Carbon management technologies, including carbon transport, utilization, storage, and capture, play a crucial role in reducing carbon emissions. The podcast explores the feasibility, cost, and scalability of these technologies. It also highlights the importance of market and economic incentives for carbon removal and discusses equity concerns and offset markets. The guest shares his favorite music recommendations at the end.
Carbon capture technology has become more viable with decreased costs and policy incentives.
Carbon utilization has potential in specific sectors but alone is insufficient for substantial emissions reductions.
Carbon management solutions are being adopted worldwide, with countries like China, Saudi Arabia, and Denmark leading the way.
Deep dives
Carbon management: Capturing CO2 emissions from point sources
Carbon management involves capturing CO2 emissions from point sources like power plants, steel mills, and cement plants. This process reduces greenhouse gas emissions and can help mitigate climate change. Carbon capture technology has been successfully implemented in projects like Petronova, a coal-fired power plant retrofit in Texas. The cost of carbon capture has significantly decreased in the past decade, making it a more viable option. Policy incentives, such as the Inflation Reduction Act, have supported the deployment of carbon capture technologies. However, challenges remain regarding the cost and scalability of these technologies.
Carbon utilization: Converting CO2 into useful products
Carbon utilization involves converting CO2 into useful products such as concrete, fuels, chemicals, and even apparel. Companies like Carbon Cure and Carbon Built are turning CO2 into building materials, offering a cheaper alternative to traditional methods. Although the potential of carbon utilization is promising, its impact on overall emissions reduction is limited compared to the scale of the problem. Carbon utilization can play a role in specific sectors like cement production and fuel generation, but it alone is insufficient to achieve substantial emissions reductions.
Global adoption of carbon management
Carbon management solutions are being adopted in different parts of the world. China, for instance, has started deploying carbon capture technology in three large facilities and plans to build seven more. The Middle East, particularly Saudi Arabia, is investing in carbon capture to decarbonize existing refining, desalination, and power generation facilities. In Europe, countries like Denmark are prioritizing carbon management to achieve ambitious emission reduction targets. These countries recognize the need to store CO2 because suitable geological formations are scarce. The market demand for low-carbon fuels in East Asia, notably from Japan and Korea, also drives the adoption of carbon capture technologies.
Dedicated Storage is Now Economically Advantageous
With the new incentive stack in 45Q, it is now more economically advantageous to store CO2 rather than engage in enhanced oil recovery (EOR). This change in the policy has led to a significant increase in dedicated storage projects, with 78% of all projects focusing on dedicated storage.
The Importance of Carbon Dioxide Removal
As we aim to pull CO2 out of the air and oceans at a large scale and speed, technologies like direct air capture play a crucial role. direct air capture can scrub CO2 out of the air and either use it or store it. While there are still challenges, direct air capture is becoming a necessary backstop technology as other expensive and hard-to-implement solutions fall short. The cost and energy requirements of direct air capture are improving, and with the right development and investment, it can become a more affordable and sustainable option for carbon removal.
Averting the worst impacts of climate change requires rapidly reducing carbon emissions across all sectors. This is particularly challenging for some so-called “hard-to-abate” sectors like cement and steel manufacturing. Carbon management – which includes carbon transport; carbon utilization and storage; direct air capture; and point source carbon capture – seeks to trap or remove carbon emissions where they can’t be easily avoided.
Recent policies like the Inflation Reduction Act have given these technologies a boost. But major questions remain regarding their feasibility, cost, and scalability. As the climate crisis unfolds, these questions urgently need answers.
What is the role for carbon management in the energy transition? Who should be responsible for deploying these technologies? And can they be scaled quickly enough to play a role in meeting the world’s climate goals?
This week host Jason Bordoff talks with Dr. Julio Friedmann about the basics of carbon management and the regulatory landscape for this sector.
Julio is the chief scientist at Carbon Direct, a consulting and investment firm focused on carbon management and carbon removal solutions. He served as principal deputy assistant secretary for the Department of Energy from 2013 to 2016, where he was responsible for the Department’s research and development program across a variety of energy technologies. Until recently, Julio was a senior research scholar at Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy.
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