Energy Post

Daily reports on the European and Global energy transition

The history of evidence of CO2-driven climate change starts in the mid-1800s

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Marc Hudson at the University of Sussex gives us a fascinating review of the history of climate change science. While the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was established in 1988, experimental evidence that CO2 traps heat dates back to the mid-1800s. The first predictions of global warming caused by humans came in 1895. The big change in perception took place in 1953. Canadian physicist Gilbert Plass (an academic whose career also … [Read more...]

CO2 emissions from Land Use: country-level data for turning “emitters” into “sinks”

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Until carbon capture technologies take off (if at all!), the world’s CO2 removals depend entirely on nature. Clemens Schwingshackl, Wolfgang Obermeier and Julia Pongratz at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, writing for Carbon Brief, review the latest data on “carbon fluxes” which measure whether the land is a net “source” of carbon or a “sink.” Flux measurements are categorised: deforestation, forestation, wood-harvest emissions, removals … [Read more...]

Turning Ethanol production’s CO2 by-product into E-Fuels using Wind power

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With vast open spaces, Midwest states in the U.S. produce millions of gallons of ethanol from corn as well as thousands of kilowatt-hours of electricity from wind farms every year. Research led by NREL is working on using wind power to drive electrolysers that turn the ethanol’s CO2 by-product into e-fuels, explains Erik Ringle at NREL. A typical 50 million-gallon-per-year ethanol plant releases 14 tons of CO2, a natural by-product of … [Read more...]

IEA’s global “CO2 Emissions in 2022” report: by sector, fuel, region, heating +more

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The IEA has published “CO2 Emissions in 2022”, giving estimates of CO2 emissions from all energy sources and industrial processes globally. Emissions from energy combustion increased by 423 Mt, while emissions from industrial processes decreased by 102 Mt. Emissions from various sources (sector, fuel, region, heating, etc.) are broken down, with reasons for why the change happened. The report is part of the IEA’s first global stocktake of the … [Read more...]

Adding ordinary baking soda to concrete production can cut 15% of its CO2 emissions

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Concrete production makes up 8% of global CO2 emissions. Half comes from the fossil energy used to make it (which, hopefully, can transition to clean power), and the other half comes from the CO2 that escapes during the chemical transformation. David Chandler at MIT describes research there that shows how simply adding sodium bicarbonate (yes, the baking soda you put in your cookies) during the early stages of production can remove, by … [Read more...]

The problem with CO2e: we need separate emissions data for each climate pollutant (methane, soot, etc.)

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Currently, we measure non-CO2 emissions by converting their impact into the CO2 equivalent over a 100-year period. The problem is that other pollutants can have their worst impact well within 100 years, like methane (the first 20 years is when the impact of methane is worst). Though CO2 has caused the most warming, other short-lived pollutants have contributed nearly half of the total, particularly methane, black carbon from soot, and some … [Read more...]

Direct capture of CO2 from seawater: new research cuts costs, ready for pilot in 2025

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Direct capture of CO2 from the air is already established in pilot phase in sites around the world, but costs are very high. So it is puzzling that capturing CO2 direct from the sea is yet to be tested properly. After all, the concentration of CO2 in seawater is more than 100 times greater than in the air, pointing at a process that should be much more efficient. David Chandler at MIT looks at research there that has uncovered cheaper and more … [Read more...]

New U.S. study: damage per ton of CO2 costs $185, not the official $51

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Maximilian Auffhammer at the Energy Institute at Haas reviews a new paper that suggests CO2 causes over three times as much damage in dollar terms as the figure currently used by the US government, $51 per ton. The new study shows $185 per ton of CO2 as the Social Cost of Carbon (SCC). The updated model is superior to previous models, says Auffhammer. It’s also open source, so anyone can use it, criticise it, and tweak the numbers to get … [Read more...]

Electrochemical CO2 removal: efficient, cheaper, first industrial client

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Leda Zimmerman at MIT describes a method of removing CO2 electrochemically, now being taken forward by MIT spin-off company Verdox. Electrodes are coated with polyanthraquinone. When it is charged, CO2 sticks to it. When it’s time to store it away, the charge is reversed and the gas is expelled as a pure stream of CO2. The technology works in a wide range of CO2 concentrations, from the 20% or higher found in cement and steel industry exhaust … [Read more...]

Clean Turquoise Hydrogen: a pathway to commercial readiness

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Whereas blue hydrogen from methane produces CO2, the by-product of turquoise hydrogen is pure carbon. The obvious advantage is you can make your hydrogen without the need for expensive new infrastructure to transport and store any CO2. Turquoise hydrogen is only at the start-up phase, so Schalk Cloete summarises his co-authored paper that looks at various scenarios to estimate the cost of producing the hydrogen (using molten salt pyrolysis) and, … [Read more...]

Engineered soil microbe can convert CO2 20 times faster than natural photosynthesis

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New research led by the U.S. Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory and the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology in Germany has shown how a bacterial enzyme found in the soil can be made to convert carbon dioxide into carbon compounds 20 times faster than plant enzymes do during natural photosynthesis. As Glennda Chui at Stanford University explains, it’s very early days but could open a door to artificially … [Read more...]

Biologically produced Ethylene for plastics can become a carbon capture leader

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Ethylene is a key component of the world’s vast appetite for plastics. But it’s normally made using fossils as a feedstock, and is energy-intensive to produce. So the chemicals industry has long sought a way to biologically manufacture ethylene. It would be a double-win for clean energy: it would capture CO2 and displace the fossil-based feedstocks. Connor O’Neil at NREL describes new research that makes ethylene in a “one-step” process fuelled … [Read more...]

Aviation policy alert: non-CO2 emissions have up to four times the climate impact

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There’s little point designing CO2 policies without knowing what other factors are heating up the atmosphere. So it is with aviation. The non-CO2 emissions (aromatics, NOx, SO2, H2O, particulate matter, etc.) from jet engines have up to four times the effect of CO2. You can see it in the contrail cirrus streaks trailing behind aircraft. Carlos LĂłpez de la Osa at Transport & Environment summarises their recent summit that brought together … [Read more...]

World’s biggest Carbon Capture project: Shute Creek’s “sell or vent” business model isn’t working

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ExxonMobil’s Shute Creek CCUS facility is the world’s largest carbon capture project. But since its launch in the 1980s half of that CO2 has been vented into the atmosphere, with most of the rest sold for pumping it underground to push out more oil from depleted wells (called Enhanced Oil Recovery). Only 3% has been sequestered underground, explain Bruce Robertson and Milad Mousavian at IEEFA, following their study based on publicly available … [Read more...]

Could nano-scale filters for isolating CO2, Hydrogen and Biogas accelerate the energy transition?

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Nano-scale filters have been developed to separate out molecules like CO2 and hydrogen from gaseous streams. The research, led by MIT, could open a new door to raising the efficiency of carbon capture, isolating hydrogen for fuel use, and the purification of biogas fuel from waste. David Chandler at MIT explains how it would replace century-old methods of separating gaseous molecules that use energy-intensive and hard-to-electrify high … [Read more...]