[HN Gopher] Shell's carbon capture plant is emitting more than i...
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Shell's carbon capture plant is emitting more than it's capturing
Author : bjourne
Score : 135 points
Date : 2022-01-22 19:37 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.vice.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.vice.com)
| fallingknife wrote:
| Correct me if I'm wrong here but it sounds like "emitting more
| than captured" here just means reduced emissions by less than 50%
| but still a lot. Seems misleading.
| lvs wrote:
| It's a massive government subsidy for fossil fuel demand.
| That's not helping anything.
| simondotau wrote:
| Correcting you because you're wrong. They're talking
| specifically about emissions _caused by_ the capture plant
| being greater than emissions it captures. The carbon footprint
| would be lower if the plant didn 't exist.
|
| The plant was not penalised for emissions it failed to capture.
| rank0 wrote:
| The original study is considering the emissions of the entire
| hydrogen plant, not just the carbon capture portion.
|
| Its a hydrogen plant with a carbon capture piece on top. Not
| a "carbon capture plant."
| throw8932894 wrote:
| And? My country produces electricity mostly from coal, ICE uses
| way less energy, but everyone will argue tooth and nail electric
| vehicles are CO2 neutral and green!
|
| Why this creative statistics should not be used in this plant?
| For example carbon capture could be in one country, while energy
| production and negative externalities in second! Boom, we
| captured N millions tons of CO2!
| kolinko wrote:
| Flagging as a clickbait title.
|
| The title seems to suggest that shell has a carbon capture plant
| that is emitting more than producing, where in reality it's a
| hydrogen generation plan that captures some, but not all co2.
|
| This article is way less better:
| https://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/fossil-gas/shell-...
| _Nat_ wrote:
| Looks like you're right.
|
| [This fact-
| sheet](https://sequestration.mit.edu/tools/projects/quest.html
| ) lists the plant has intending a 35% capture-rate. And while
| that's a weirdly low target-(capture-rate), it doesn't seem
| hidden.
|
| Looks like [a Canadian-government-hosted report from
| 2011](https://open.alberta.ca/publications/quest-carbon-
| capture-an... ) also includes this in the executive-summary:
|
| > The purpose of the Quest Project is to deploy technology to
| capture CO2 produced at the Scotford Upgrader and to transport,
| compress and inject the CO2 for permanent storage in a saline
| formation near Thorhild, Alberta. Over one million tonnes of
| CO2 per year will be captured, representing greater than 35%
| capture of the CO2 produced from the Upgrader. Quest is a part
| of the Athabasca Oil Sands Project (AOSP), an oil sands joint
| venture operated by Shell and owned by Shell Canada, Chevron
| Canada and Marathon Oil.
|
| So if they're capturing ~38.4% when they proposed " _greater
| than 35% capture_ " to the government, then... that sounds
| kinda like they're doing what they said they'd do.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| I would like to see the absolute amount of energy produce vs
| emitted carbon compared with oil/gas/{fossil_fuel} rather than
| an article by a pissed off reporter/magazine. Is it an
| improvement over existing technology/efficiency? Is it just the
| first step and can be improved or has it been a failure? These
| are the types of articles people should write. NetZero carbon
| won't happen over night.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| The issue still stands why are governments subsidizing this
| dead end research?
|
| 5.6 trillion dollars of taxpayer money went to Fossil Fuel
| subsidies. That's almost 7% of the world's gdp, or about 11
| million dollars per minute just in 2020 [0]
|
| Oil companies continue to capture trillions in subsidies while
| deflecting blame and misleading the public along the way.
|
| [0]
| https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2021/09/23/Sti...
| [deleted]
| _Nat_ wrote:
| It sounds like this was intended.
|
| It looks like the project may've been based on winning a grant
| [from this call [PDF]](https://www.alberta.ca/release.cfm?xID=263
| 8932A61D80-09C7-C9... ) from 2009, which wanted:
|
| > The first round of commercial scale projects is expected to
| achieve annual carbon dioxide reductions by 2015 equivalent to
| taking approximately one-million vehicles, or about a third of
| all registered vehicles in the province, off of the road.
|
| Sounds like the Canadian-government was looking for projects
| that'd remove a lot of CO2 for the money, rather than necessarily
| a high portion of CO2 from the source.
|
| Then from the executive-summary of [this report from
| 2011](https://open.alberta.ca/publications/quest-carbon-capture-
| an... ):
|
| > Over one million tonnes of CO2 per year will be captured,
| representing greater than 35% capture of the CO2 produced from
| the Upgrader.
|
| Plus [this project-
| database](https://sequestration.mit.edu/tools/projects/quest.html
| ) also listed it as being intended to capture ~35%.
|
| It's kinda weird to capture just ~35%, but apparently they didn't
| need to go higher to meet the project-specification.
| codewithcheese wrote:
| They run this same scam in Australia, see this honest government
| ad https://youtu.be/MSZgoFyuHC8
| JulianMorrison wrote:
| It's capturing money.
| Comevius wrote:
| Another way of looking at it is that they captured 6 million
| tonnes of CO2, which is not a bad demonstration for the
| technology. Shell never claimed that they can achieve zero or
| negative emission. It's a hydrogen plant, it creates hydrogen and
| CO2. They managed to capture almost half of the CO2.
|
| Still not climate-friendly, but it's something.
| NotACop182 wrote:
| It takes as much or more energy to capture the co2 as it took
| to create it in the first place. It's just the laws of the
| universe.
| fatbird wrote:
| As someone else said: "We lose money on every sale, but we're
| hoping to make it up in volume!"
| JoeyBananas wrote:
| It's not like Shell would make a carbon capture plant for
| nefarious purposes. They wouldn't set up a carbon capture plant
| just to accelerate global warming.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| They don't think along this axis at all, I'm afraid. They try
| to maximize profits while having more compliance checkboxes
| checked than their competition does.
|
| Good/bad for planet is more of a marketing sort of issue.
| JoeyBananas wrote:
| Even if Shell is a completely amoral company (they're
| really not) setting up a carbon capture plant that emits
| carbon is still not even rational.
| brazzy wrote:
| As the first comment in this tree pointed out, it's not,
| in fact a "a carbon capture plant". It's an oil refinery
| with added facilities to capture the CO2 that the
| refinery emits. And now it turns out that it captures
| less than half of the overall emissions. Which is better
| than nothing, but not nearly good enough.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| If they're not amoral, they are morally evil, since they
| have repeatedly tried to cover up global warming, oil
| spills, and have many many other sins to their name.
| Comevius wrote:
| I mean I agree that carbon capture should not be used as an
| excuse to prolong the fossil fuel industry, but we sort of
| need to produce hydrogen to produce ammonia.
|
| It's hard to get out of this trap, because ammonia is
| critical for the agriculture, and this is not a sustainable
| practice, but it's a Sophie's choice. Starve now or kick the
| can down the road and likely face bigger problems.
|
| The fossil fuel industry gets the angry letters, but in this
| case agriculture is the one that needs to be reinvented
| first.
| VintageCool wrote:
| Green hydrogen is a thing. It is not economically viable
| now, but the costs of electrolyzers are falling.
|
| The world in 2020 had 300 MW of electrolyzer capacity, but
| multiple companies (Cummins, thyssenkrupp, etc) are
| building factories with the capacity to build 1 GW of
| electrolyzers per year.
|
| The IEA anticipates 17 GW of installed electrolyzer
| capacity in 2026.
|
| https://www.iea.org/articles/could-the-green-hydrogen-
| boom-l...
|
| Green hydrogen could be cost-competitive in a few years.
| zapataband1 wrote:
| They set it up for the purpose of staying in business and
| staying in business for them means continuing to extract
| petrol. So yeah they are doing this to _continue_ to
| accelerate global warming.
| stjohnswarts wrote:
| Staying in business is all the ultimately care about. If
| they can use their expertise to make green energy in an
| economical way that is on par with their current money flow
| they would have no issues with that. It's all about money
| in the end with investors.
| dasil003 wrote:
| Okay, but why is the government subsidizing this? That just
| encourages increasing the volume of production that increases
| emissions over time. Instead we need to progressively ramp up
| taxes on fossil fuels to drive down demand over time.
| rzwitserloot wrote:
| For the same reason governments the world over subisidize
| research (which, on its own, obviously emits more co2 than it
| directly saves, as it directly saves zero), or why e.g.
| germany has subsidized solar so hard there were plenty of
| obvious net-negative cases to be found:
|
| To pull the technology through the hole where it is
| financially inefficient - without having to wait for some
| investor to take that gamble (and expect the 10x return that
| goes with it).
|
| _IF_ the subsidies continue forever and _IF_ this technology
| now takes over all other attempts, you're totally right:
| Utter madness.
|
| But those 2 ifs are extraordinary claims.
| bawolff wrote:
| If you only fund things that fully work, you'll never get
| anything new because research takes steps. It doesn't happen
| in a day.
| lvs wrote:
| This is not a research effort. It's a scam.
| azinman2 wrote:
| My question is why the government is funding Shell of all
| companies. The ones who have contributed to so much climate
| change and climate denial in the first place -- shouldn't
| this come out of their own pocketbook?
| caminante wrote:
| FTA:
|
| _> Joanna Sivasankaran, the press secretary for the
| Minister of Natural Resources, said, "Carbon capture
| utilization and storage is not a silver bullet to the
| climate crisis but it is an important tool on the pathway
| to reaching Canada's ambitious climate goals and reducing
| emissions in many industries, including oil and gas."_
| azinman2 wrote:
| Oh I'm not suggesting to avoid gov funding research. I'd
| just rather see that money go to academics, gov labs, and
| startups rather than a multinational who has raped the
| Earth for decades, and helped (helps?) fund climate
| denial. For those companies, I'd suggest forcing them to
| subsidize the research rather than the public subsidize
| them.
|
| No to privatizing profits while socializing loses.
| caminante wrote:
| _> I'd suggest forcing them to subsidize the research
| rather than the public subsidize them._
|
| I'm afraid the sanction approach would merely force Shell
| to limit research/commercialization efforts and take jobs
| and tax revenues out of Canada.
|
| You're not designing a greenfield system. But if you want
| to go hardline, there would be severe consequences for
| Canada.
| WJW wrote:
| It's a pretty pragmatic call: Shell has decades of
| experience with large scale chemistry operations, and the
| oil majors have been hiring all the smartest engineers in
| the field for decades, similar to how FAANG hovers up
| much of the software engineering talent by offering
| humongous salaries. If there is any company that has a
| decent chance at success for scaling up carbon capture
| technology, it is probably Shell or one of their main
| competitors.
|
| This type of hardware-based market is much less amenable
| to the type of startup-driven innovation that we see in
| the software world, because building a large scale
| chemical plant is so incredibly expensive.
| echelon wrote:
| Pragmatism and realpolitik.
|
| It doesn't really matter who is doing it so long as it's
| being done. The incentives align, and they're well
| positioned to do this.
| afarrell wrote:
| Indeed. In the choice between punishing a corporation and
| solving the problem, we should pick solving the problem.
| hazza_n_dazza wrote:
| Thank you for that strawman. In a world with two choices,
| I take the third. Lets open up dialouge, not close all
| doors but two.
| FormerBandmate wrote:
| Because carbon is the negative part of using fossil fuels? If
| this improves enough there could end up being no problem
| whatsoever with fossil fuels.
|
| We should fund efforts like this with carbon taxes however
| because carbon hurts now
| mlyle wrote:
| Government should do both: tax carbon and use it to pay for
| pilot projects and moonshots that could be valuable in the
| fight against AGW.
| lukifer wrote:
| It was definitely a light-bulb moment, recognizing that in
| some cases, taxation is not a necessary evil, but a
| positive good (in this case, pricing externalities) [0].
|
| At this point, I care less about what carbon taxes pay for,
| than making sure they exist at all, enough to shift
| incentives on both production _and_ consumption. (That
| said: the dividend strategy certainly does seem to have
| advantages for political viability, and avoiding "yellow-
| vest" backlash to regressive taxation.)
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pigovian_tax
| jeromegv wrote:
| Canada carbon tax is interesting because it's meant to be
| almost a zero-sum game. They take the money and you get
| it back in your tax refund. So it is more about pricing
| externality and ensure we slowly switch to better
| alternatives without disproportionately taxing us.
| edgyquant wrote:
| That taxes and tax breaks can be used in to create
| incentives is one of the fundamental aspects of modern
| liberalism. Most people don't have the libertarian idea
| of taxes where they are evil/theft.
| petermcneeley wrote:
| This is like selling 10 dollar bills for 9 dollars.
| lukifer wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dollar_auction
| caminante wrote:
| Then why is Shell Canada's operating profit margin hitting
| 29%?
|
| [0] https://reports.shell.com/tax-contribution-
| report/2018/our-t...
| pharmakom wrote:
| Because they are selling the tax payers dollar bills.
| gmuslera wrote:
| It would had captured more carbon (or at least, less carbon in
| the atmosphere) if you didn't turn it on.
|
| It would be great a carbon capture technology, on which
| companies should invest billions in a technology that turns
| carbon into (natural) gas, liquid (oil) or solid (coal) form
| and bury them deep underground. In the same way with that
| plant, not extracting them in the first place would be a more
| efficient solution.
|
| But instead we have this kind of placebo technology that not
| only does nothing, but worsen the problem, and with some
| creative accounting gives them an excuse to extract even more
| fossil fuels and delays even more the urgent actions needed to
| mitigate the devastating consequences that warming at the
| current rate will bring.
| kuratkull wrote:
| Sounds like a great plan... if you don't need electricity
| ajb wrote:
| The way the capture guys argue is that if you have a plant that
| captures 50% of carbon emissions, then you run it on >50%
| renewable fuel, and it ends up carbon neutral or negative.
| zapataband1 wrote:
| Petroleum companies have captured our governments and are
| subsidizing bs technology to stay relevant on our dime, it has
| never been about zero emissions for them.
| lvs wrote:
| No it is nothing. It has concocted a way to launder fossil fuel
| demand through another product stream.
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