Money is a moot point because either way you’re investing in something, either CC or EC. As far as time goes, when it comes to climate change I don’t think time is on our side either, so we don’t have time to wait to develop actually effective CC. We need to be making a transition to renewables now, and smooth out the jagged edges along the way, we don’t have time to wait and hope for a magic technology to eventually make our fossil fuels less dirty
Could the same not be said for carbon capture? The point I’m trying to make is that the costs of carbon capture technology and renewables are very similar but the payout is not. It doesn’t make sense to invest in something that’s going to be less effective than something with a similar cost.
Aren’t CCUS retrofits targeting 85%-100% reduction in emissions? Solar is only 10x more efficient than gas in terms of emissions, so its not that big of a difference anyway.
The problem you have to optimize for is maximum electricity generation today to sustain your economic growth. That’s the problem that every non-first-world country is solving. The operational costs and retrofitting cost of fossil fuels is negligible because the economic stimulus provided by increased electricity supply more than offsets it.
Plus, countries like China are already maxing out on their renewables manufacturing capability. China owns something like 75% of the solar panel market and a similar amount of the battery market. It’s simply not enough manufactured capacity without large players like the US, Europe, and India also stepping in. Scaling isn’t infinite and the economics of photovoltaic manufacturing in China are already breaking down because of a lack of competition.
That’s why China simultaneously has the largest solar farm, largest wind farm, largest hydroelectric dam, and largest nuclear reactor backlog in the world.
People sit in their nice cushy chairs in an air-conditioned room and drive their air-conditioned cars to their air-conditioned workplace on well-paved roads, eat food grown halfway around the world, then complain about how the people living in rural China and India should live with rolling blackouts and no HVAC systems because of sustainability. These governments would rather pay $100 million today to build the plant and $100 million 5-10 years down the road to retrofit it than to pay $200 million for an equivalent solar/wind installation and $100 million for the storage.
If people really cared about climate change, they would lobby the US government to give China access to natural gas through oil. Natural gas is the single most cost-effective reducer of carbon emissions on the planet because you can, for basically no capital, retrofit an existing coal power plant to take natural gas and cut your emissions in half. This can be done at-scale across an entire country as long as the natural gas transportation infrastructure exists.
Money is a moot point because either way you’re investing in something, either CC or EC. As far as time goes, when it comes to climate change I don’t think time is on our side either, so we don’t have time to wait to develop actually effective CC. We need to be making a transition to renewables now, and smooth out the jagged edges along the way, we don’t have time to wait and hope for a magic technology to eventually make our fossil fuels less dirty
With what capital? Renewables are capital-intensive but lifecycle-cheap. That only makes sense if you have an infinite supply of money.
Could the same not be said for carbon capture? The point I’m trying to make is that the costs of carbon capture technology and renewables are very similar but the payout is not. It doesn’t make sense to invest in something that’s going to be less effective than something with a similar cost.
Aren’t CCUS retrofits targeting 85%-100% reduction in emissions? Solar is only 10x more efficient than gas in terms of emissions, so its not that big of a difference anyway.
The problem you have to optimize for is maximum electricity generation today to sustain your economic growth. That’s the problem that every non-first-world country is solving. The operational costs and retrofitting cost of fossil fuels is negligible because the economic stimulus provided by increased electricity supply more than offsets it.
Plus, countries like China are already maxing out on their renewables manufacturing capability. China owns something like 75% of the solar panel market and a similar amount of the battery market. It’s simply not enough manufactured capacity without large players like the US, Europe, and India also stepping in. Scaling isn’t infinite and the economics of photovoltaic manufacturing in China are already breaking down because of a lack of competition.
That’s why China simultaneously has the largest solar farm, largest wind farm, largest hydroelectric dam, and largest nuclear reactor backlog in the world.
People sit in their nice cushy chairs in an air-conditioned room and drive their air-conditioned cars to their air-conditioned workplace on well-paved roads, eat food grown halfway around the world, then complain about how the people living in rural China and India should live with rolling blackouts and no HVAC systems because of sustainability. These governments would rather pay $100 million today to build the plant and $100 million 5-10 years down the road to retrofit it than to pay $200 million for an equivalent solar/wind installation and $100 million for the storage.
If people really cared about climate change, they would lobby the US government to give China access to natural gas through oil. Natural gas is the single most cost-effective reducer of carbon emissions on the planet because you can, for basically no capital, retrofit an existing coal power plant to take natural gas and cut your emissions in half. This can be done at-scale across an entire country as long as the natural gas transportation infrastructure exists.