Can We Capture Greenhouse Gases?: Crash Course Climate & Energy #7
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- čas přidán 28. 05. 2024
- It’s one thing to say a business is carbon neutral. It’s another to be able to truly account for that carbon at all stages of the production process. In this episode of Crash Course Climate and Energy, we’ll take a look at efforts to count all those greenhouse gas emissions, reduce them, and capture the ones we can’t avoid.
Chapters:
Introduction: Carbon Neutrality 00:00
Defining Biofuels 1:05
Ethanol 2:09
Carbon Accounting & Greenwashing 3:22
Cellulosic Biofuels 6:24
Carbon Capture 7:38
Storing & Using Carbon 10:42
The Future of Carbon Emissions 11:38
Review & Credits 12:20
Sources: docs.google.com/document/d/1r...
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Step 1: say you're going carbon neutral
Step 2: burn even more carbon than before
Step 3: give your CEO a bigger retirement package than all of your low level employees make a year combined
Step 4: blame the lie on the old management and that the NEW management actually cares about hitting the goal
Step 5: profit, and repeat
Passing the carbon accountability to the consumer? You’ve gotta wonder what consequences will come when you can’t afford to buy “eco friendly” cars and refrigerators. Who are we showing our report card to?
Buy a bicycle and go for a hike... "Ecofriendly car" is an oxymoron. Btw, the carbon /toxicity boot print of the elephant in the room aka the military industrial complex Ruth?
I would argue that these high carbon products have actually been discounted in our society for decades. It is a negative externality, where the cost of the damage of releasing CO2 isn't reflected in the price of the product.
For example, if the government said tomorrow that it would help reduce inequality by discounting gas to just 10 cents a gallon, would you be in favour of that? Or would you worry that discounting it so much would massively increase usage, making our climate targets much harder to achieve?
I think it is a valid position to want to reduce inequality / help out the poor, but doing that by not factoring in the true cost of CO2 isn't the way to go. There are other ways help them out (e.g. more /cheaper social housing, raising the minimum level at which you start paying tax, tax credits etc) that don't incentivise people to burn fossil fuels.
You seem to misunderstand the concept. The idea isn't that someone must pay for the carbon, but that it is accounted for. If you can't afford the green option then you buy a cheaper one. The idea is simply to provide an accurate report of the product's impact. Taxing carbon is a different issue, an easier one that's currently practiced. Depending on your situation you may or may not want accurate reports for that.
Internet/wifi
Very good and important series, thank you so much
You should really look into the work done, and being done on CO2 sequestration in Basalt - it’s chemically integrated as a carbonate (a solid) within just a few years.
I really love this channel from middle school and now I am a graduate student
5 : 1 energy gain is pretty low. ..and much switch grass would you need to replace millions of liters/day of gasoline or diesel that is used in the US?
Point - source carbon capture is really hard. Climate town had a really important video on clean coal and how it's just not economically viable to capture the carbon from a coal plant
thanks so much crash course for making this series
The way the GHG Protocol was described here is really misleading. It is the de-facto standard for carbon accounting that almost all sustainability reporting frameworks are built upon when it comes to emissions. Also, it does cover all of the indirect emissions, as long as the 15 categories of scope 3 are included. The issue described is that many companies currently only cover scope 1 and 2, not that the framework doesn't cover value-chain emissions as is said. Additionally, there are important differences between carbon neutral and net-zero even though they are being used interchangeably here.
What is the difference between carbon neutral and net-zero?
This episode discussing bioenergy should have mentioned algae and Hydrothermal Carbonization (HTC), and specified that bioenergy can make use of previously existing fossil fuel energy generation infrastructure like coal, deisel, and fossil gas, but using the bioenergy alternatives. While this show tends to hit on some important stuff it tends to linger too long on things that don't need that much time and as a result not mention crucial aspects of the clean energy transition.
Update on Crash course kids please I miss it
Hopefully carbon capture becomes affordable so it can be actual possiblity.
I'm watching this months later because of the youtube algorithm. I care deeply about this information. Please consider diversifying your media.
there is a silver bullet for fixing climate change. if countries would actually put more money into building the infrastructure that we need to do the job, you get economic incentives and you get people into jobs, the problem is the infrastructure bill is dead and even if it was still on the table the fed would not spend enough on the infrastructure because it would cut into their precious military budget.
the great thing about ethanol is that it is cheaper than diesel so it can cant construction businesses a lot. we do need more infrastructure though to produce more ethanol.
The infrastructure billed passed in 2022. It contains a bunch of climate projects and I'd like to hear what impact these will have on the grid.
Biofuels have a major problem I didn't see addressed here. The world's supply of arable land is finite. Land being used to grow fuel is land that isn't producing food.
Interesting.
Greenwashing is the new norm. Btw, the carbon /toxicity boot print of the elephant in the room aka the military industrial complex anybody?
Thank you
Thank you for making a video on this, carbon capture is such a misunderstood topic!
Big fan of you. Inspired by you I have also opened my youtube channel. I don't know if it will work or not but you inspire me to do the hardwork and just don't think about the result ❤
Looks like a way to go - for Gulf countries and other countries located in same deserted sunny regions to develop industry which allows conversion of CO2 + H2O + solar energy to CH4
Basically power plants in the north burn Gas - CO2 captured there, converted to solid form - moved by ships to the south where using solar energy this CO2 can be processed to CH4, liquified and sold back to the north
This way you can use existing gas infrastructure and also utilize solar energy where it's abundant
As for Direct Carbon Capture, solution is - Trees subsequently they can either be buried or send to industry above there their C is put into CH4 production
Simplest lowtech carbon capture : regrow forests from meat related fields.
Does the US have to get off using natural gas for heating homes and water to reach net zero?
No, there are many options, the question is which are easiest and most cost effective. For example, coal can be replaced by solar or nuclear to reduce carbon output but neither is mandatory or forbidden.
I would say definitely. Luckily you can heat and cool homes with heat pumps which are cheaper than both conventional heating and ac
Personally I feel that eco friendly and all those other labels gets thrown around too much and the best solution is for us to simply consume less.
Is planting trees carbon capture?
So kinda like damned if you damned if you dont.
After all the effort, after all the attempts, I have taken reverse steps.
I thought you could freeze carbon out of the air using refrigeration but turns out co2 is so thin it won’t form nucleation points. Really sucks for us.
Actually it has to be half and half
It's great you got rid of that annoying whooshing sound during the transitions to the info you're explaining.
The best way to reduce emissions is to commit sabotage.
May the Anthropocene epoch make the Permian-Triassic extinction event seem like a minor footnote in the pages of Earths history. Here's to making scenario SSP5-8.5 of the IPCC assessment a reality.
Wtf?
Wha....
So all life on Earth will die sooner or later because of us Homo Sapiens?
This is all very old, very available data...
How are "investors" on the list of professionals that can help the problem, but not activists? Investors make LOTS money now funding the problem, and banking on eco-friendly profitability for the future seems naive at best and actively harmful at worst.
Grow more trees
I find it just a bit disingenuous to portray carbon capture as a viable contribution to the solving of climate change without any clarifications being tagged on. In its current state the poor effeciency of carbon capture is pulling away clean energy from everyday uses that could be more benificial. And that would be the best case scenario, since otherwise it would be capturing the very carbon that was put there to power the whole operation. Research into carbon capture is, in my opinion, a good idea. If at some point more energy would be generated than could be used and stored, the excess supply could be well used for carbon capture. But that is not a situation most of the world is in (except for maybe Iceland). What I am trying to say here is that it is not fair to say that people should have faith in carbon capture as a silver bullet, especially in the near and slightly far future. Its success will be far away and more of a way to clean the mess after the leaking faucet has been fixed. To say that carbon capture is the solution without highlighting the points above would be a way of greenwashing itself.
In other words, its better to use wind and solar to power peoples homes, etc. than to use it to power carbon capture because the former will prevent more CO2 emissions than carbon capture would remove. But, I object, deploying carbon capture will drive its price down and increase its efficiency so you may have to take a step backward to make eventual progress.
Totally agreed, I'm shocked they haven't spoken once of the second law of thermodynamics. As if we can pump carbon from the soil, burn it and put it back there with an energy gain. Although we're not putting the carbon back into its original oil form (which would be a violation of the second law of thermodynamics), there's very little chance that this process is going to be economically viable anytime soon, if ever.
Did she...not literally say that carbon capture can't solve climate change at its current state, or am I deaf? I'm not a fan of carbon capture but it wouldn't be fair to not mention its potential when talking about reducing greenhouse gasses.
+
do not understand. sorta
or just plant trees
I can hardly wait for your episode on the single greatest emitter of greenhouse gasses - The Pentagon. You can't do a series on climate and energy and not mention that the American Armed Forces produce more carbon emissions than most nations, right?
Huge fan, but very disappointed in this episode. This concept absolutely screams out to support natural ways of sequestering carbon to be mentioned. Rainforests, rewilding land, ocean critters etc.
" All our environmental problems become easier to solve with fewer people and harder - and ultimately impossible - to solve with ever more people.”
Sir David Attenborough
In other words, trying to reduce emissions while allowing vast numbers of CO2 emitters (humans) on the Planet, is, Madness.
Reduce our numbers, or Nature will do it for us.
The big question there being how you GET fewer people.
@@garethdean6382 It's actually not a particularly hard question. We know that greater education results in lower birth rate. Specifically education targeted at younger women.
Very specifically education for younger women in conjunction with family planning.
1st comment
here first