Greenhouse Gas Removal Details

This section includes two parts: Emergency Response and Restoration Actions. Emergency response is required to ensure we do not incur untenable futures because of degradation-caused climate tipping responses that are now active. Restoration actions are required to finish the job of emergency response, where in an emergency, any emergency, the tools at hand are used to save lives and property, then additional actions are taken to ensure the emergency does not recur.It appears likely that natural systems will play a large role in CDR, especially with the very large capacity of our oceans to change our climate. But the first tenant of emergency response is to implement immediate actions with the tools at hand. We do not yet have the knowledge or mature processes/strategies to utilize natural systems as significant CDR resources. This time when we have this knowledge will likely come, and it is quite plausible that natural systems can assume the heavy lifting of CDR at some point in the future.  To ensure we are doing everything possible to address the climate emergency however, we need to implement shovel-ready solutions in the form of industrial atmospheric removal processes widespread in industry for 100 years, with individual components of these processes even more widespread.

EMERGENCY RESPONSE

The air capture emergency response revolves around three, 100-year old processes that are widespread in industry. Air capture of carbon dioxide is needed so that we do not have to use emergency direct cooling processes indefinitely, and because direct cooling cannot stop ocean acidification. There are three major industrial processes that were developed a hundred years or more ago, that can meet these needs. These processes are shovel ready for emergency response. All that needs done is for our engineers to scale them to the gigasize – no further development research is required. Once an appropriate giga-infrastructure implementation is underway, then we can turn to new atmospheric removal process that need more study, so that we can create a more efficient climate restoration.

Three mature industrial CDR processes have been in use for about a hundred years: recyclable lime/potash, amines, and cryoseparation. Many new processes to remove CO2 and other greenhouse gases from our atmosphere have been discovered since, or are a part of the wide push to seek market share in the coming CDR industrialization of our world. These three mature processes are ready to use with almost all of their process components already widespread in industry. This allows the first principle of emergency action to be implemented, where any emergency requires we use the tools at hand to save lives.
(see a History of Carbon Dioxide Removal for more information.)

RESTORATION ACTIONS

We cannot use direct cooling engineered solutions forever. The risks are too high, increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere reduce direct cooling efficiency, and our biggest and most important resource, our oceans, do not de-acidify with most direct cooling solutions. Future emissions eliminations with net zero helps a small amount but primarily, carbon dioxide removal (CDR) that is far in excess of emissions reductions is required. These processes are also known as negative emissions. There are two forms of CDR, natural and industrial.

NATURAL CARBON DIOXIDE REMOVAL

Natural CDR is things like our forest, soils, permafrost, wetlands, mangroves, oceans, or different agricultural techniques. The National Academies of Sciences (NAS) and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) limit global natural systems sequestration to 5.5 Gt annually fully enhanced and completely healthy, because of sustainability and very importantly, because of equity.

Natural Systems Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) Compromised – Permanence

The National Academies of Sciences (NAS) and IPCC limit global natural systems  sequestration to 5.5 Gt annually is significantly lower than others’ because it takes into consideration sustainability and equity issues. Numerous studies show how much greater sequestration is plausible with natural systems but plausibility is not feasibility. Paul Hawken’s Drawdown Project is another example of great promise. Though Hawken’s strategies are certainly plausible, permanence of natural sequestration is compromised because of warming-caused degradation. This compromise will only get worse until that time that we cool our climate’s temperature back to within the evolutionary boundaries of our natural systems so they can self-restore. This concept of compromised sequestration permanence has been demonstrated in academic literature as being ongoing and intensifying. Current natural systems science that tells us natural systems can do a large part of CDR do not incorporate the latest warming degradation science. Some natural systems will certainly remain sequestration resources, but many if not most will not and cannot be relied upon to ensure we do not pass the point of no return of already activated tipping collapses.

Update: Critical work on natural systems sequestration shows they have turned the corner to decline across the globe. This work (Curran and Curran 2025) looked at the response of the Keeling Curve of atmospheric CO2 concentration at Mauna Loa, and how the curve’s cold-season decrease has changed over time, where the cold season decrease is relative to Earth’s natural systems carbon sequestration. What they found was that net, our Earth systems’ carbon sequestration is in decline. What this means is that, if our Earth systems were sequestering greenhouse gases at the same rate they did in the 1960s, the annual atmospheric growth rate would have been 1.9 ppm CO2. Instead, the annual growth rate is 2.5 ppm CO2, a 32 percent decline, and this is the 2010 to 2020 average. In 2023 and 2024, the atmospheric growth rate jumped markedly from previous data at about 3.5 ppm CO2 growth per year, according to the Mauna Loa CO2 records  in Hawai’i. This is a further 40 percent decline in just two years. Carbon dioxide removal by natural systems has been increasing since emissions began, as an effect of greater a greater concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, and partly because of the CO2 fertilization effect. Natural soil nutrients may now be limiting the CO2 fertilization effect, but most importantly, drought, insects, disease, permafrost thaw, declining ocean absorption, and wildfire are taking their toll and reducing the sequestration capacity of Earth systems. (End Update)

Case Study – West Coast’s Carbon Offset Buffer Burned Already

Permanence is an immense challenge of natural systems sequestration in a climate that is warmer than the evolution of the Earth systems doing the sequestration. As an example, nearly the entire buffer pool for the California carbon credit program has now burned, mostly in 2020 and 2021, a buffer that was supposed to protect the forest carbon credits from fire, insects and disease through 2100. The lightning-caused Lionshead Fire in Oregon in 2020 is one example of many that alone, based on conservative estimates, burned four percent of the buffer pool. Western US fires have recently begun burning much more severely, compromising much more forest area, with an 800 percent increase in high severity fire from 1982 to 2017, where 97 percent of area burned in the 20 years of the study has been high severity fires, with mortality of 95 percent in high severity fires. The result of the California fires in just 2022 are that these fires emitted two and half times more carbon than was reduced by all of California’s emissions reductions actions since they began.

Extreme Fire, Forest Regeneration Failure and Forest Emissions, Not Sequestration

Forest die-off from climate change effects has been observed across the globe, with the results of warming feedbacks  through net forest emissions and reduction of the size of the global forest carbon sink. Extreme fire (≥99.99th percentile) doubled globally, increased 11.1 times in temperate coniferous forests, and 7.3 times in the boreal/tiaga from 2003 to 2023. Drought mortality in forests  has doubled to quadrupled across the globe, where a doubling of forest mortality halves carbon storage. Forest regeneration failure after wildfire has doubled, with half of the remaining forests’ regeneration occuring at only half of the 20th century rate. Management of forest with prescribed burning creates forests that emit greenhouse gases instead of sequestering them because of an additional warming-related feedbacks where more sun hists the former forest floor, increasing soils evaporation and forest floor temperature that limits forest regrowth. These behaviors also broodily represent long-term averages because of large natural variability. This means that it is likely that current responses are double or more the long-term averages. In addition, since these studies were completed, warming has not only continued, but it has accelerated at a pace greater than anything in the record. Finally, enhancing  –or even conserving– most of these forests is not possible until their evolutionary boundary conditions are restored. These responses to warming effects create a natural world that is not only not sequestering, but it is on average a net emitter and not a candidate for CDR.

INDUSTRIAL CARBON DIOXIDE REMOVAL (CDR), DIRECT AIR CAPTURE (DAC), CARBON CAPTURE AND SEQUESTRATION (CCS)

This section comes in two parts: Industrial carbon dioxide removal (air capture or DAC), and carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) from energy generation and industrial processes.

Introduction – Why does IPCC and much academic literature say DAC is too expensive and cannot reach quantities needed?

There are many more reasons than the five listed below that describe why it is that our climate culture wrongly tells us that air capture is infeasible. They come from credible sources and appear to be valid, but “valid” in many cases may not be “valuable.”

Scenario bias… The scenario bias is one reason and it is a big one. Our climate policy is driven almost exclusively by reviews of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). IPCC’s summaries of scientific findings are limited to those findings that follow IPCC’s scenarios. Of the 3,131 scenarios in IPCC’s database of their current report series, they only reviewed 1,202 findings because the rest did not meet their scenario criteria. One of these criteria assume that CDR is only used for cooling back to 1.5 or 2 degrees C warming after temporary overshoot the warming target while we are reducing emissions, and that CDR is used to compensate for net zero emissions for economic sectors that cannot reduce emissions, like industry that requires flame energy for oxidation reactions. IPCC evaluates zero scenarios for climate restoration, or that allow continued emissions with strategies to limit warming or restore our climate using only CDR and or engineered cooling solutions. IPCC reviews are also significantly understated because feedback scenarios in modeling are poorly represented or absent, and the vast majority of IPCC’s summaries are based on modeling outcomes.

Scenario bias – the Moon Shot… Another scenario bias can be labelled the Moon Shot Bias with an argument that, we only remove 10,000 tons of CO2 from air every year and we need to remove 1,000 Gigatons which is 100 million times more and this is all simply infeasible. The same argument was made about human’s travelling to the moon before humans’ travelled to the moon, about electricity, the internet, telephones, transiters, human sewage pollution treatment, and any number of the things we do billions of times a year in our advanced civilization of eight-billion souls. Occidental chemicals alone has six air capture hubs in-design, with the first schedules to begin operations in 2025, with a total capacity of 6 gigatons of CO2. In total, Oxy has 100, 1 million ton per year units committed under the IRS 45Q removal incentive.

Cost bias… this is another scenario bias where academic findings are the product of scenarios and things not defined as a part of the scenario(s) being studied are not represented by the findings of the study. The primary example is Keith 2018’s findings of costs of air capture with the lime-potash process using $0.03 kWh natural gas energy. If renewable energy with a cost of $0.01 kwh is interjected into Keith’s scenarios instead of his $0.03 kWh natural gas energy, costs are far lower, but the media, IPCC and even other scientists findings do not acknowledge the opportunity of any other scenarios and blinding regurgitate the scenario biased findings leading to a false impression of the lower limits of costs of air capture. (See more on Keith 2018 here.)

Moral Hazard… Many view any solution that does not eliminate future emissions as being morally wrong because climate pollution is bad and we have to stop emitting it. This is an upside down argument that does not consider that our advanced human culture almost never eliminates pollution, but we do treat it responsible because the thing that caused the pollution is needed or demanded by our culture. (See more about the Moral Hazard here.)

Nascent technologies that need more research…  Ever present in the DAC disbeliever culture is the concept that air capture technologies are new and not yet up to the task because more research is needed. The reality is that three major industrial processes that are widespread in industry have been in constant use for over 100 years. What is needed is not more research, but for our engineers to scale these processes like they scale countless things to the hundreds of billion units ever year for our advanced civilization of eight billion souls. (See more on giga scaling here.)

HOW OUR TRUSTWORTHY ENGINEERS WILL RESTORE OUR CLIMATE WITH INDUSTRIAL CARBON DIOXIDE REMOVAL (CDR) – DIRECT AIR CAPTURE (DAC)  

Industrial CDR strategies and their components have been in use as a major part of our world’s industrial complex for about a hundred years, with a capacity that is only limited by humanity’s motivation.

The three mature industrial CDR processes are: recyclable lime/potash, amines, and cryoseparation. Many new processes to remove CO2 and other greenhouse gases from our atmosphere have been discovered since, or are a part of the wide push to seek market share in the coming CDR industrialization of our world. These three mature processes are ready to use with almost all of their process components already widespread in industry. This allows the first principle of emergency action to be implemented, where any emergency requires the tools at hand be used to save lives.

Over 200, CO2 capture units are committed under IRS 45Q for completion by 2035. This is an excellent start on industrialization of a climate restoration infrastructure that can finish the job that direct cooling engineered solutions begins. Most of these units use the lime-potash process.

THE THREE, MATURE DAC PROCESSES

Cryoseparation and Beer

Nobel Prize nominee Carl von Linde was the first to remove carbon dioxide from air in a meaningful way. His technology was developed from his high pressure refrigeration discovery that itself was first used in the 1870s to help the brewing industry overcome limitations on summer season brewing and beer storage that was plagued by warm-season bacterial contamination. Literally, brewing beer in the warm season during the 19th century was banned in Bavaria because of this problem. By 1890 Linde had sold 747 of his “ice machines.” In 1892 Guinness contracted with Linde to build a CO2 liquefaction plant to sell excess CO2 from fermentation as a feedstock in the newly industrialized world. This set in motion the ultra-cold, ultra-high pressure refrigeration technology that Linde later used in cryoseparation to distill the components of air into usable products that included, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide and argon. The cryoseparation technology first supercools and super compresses air to a liquid, then evaporates the liquid in a tall column where the temperature rises upwards in the column, condensing individual components of air as the temperature warms moving upward in the column, much like water vapor condenses in clouds.

Lime-Potash Process for Removing Carbon Dioxide From Air – Submarines, Baking Soda and Cement

The recyclable lime-potash process has been used in various forms to remove CO2 from air since the late 18th Century. It involves two parts – capture with potash and release using lime in the baking soda production process where this baking soda process is part of the process of making cement out of limestone. These two processes have been ubiquitous in industry since the mid- and late-1800s. Sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) has been used for thousands of years as a natural mineral deposited from hot springs among other places. French chemist, Nicolas Leblanc discovered the process to make baking soda (known as soda ash too) in 1791. In the late 18th century, soda ash was first used as a leavening agent in baking by John Dwight and Austin Church, in New York. Its many other uses include: as an animal feed additive, as a bonding agent in dying, as a purifier and catalyst in the plastic industry, in the manufacture of rubber, as a softener in the food industry, as odor control in wastewater treatment, it is widespread in pollution treatment of flue gases (sulfur and nitrogen oxides) using the same chemistry as wastewater odor control, and it is also widespread in the pharmaceutical industry. Potassium carbonate (potash) was first identified in 1742 by Antonio Campanella. It is made by the absorbent reaction with carbon dioxide. Together these things defines the atmospheric carbon capture reaction used in the lime-potash process that kept our submarine sailors safe from carbon dioxide poisoning in World War II.

Vitamines (Note the Spelling) and Amig

Amines are likely going to be the Go to for air capture of CO2 as research into use of this very large chemical family that is extremely important to industry. Trillions of dollars of revenue are at stake and amines are more efficient than the lime/potash and cryosperaration processes. In 1930, Robert Bottoms was awarded a patent for removing CO2 from air with amines. The discovery of amines was first published in 1911 by Kazimierz Funk. Funk was inspired by Christiaan Eijkman work that showed eating brown rice reduced vulnerability to beri-beri, compared to those who at normal milled rice. (Beri-beri is a vitamin B deficiency that causes nerve and heart inflammation.) Funk was able to isolate the substance and because it contained an amine group he called it “vitamine.” It was later to be known as vitamin B3 (niacin),  and described it as “anti-beri-beri-factor”. Amines have gone on to become one of the most important chemical groups in all of industry with processes that include: dyes, nylon, medicines, cooling systems, surfactants, cosmetics, agrochemicals, corrosion inhibitor, machining fluids, powder coatings, polyurethane, and epoxy coatings. Amines are a $32 billion industry in 2023.

The Haber-Bosch Process (Amines) and Bat Guano in World War II

The Haber-Bosch process was a most important piece of chemistry developed just before WWI that allowed nitrogen production for use in explosives and fertilizers, with a key part of the process being the CO2 removal. It was a German invention because the Allies controlled all the bat guano deposits in caves that were the nitrogen source for fertilizers and explosives manufacturing. CO2 is a byproduct of the process produced as waste that must be removed, which is fundamental to the CO2 air capture process. The Haber-Bosch process is responsible for almost all fertilizers on Earth, one of the largest industries on the planet.

Costs of Air Capture CO2

Here is another of the big misinterpretations of science in a mandatory climate restoration world. Not only are air capture CO2 processes widespread and mature, but their costs are nothing like what is suggested in academic literature. Why is this? Academic literature is scenario driven. If the proper scenario criteria are not evaluated, results are not as meaningful as they could be, or simply do not apply.

Case Study – Cost of Industrial CDR, Carbon Engineering (Keith 2018)

Reported excessive costs of industrial CDR are an artifact of science that does not fully consider alternatives; of errors in very credible publishing, of lack of publishing from players as their secrets are worth trillions of dollars in incentives, and from poor interpretation of academic literature by both popular journalism and scientific publications. The Carbon Engineering (Keith 2018) scenario criteria result in a range of $94 to $232 per ton of CO2 captured that reflects the low and high energy costs of natural gas in 2018, or $0.03 kWh and $0.05 kWh, and where 87 percent of process costs are energy related, and costs include upstream emissions and the carbon penalty to remove the carbon emitted from burning the natural gas to create the energy to run the process. Realistically, the lowest cost of of energy will be in these processes. But Keith used $0.03 natural gas energy and the lowest cost today is wind and solar energy at $0.01kWh and not carbon penalty for burning natural gas. so to use a different scenario for Keith’s work, with the latest wind and solar costs , and considering that Keith 2018 allows that 40 percent of process costs can be as electricity, and the rest requires flame energy for oxidation, with $0.01 kWh renewable site-built energy, this reduces total costs to $60 ton. An interesting likelihood with industry is that to energy producers who will likely be doing the lion’s share of atmospheric removal, the costs of natural gas are almost free. this would make using 100% natural gas the go to, as upscaling their removal processes to remove the extra CO2 generated from natural gas powering the process is little money compared to the profits plausible with “almost free” natural gas to the producer.

Utilization of CO2 from Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR)

It matters not how feasible, plausible or impossible atmospheric carbon capture is perceived to be. If we do not restore our atmosphere to within the boundaries of our Earth systems, untenable futures result. The two big challenges with utilization are quantity and time. Generally, because time is of the essence, utilization cannot create atmospheric removals anywhere close to the quantitates need to reduce Earth’s temperature to a restoration target less than 1 degrees C warming. Nevertheless, utilization is important and has a capacity to help with restoration. One of the most exciting of utilization strategies and or processes is contemporary carbon limestone aggregates made from air capture CO2. One of the leaders in this synthetic limestone production is Blue Planet Aggregates in California where they have synthesized limestone aggregates that are carbon negative for use in airport construction and many other projects, sequestering a net of 500 pounds per ton of concrete, upstream emissions included. Low carbon concrete products that are proliferating in the market today only reduce the carbon footprint of concrete, they do not reverse it like concrete made from synthetic aggregates.

Can We Afford Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR)?

We have already described the biases in cost assumptions where scenarios rule nad costs are innocently overblow by reports of academic literature that does not look at scenarios that are likely to be used. This discussion addresses the total cost of removing CO2 from the sky that is widely believed to be extremely excessive. Using easy math, removing 1,000 Gt of CO2 at $50 per ton (to use a RAND study costs), is $50 trillion. In 20 years, to restore our climate by mid-century, this is $2.5 trillion per year globally with the US share being a quarter of that or $625 billion per year. At $100 per ton the cost is $5 trillion per year globally and $1.25 trillion for the US. Cost will very likely, before long, fall below $50 per ton, based on iterative process design and Keith 2018 being $60 ton using renewable energy. But the challenge remains that this is a lot of money and when money is always short everywhere, where does the money come from? Simply put, we can find the money as we always find it in an emergency. We realize this is dodging the question, but if motivation is there, the money will be found. What needs to be understood is the scope of this spending. Once it is understood how this very large amount of money (2.5 to 5% of global gross domestic product) relates to life on Earth as we know it, it will be much easier to integrate this spending into our perception of reality. Consider…  In the US alone we spent $4.3 trillion on health care in 2021, $500 billion on clothes, $750 billion on durable goods, $1.3 trillion on nondurable goods, $1.5 trillion on our automobiles, $2.1 trillion on food, $500 billion on water and wastewater treatment, $500 billion on agricultural damages not counting climate change, $500 billion on entertainment, $1 trillion on energy, $600 billion on sick days, and $200 billion disposing of urban waste. Globally we spent $1.9 trillion on fuel subsidies, $2.6 trillion on life insurance, and $1.6 trillion on advertising.

See more details about atmospheric carbon capture below.

CARBON CAPTURE AND SEQUESTRATION (CCS) FROM INDUSTRIAL AND ENERGY GENERATION EXHAUSTS – CATALYZING GIGASCALING

CCS refers to capturing CO2 from exhaust streams in energy generation and industry. Though air capture of CO2 is often referred to as CCS, for this discussion, CSS only includes capture from exhaust streams of energy generation or industry applications. Much literature and IPCC reviews show that to achieve net zero emissions, we must use CDR offsets or carbon captured elsewhere, to compensate for hard to decarbonize sectors. With unlimited time, it is plausible we could decarbonize these sectors but because of the difficulties and short time frames involved with Earth systems degradation, both CDR and CCS are mandatory. WE need CDR to restore our climate, and we need CSS to limit future emissions so as to make CDR easier, and importantly, to catalyze the scaling of CDR. Much has been written about failures of CCS and some is valid because of challenges with emerging technology implementation, but most is misguided. There is no incentive for industry to capture CO2 from their processes and energy generation, but industry can read the writing on the wall and profitability demands they be ready when carbon emissions regulations appear. Therefor they pilot CCS units to determine feasibility, then shut them down because there is no incentive to keep spending money to keep them operating. This process has been misinterpreted by many as failure.

What is the importance of CCS then, with climate restoration? 

CCS alone only limits future emissions by capturing and storing new emissions as they are generated. The importance to climate restoration however, is that CCS serves to catalyze removal and storage process scaling. Most of the CCS process components are identical to air capture components. Storage is identical. CCS engineers scale their components to be able to advance the process to make more money from the sequestration incentives. CCS implementation also considers that soon, there will carbon emissions regulations that do not have positive incentives so their processes for both CCS and air capture need to be maximized through engineering iteration, so that industry’s bottom line does not suffer unduly. These engineering tasks serve not only to safeguard industry profits, but since their components are largely identical, they advance scaling air capture to quantities that are meaningful to climate restoration in time frames that matter.

Case Study – CCS Failures? The Petra Nova Unit

Petra Nova is a first of its kind full-scale demonstration unit for removal of CO2 from coal fired electricity generation in Houston. The CO2 is used for enhanced oil recovery (EOR). Widespread reports of the failure of this unit are unfounded. It was shut down when the price of oil went to near zero during Covid after meeting 85 percent of its design goals – an excellent initial outcome for a full-scale demonstration unit.  Petra Nova is operational again after being refurbished to increase capacity by 30 percent. This is the fate of most of these carbon removal demonstrations. Industry first demonstrates full-scale units to prove concept and then they shut them down after proof awaiting a revenue stream or mandatory regulation as there is no profit in operating the systems (without EOR) and there are no regulations requiring carbon removal from exhaust streams.

Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) with CDR, and Carbon Negative Oil

Myth: Enhanced oil recovery cannot be carbon negative because of the greenhouse gas emissions from burning recovered fossil fuels.
Reality: This myth is based on the standard EOR process where all available CO2 is removed from the recovery well to inject into the next well.

Analysis of sequestration efficiency with EOR is based on the industry process of recycling CO2 to the next well where industry removes all the CO2 it can from recovery wells to recycle the process to unrecovered wells. To create carbon negative oil and gas and be awarded incentives from the California Low Carbon Fuels Standard (LCFS) or IRS 45Q Carbon Sequestration Incentive, and as these laws development state – to further the mandatory industrialization and scaling of carbon capture technologies, simply close the valve and leave CO2 in the ground.

EOR produces 10% to 15% of remaining oil or gas in a field where primary and secondary production is no longer feasible after removing half of the product originally in the ground. What must be done to sequester more CO2 is simply close the valve on the well and do not recycle all the CO2 to the next well – or, pump more in the ground, there’s room for it. Why would an oil and gas producer do this? Because the EOR production process to each well already exists and air capture CO2, once the air capture infrastructure is put into place, is cheaper than the LCFS and 45Q incentives creating a revenue windfall. Won’t they just pocket the windfall? Not likely, at least most of it. The reason is that far more revenues will be available from carbon sequestration incentives to the first to market – the first to create the most infrastructure to achieve market share of the 1,000 or so Gt CO2 removal required to restore our climate.

Specifically, How Can Oil From EOR be Carbon Negative?

Half of CO2 injected for EOR is trapped in the formation to start with. It is trapped in kerogens that originally held the oil and gas, it is mineralized in the geology, and it is dissolved in the salty formation water associated with the oil and gas. This sequestration approximately equals the CO2 emissions from burning the recovered product plus the upstream emissions in the process. To make oil and natural gas from EOR carbon negative, leave more CO2 in the ground, the CLCF and 45Q standards pay more than the value of the air capture CO2.<

Incentives for EOR and Non-EOR Air Capture

The Internal Revenue Service’s Carbon Oxide Capture rules (IRS 45Q), pays up to $85 per ton of CO2 sequestered with EOR, if union labor is used. Air capture without EOR, and direct sequestration or sequestration in durable products pays up to $185 a ton if union labor is used. There are many different air capture technologies and most are still in development. The three discussed here are lime/potash, amines and cryosperation.

The Importance of Carbon Dioxide Removal

Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) is required because complete emissions elimination this instant allows further warming and it is current warming that has allowed Earth systems to begin degrading, where once a system begins to degrade, it does not stop unless the thing that caused it to degrade is removed. Engineered cooling is required because once systems’ degradation begins, there is only a limited amount of time before degradation becomes so severe the systems’ cannot self-restore on their own, with time frames of mid-century according to much academic literature. Carbon dioxide removal is required so we do not have to use engineered cooling solutions indefinitely, and because engineered cooling cannot stop ocean acidification and untenable degradation of our planet’s most important system. Decarbonization of as much of our advanced civilization’s infrastructure is also required to create a sustainable future for humankind, but this does not absolve us of the critical path demand for carbon dioxide removal and engineered cooling solutions.

Trust In Engineers to Remove Carbon Dioxide and Other Greenhouse Gasses Too

We trust our engineers to keep us safe from danger, to treat pollution so we can be safe, and to design a world where we can live free from undue risk. Literally, engineering pollution treatment solutions have made our advanced civilization what is is today. Yet, we do not trust geoengineering. Why is this? Why do we trust our engineers to safely deliver extremely deadly electricity to our homes, and to design the plethora of electric appliances that populate our lives so that they do not kill us, and we never give it a second thought? Why do we trust them to design our multiple ton automobiles that travel at 100 feet per second with collision energy of seven million pounds of force? Or, to treat our drinking water to ensure it is free of deadly pathogens, design skyscrapers, dams, and airplanes so they don’t fall down and kill people?

In the US alone, our trustworthy engineers treat 112 gigatons of potable water and human sewage every year, half of which treats extremely dangerous material through a complicated and sensitive process using a biologic reactor. The belief that carbon dioxide pollution treatment is too expensive, too big, and has only limited application is simply a myth, created by those that are unsure, or by those that believe it is morally wrong, or those that believe the scenarios of IPCC are not negotiable; that CDR is only for overshoot and hard to decarbonize sectors. And there is also a huge myth that air capture pilot projects demonstrating CDR have almost all failed, when almost all of them reach their goals and are then shut down because there is no incentive to keep pouring money over them.

Our engineers know what they are about. They have been building processes to remove carbon dioxide from our atmosphere — to treat CO2 like the pollution that it is, for over 100 years. Our engineers  have created our advanced civilization, taking our population from one billion to eight billion, and they have done it safely. They deserve our trust with climate pollution and w once our climate culture understands this fundamental fact of our advanced human civilization, we will sleep a lot easier.

The Moral Hazard – A River That Runs Both Ways; A River of Human Sewage

A primary argument in our climate change culture has been that, pursuing carbon dioxide removal (and direct cooling solutions) constitutes a “moral hazard” because implementation would slow greenhouse gas emissions reduction efforts and this would be “morally wrong.” The rationale continues, “If we can simply remove CO2 from the sky, climate polluters will just keep on polluting.” The simple and effective response to this argument is that, why should we stop emitting only climate pollution? When we discovered that human sewage pollution was killing millions from disease in the 19th century, we did not stop emitting human sewage, we simply started behaving responsibly based on new knowledge that human sewage allows vectors to distribute deadly disease if human sewage pollution is simply dumped in the ditch. Of course decarbonizing our culture will create a sustainable future and of course, limiting emissions reduces the amount of atmospheric removal and direct cooling required. But alone, complete net zero this instant cannot cool, and it is cooling that must occur to avoid untenable futures caused by ongoing ecological degradation that will not self-restore unless we cool our climate to a temperature cooler than today.

Pollution Treatment Theory… We do not as a general rule, stop the emissions of other pollutants when we find out they are deadly, we simply create rules to reduce their emissions and or require treatment to render them moot. Why has our advanced civilization decided that treating climate pollution is different from other forms of pollution? The answer comes from the way our climate change culture was created. In the beginning, in 1990 when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) created their first report, simple emissions reductions from fossil fuels would have solved our human climate sewage pollution problem, if they were responsibly enacted in a timely manner.

Pollution Treatment Responsibility… We did not act responsibly and instead, delayed implementation of emissions limitations regardless of what scientists warned. This delay has now exceeded thirty years and one of the most important things climate scientists warned us about in 1990, was that if we delayed regulations on climate pollution, limiting warming would become more difficult, the rate of warming would rapidly accelerate, and at some point, effects of warming would become so extreme that we would have to use artificial climate cooling strategies to lower our climate temperature or suffer untold mortality from warming related effects. Now, the river of human sewage known as climate pollution has reversed its flow and our advanced civilization as we know is at certain risk of failure.

The repeatedly unprecedented effects from warming can no longer be argued to be natural and their nonlinear increase in extremeness has just begun. Ecological degradation from warming is well underway and does not self-restore unless we cool our climate from today, ultimately leading to ecological collapses across the planet in time frames far sooner than the classic end-of-century, year 2100 time frame. No amount of future emissions reductions can now cool our climate at all, in time frames that matter to ecological collapse, and warming in the pipeline –even with complete emissions cessation this instant, continues to warm because of the great imbalance between our rapidly warming climate and slowly warming oceans and ice sheets. The ultimate fate of climate warming is that, even with complete emissions elimination today, our global temperature will warm another four to five degrees C by the end of the century and a total of eight to ten degrees C after a couple hundred more years — and, there is nothing we can do about it except remove the very long-lived climate pollution from our sky and treat it so we can be safe, and because this takes time, we also must artificially cool our climate with engineered solutions to gives us that extra time to remove the climate pollution from our sky.

The New Moral Hazard… The moral hazard today has been turned upside down because we were irresponsible about our human climate pollution sewage emissions and did not do as our scientists suggested prudent.

The real “moral hazard” then, today, is the failure to pursue cooling approaches that can stop irreversible degradation responses, and reduce ecological and human disasters, and eliminate warming-caused injustice and inequity. It is now morally wrong to only suggest emissions reductions alone can save us. We have caused this reversal of the moral hazard because of our irresponsible delay in action, and now it does not matter what are the costs of carbon removal and engineered cooling solutions, or if there are risks involved. The risk of not cooling our climate; of not restoring our climate so Earth systems degradation can stabilize – the risks are futures that see natural feedback greenhouse gas emissions from failing Earth systems that will dwarf humankind’s climate sewage pollution emissions, will creating a world where even artificial emergency cooling is at risk of failing.

The Limits of Carbon Dioxide Removal

If we delay implementation of a giga-scale air capture infrastructure, natural feedback emissions will vastly increase the amount of removal required. these natural feedback emissions are almost always overlooked in policy and advocacy discussion and in academic findings as well. Even though engineered cooling solutions are the only way we can avoid natural feedback emissions that dwarf humankind’s in the short term, removal is required so we do not have to assume the risks of long term cooling, which does not reduce ocean acidification, where warming degradation is currently creating risks for the viability of humanity’s most important system.

Natural systems have to risks: their capacity fully enhanced and in prime health is only about 5 gigatons annually, considering we can fully enhance all our Earth systems. This consideration however is not possible in most Earth systems because they are currently degrading because of warming. Therefore their restoration so as to apply enhancement is not feasible. this greatly limits the capacity of natural systems to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, let alone remove more than they are removing now because many of them are in fact emitting now, and no longer sequestering.

Delay in action to deploy atmospheric removal solutions, like when we delayed action on reducing emissions, creates a world where removal becomes nonlinearly more difficult, because natural feedback emissions increase nonlinearly with further warming. Combine this with the nonlinear economic effects of warming as it increases and pretty soon there will be a point where removals as well as engineered cooling solutions become infeasible.

Conclusion

The road to climate stability and a sustainable planet will ultimately require a complete transformation of global industrial civilization’s economies, systems, and practices, but if we do not first use engineered cooling solutions to create emergency climate stabilization, and simultaneously implement a gigascale greenhouse gas removal infrastructure, and if we do not do so in time frames relative to point where natural systems degradation becomes so extreme that the systems cannot self-restore, all other actions to create a sustainable human culture will be for naught.