Occidental Makes a Billion-Dollar Climate Moonshot
Please note that thanks to Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act subsidies, Occidental Makes a Billion-Dollar Climate Moonshot—So It Can Keep Pumping Oil
About fifty miles southwest of Midland, Texas, deep in the oil-saturated Permian Basin, more than 100 workers are busy laying out roads and water lines, preparing to build an elaborate complex of fans, each as large as a tennis court.
When they start running in 2024, the fans will suck massive amounts of carbon dioxide out of the air. The carbon will be funneled thousands of feet down deep wells into geological formations, where it should remain for centuries.
Removing CO2 from the atmosphere at this scale has never been done before, and the enterprise comes with abundant commercial and scientific uncertainties.
The plant’s fans will pull up to 500,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide from the air a year—about as much as 111,000 American cars spew out in a year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.
The Houston-based company said it wants to build up to 135 such plants by 2035, depending on public incentives and demand for carbon credits.
Fans pull air into containers, where chemicals bind with the CO2 to separate it from the air, eventually creating pellets. The pellets are heated to release pure carbon dioxide, which is compressed to be transported through pipelines and funneled deep underground.
Airbus has prepurchased credits from Occidental covering 100,000 metric tons of carbon removal a year over four years, according to the companies.
Fuzzy Economic of CO2 Extraction
- The Occidental plan is possible thanks to subsidies that will cover 45 percent of the cost.
- There are 278 million cars in the US and 1.4 billion in the world. When fully operational, Occidental’s fans will only reduce the energy of 111,000 cars.
- Occidental hopes to make money by selling carbon tax credits to other companies that use unclean energy.
- Powering the fans requires energy. Occidental is investigating the use of mini-nuclear reactors and using energy from natural-gas powered plants that capture their own CO2.
- In 2019 Occidental took a stake in Carbon Engineering, a Canadian startup backed by Bill Gates, which developed the system to capture, purify and compress carbon dioxide.
- The Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law by President Biden last year, rewards companies that capture and store atmospheric CO2 with a $180 tax credit per metric ton contained permanently, up from $50.
- Analysts said collecting CO2 from smokestacks requires much less energy and is therefore cheaper.
Dismal Record
By the way, please note Projects to Capture Carbon Emissions Get New Boost Despite Dismal Record
Petra Nova, once billed as the largest U.S. project to capture carbon-dioxide emissions from a coal-fired power plant, opened to considerable publicity in Texas in late 2016.
Less than four years later, owner NRG Energy Inc. shut down the carbon-capture system, which cost $1 billion—not because the technology wasn’t working but because the expected end use for the carbon was no longer economically viable. The coal plant continues to generate electricity and emit carbon.
More than 80% of proposed commercial carbon-capture efforts around the world have failed, primarily because the technology didn’t work as expected or the projects proved too expensive to operate, according to a 2020 study by researchers at Canada’s Carleton University, the University of California, San Diego and other institutions.
Nothing like subsidies and mandated buying of carbon credits to make economically-stupid projects appear viable.
How much of Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act will be wasted on obvious boondoggles like this?
By the way, the environmental madness of projects like this coupled with mandated buying of carbon tax credits is very inflationary.
Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) Flashback
On November 30, 2022, I noted The EU is Very Worried About Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA)
Germany is upset because the US is handing out free money clean energy subsidies despite WTO rules and it can’t.
There’s more than a bit of irony here. Without trying, Biden has had more success than Trump in actions that splinter the EU.
A New Green Deal Trade War Accelerates Between the US and EU
On February 6, I noted A New Green Deal Trade War Accelerates Between the US and EU
The EU strikes back against Biden’s Inflation Adjustment Act with its own inflationary version of corporate welfare.
Well, don’t worry, the Fed is modeling the impacts.
For discussion, please see The Fed Models the Weather Although It Can’t Even Stress Test Treasuries
This post originated on MishTalk.Com.
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Mish
Earth is currently in an ice age called the Quaternary Ice Age which began around 2.5 million years ago and is still going on. We are currently in an interglacial stage of this ice age.
Even sea level rise isn’t unique or unusual.
Thanks for the comments everyone. I haven’t laughed that hard
in a long time. The best part is that you all think you actually know
something. Priceless! Here are a few of the gems:
Cocoa: Even better, let’s place them by agriculture or
open space so we can kill the plants that use CO2. So dumb. And inject it back
into the earth, as if Co2 can’t get through a tunnel
Soupbone: Long time reader, first time to comment. Carbon
dioxide permanent capture involves also the permanent capture of two oxygen
atoms. Best make sure we don’t ever want that oxygen back beforehand. Else make
the system reversible so as to be able to get the CO2 back out. Here is a case
of politicians driving change that is quite serious and they are hardly
qualified to do so.
Gruesome Harvest: Why don’t they pull water from the air? It
would be less expensive and water vapor contributes more to global warming.
Plus, you get the benefit of making clean water available.
PerplexedPete: Princeton University professor William Happer
argues that we are presently in a CO2 DROUGHT! He bases his opinion on historic
CO2 levels captured in ancient glaciers. The youtube censors haven’t removed
videos of him yet, so you can still find interviews with Dr. Happer on the “Conversations
That Matter” youtube channel. He completely disagrees with the mainstream
CO2 global warming hysteria.
Hamsaplo: Not only are we wasting money on this kind of
garbage (there is no climate “catastrophe”) but this is also a
demonstration of how poor the quality of our scientists and engineers is. No
thinking for themselves. No courage enough to push back at what they are
required to do to keep their jobs.
Hilarious!
Now, back to reality. Humans are consuming more energy every
year; from both renewables AND from fossil fuels. Humans are going to continue
to add more GHG’s to the atmosphere and further warm the planet for some time
to come. Those in charge of making decisions will continue to make futile
attempts (like direct air capture of CO2, expanding renewables, spending on hydrogen,
etc.), which will not accomplish much for the next decade, but make it look
like they are at least trying to address the problem. In addition, they will
continue to slam the oil and gas industry for being a big part of the problem,
while also demanding more oil and gas when inventories run low and prices run
up.
The oil and gas industry, will respond (as they have for the
last 10 years now) by continuing to spend less on oil and gas capex, and more
on various green efforts. The net effect will be less oil and gas supply and
higher prices going forward, which ultimately, provide higher cash flows and
profits for the oil companies. The side benefit, is that higher prices will
help reduce consumption slightly as we move forward.
As I frequently say; I cannot change what is happening but I
can profit from it. Which is why I am still heavily invested in oil and gas
firms and am also dabbling in various renewable and hydrogen companies which
might end up winning from the policy initiatives being implemented.
The island of Newfoundland, Canada, is situated close to the former margins of the Laurentide ice sheet. The post-glacial sea-level history is complex, dominated by the effects of an ice-marginal crustal forebulge produced by isostatic deformation of the lithosphere. Marine fossils found above present sea-level can be 14C dated, and examination of the temporal and geographical distribution of these 14C dates in combination with geomorphological indicators of past sea-levels indicates regional trends of relative sea-level change. For most of the island (apart from the Northern Peninsula) no samples have been recovered that date younger than 8000 BP. suggesting that sea-level lay below the present one in these areas for the last 8000 years. The same areas commonly show geomorphological evidence for stands of sea-level both above and below present sea-level. This evidence is interpreted as showing that over most of Newfoundland, following deglaciation, sea-level fell to below present levels, and subsequently rose to the modern level. Exceptions to this pattern are the north of the Northern Peninsula, which shows a history of continuous emergence, or a more complex pattern of sea-levels falling below present, subsequently rising above present, and currently falling; and the northeast Avalon Peninsula, which may have had sea-levels below present throughout post glacial times. This pattern of relative sea-level change is interpreted as being mostly due to isostatic recovery, with the main factor being northerly migration of the forebulge. Mapping the time at which sea-level fell below the present level allows estimation of the rate of northerly migration and collapse of the forebulge at between 4.5 and 11 km/100 years; this is considerably faster than previous estimates.