The roughly two-hectare facility, still under construction, is hosting what could be called a carbon removal Olympics. It will pilot eight different versions of a similar technology using various machines that will suck in air, remove the carbon dioxide and send it to a central plant where it will be compressed and liquified for storage deep underground.
The winner of this initiative wouldn’t get a medal on a podium. Instead, Deep Sky, the Montreal-based project developer behind it, plans to take the best versions of the direct air capture technology that prove most effective in Canada’s climate and deploy them on a commercial scale all over the country.
I’ve read a lot of skepticism over the years about how carbon capture is a gimmick that doesn’t work but helps prop up the fossil fuel industry as a greenwashing scam.
And then I see something like this:
The company is so confident this will be successful that it’s already begun initial work on two commercial projects, one in Quebec and the other in Manitoba. That’s despite not yet knowing how they will be fully financed or which technology will be put to use.
“We don’t know if it works or how we’ll pay for it.”
Government subsidies from politicians eager to greenwash their oil and gas industry.
Or they’re generating buzz for a private investment scam where they can take the money and run.
So far DACC is a scam. The energy costs to capture carbon have always proven near as high or higher than the energy gained from burning fossil fuels. It’s always been unviable and treating any of it as anything but research projects is 100% bs.
Fossil fuel companies have vested interests in perpetuating the myth that we can clean up our mess after the fact. Think about how insane this proposition is! How can a world that has to drastically reconfigure itself to run on a renewables eroei of roughly 3 to 1, find the surplus energy to recapture capture carbon when the 100:1 eroei of fossil fuels are no longer available? The superorganism known as human civilization won’t have the surplus energy to handle its own metabolic needs and recapture carbon.
A surface gusher of light sweet crude used to give 100:1. The last 30 years have seen eroei decline from 30-1 to 18-1 today as an average with tight oil going as low as 5-1.
This article is false hope. Sickly sweet paliative medicine given to terminal patients. There there dear. Your suffering will soon be over and everything will be beautiful again in the afterlife.
In theory you could run it on excess solar and turn it off the rest of the time, but of course if you’re running it only part of the time it’ll take you longer to capture CO2, and not every process can actually be easily turned off and on.
That’s just using solar power with extra steps.
Yeah, investing in batteries on the grid would definitely be a better use of capital.
I agree with this. I don’t want to expand fossil fuel generation, but with renewable generation proliferating and potential breakthroughs in the long term, using excess available energy to try to reverse the emissions we had already put in the air could be beneficial.
Illinois just banned this practice in certain areas where the only source of water is underground. ADM in Decatur Illinois has a project which leaked under the lake and ADM lied about it for months. The funniest part is that local politicians were shocked ADM would lie like they didn’t make a whole movie about it starring Matt fucking Damon.
Here we go again…
The Saskatchewan government has been running this scam for at least a decade; throwing subsidies to their rich friends AND using it as an excuse to lie and say “see…there ARE alternatives to the Carbon Tax”.
It’s all bullshit. It never worked. It never will work. It’s a grift to make Scott Moe’s donors more money.
How dare they try to make a profit off the exhalations of millions of CO2 creators without fairly compensating them?
You can’t take the sky from me.
How about we not generate carbon in the first place? I’m calling for a switch from fossil fuels to electricity generated by renewable sources of energy such as solar and wind. Fossil fuels are not only directly hurting the planet via means of greenhouse gases but also profits are being spent to buy politicians and cause democratic backsliding and they were instrumental to Trump being elected and not to mention they do lots of lobbying and political interference on a global scale including in Canada. So when you import fossil fuels from U.S. companies they are paying for your own demise.
The good news is you have the power to fight back. I urge you to contact your MPs and demand a faster transition to renewable energy, no more buying fossil fuels from the U.S. and also divest from other major Republican and Trump donors. Also consider getting solar or wind for your home if that option is right for you. No fossil fuels means less fuel for Republican’s campaigns.
