The energy requirements for storing one ton of co2 are many many times higher than the energy gained from generating one ton of co2 (by oil, gas, coal or biofuel).
So each MWh spent “storing co2” would be ten times more efficient if used to offset oil extraction to get one MWh less out in the first place.
This is wasteful greenwashing. If it wasn’t, we’d have broken physics on the level of making perpetual motion machines.
That’s true but even if we switch entirely over green energy overnight, we’ll still have Steel, still have Bauxite refining for Aluminum, etc, still have to melt and reform glass and aluminum recycled containers, etc, etc.
There are many processes that we really can’t just get rid of, so they will need carbon capture to ensure they’re not hurting the environment.
Sure, but that’s only relevant once we have 100% clean energy
Developing the technology now is still useful. Waiting until we’re carbon neutral before even thinking about capture would also be mistake.
Lol I love that you think we’ll actually get beyond carbon neutral at some point. You’re far more optimistic than me.
Don’t we have similar objects on the ground? Wouldn’t it be more convenient and cheap to not hassle with the ocean?
The north sea oil fields are huge, and mostly empty now. They also have the infrastructure already built for gas extraction/injection.
Makes sense as a location for a UK trial.
wow so they’re ‘storing’ it in the ‘empty’ oil fields? Sounds a lot like Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) to me.
Used to extract fossil fuels, the field is now getting a second lease on life as a means of permanently storing planet-warming carbon dioxide beneath the seabed.
Yeah, I’m sure it’ll work this time. It definitely won’t hold just long enough for attention to go elsewhere…
Oil companies are really great at keeping things in oil wells, especially at sea. Just a fantastic track record
If it held natural gas, it should hold carbon dioxide. Especially as CO2 should react with a lot of the porus rocks and be absorbed.
That’s why it’s worth doing this kind of stuff though. Find out if it works now, so we know if it works when shit really goes down.
You don’t understand… We already know it doesn’t work. They’ve been doing this for decades, they’ve recently started green washing this fracking technique
And in case you didn’t know, there’s dozens of oil wells leaking right now. Some is oil in the ocean, some natural gas, some of it is burning underground… And there’s just no known way to stop it. You can’t just seal them back up when you’re done, the structure of the rock is damaged
And all of the aside, this doesn’t math even if it worked. It takes too much energy to pull CO2 out of the air, and to even make a dent we’d have to put up CO2 condensers on a percentage of earths surface… It’s a dead end tech.
A distraction from the truth… We just have to reduce emissions. It’s that simple, we have to do it before the systems that keep Earth stable flip and accelerate warming
And all of the aside, this doesn’t math even if it worked. It takes too much energy to pull CO2 out of the air
They aren’t taking it out of the air. They are taking it out of smoke stacks. It’s far easier to pull it out of highly concentrated sources like smoke stacks than to try to pull it directly out of the atmosphere.
we’d have to put up CO2 condensers on a percentage of earths surface…
You’re describing biofuels. Vegetation “condenses” the CO2 out of the atmosphere, incorporating it into carbohydrates.
Burning biofuels, we produce H2O and CO2 in the smoke stacks. Every pound of CO2 pulled from the smoke stack is a pound removed from the atmosphere.
Any introduction of fossil fuels into the process defeats the purpose, but the underlying technology is theoretically feasible with biofuel carbon sources.
