Lets say upfront. I am not climate ignorant. I believe in human effect on climate and I think we were going wrong way.
Reasons for global climate change in short: we did not use in our business cases the impact on climate by exhausting resources.
Now we need to do something about it, because our current trend will bring us and our children to significantly worse world with less water resources. And from that it’s really close to deserts, food shortages and wars in the end, which will really not help nor increase our effectivity to save the planet. So the time to act is now.
But why I don’t think, there is need to panic is, that I believe in humanity, self-organization (on some levels) and the common will to live in better world.
Climate change is a huge topic, but lets focus on what I see the most important and that’s CCS – carbon capture & storage technologies. I will try to guide you through few resources to make your own picture.
Technology and inventions first
Carbon capture technologies already exists and are relatively capable. First issue to solve is to have the feasibility (ROI) on this activity.
Carbon capture has been demonstrated successfully at about two dozen projects worldwide that each store about a million tons or more of carbon dioxide a year. Most problems with the Kemper project are due to issues not directly related to the carbon capture technology. Let’s read something about that here
Engagement of business, which drives the world
Carbon capture factories are already developed, piloting or in the focus of major companies.
- Pilot in Switzerland – The company wants to dramatically scale its technology over the next decade, and its long-term goal is to capture 1 percent of global annual carbon dioxide emissions by 2025. Read more here
- Linde has it’s own too. Read here
- ExonnMobile focus on developing it’s own too. Read more here.
- Anothers are piloted in Canada with cooperation of Edinburgh university, Carbon Engeneering company, one under development at Toshiba. So there is already a business interest.
Moreover to develop more efficient technologies, there is also X Prize running.
To solve these problems and spur development of new technologies, the X Prize Foundation launched a $20 million competition to award “breakthrough technologies” that use the most CO2 to create products with the most economic value. Forty-seven teams from seven countries entered the competition; ten finalists are now building commercial-scale demo projects. The winners will be announced in 2020. Read more here
But how to make the capturing profitable?
CO2 capturing is already profitable, in US, because of emissions tax US. So the only thing remaining is make the transport and storage profitable.
Since last year, thanks to bipartisanship, the United States has one of the most progressive values on carbon globally. The so-called 45Q tax credit will be worth up to $50 t/CO2 captured and permanently stored. Add the value of the California Low Carbon Fuel Standard credit through its newly created CCS-Protocol, currently trading at close to $185 t/CO2, and here is your business case. In short, U.S. policy is making emissions abatement profitable.
The answer to this problem is a transport and storage network. Networks afford economies of scale that deliver significant unit-cost reductions and reduce cross-chain risk by creating multiple customers for the operators of CO2 transport and injection businesses, and multiple CO2 storage service providers for industrial CO2 sources. Read more here
Carbon storage or reusing
Well we have two options as storage of something can never be profitable. We can create subsidies for storage, or we can reuse the carbon captured.
There are already studies, that possible utilization of CO2 could be a trilion dolar market by 2030. Also there are new inventions, to bring efficiency to this process.
If the CCS technologies could not save us, they will give us at least time to transform sectors, which generates most CO2, before we cross the non-reversible climate tipping-points.
Game Changer 