s harder to harvest the food in a cheep mass produced way when maintaining diversity in a more natural looking structure though we are likely to have bots able to pick delicate produce in diverse terrains. Alternatively in food forests close to communities when you are hungry and unemployed it’s not such an imposition to wander around a few archers for a few hours once every few weeks. Low food miles too.
umm... the objection to tree planting seems to be that mature trees don't capture much carbon. Given that... cut down the trees, use them to build stuff, and re-use the same land to gather some more carbon with new baby trees. If you harvest the wood, say every 20 years... does it move the needle at all?
How much CO2 does BECCS store compared to the amount of fossil fuels extracted. Storage of captured CO2 will never be as dense as coal and oil in the ground. The most important thing is to leave fossil carbon in the ground.
Surely the best solution then is to just produce and store wood pellets indefinitely. There will be around twice as much carbon in a fuel pellet than the equivalent weight of CO2 and it’s less likely to escape if stored correctly. Then, you can continue to use the land to grow more trees to produce more pellets to extract from the longer carbon cycle…