Google, Salesforce, and a handful of other tech companies have announced an $80 million investment in carbon capture technologies, aiming to retrofit industrial facilities like paper mills and sewage plants. This move is framed as a forward-thinking solution to climate concerns, but given the complexities and uncertainties of the issue, it looks more like an expensive foray into the latest corporate trend than a meaningful response to any clearly defined problem.
What’s the Plan?
The funds are split between two projects:
- CREW: A startup focused on capturing CO₂ emissions at wastewater treatment facilities.
- CO₂80: A company retrofitting pulp and paper mills with carbon capture systems.
CO280 takes a different approach by adding carbon capture devices to facilities that burn “black liquor,” a bi-product from pulp manufacturing that’s used to generate heat and power. The devices are supposed to capture the CO2 from burning black liquor so that it can be permanently stored in underground wells. Since the fuel is made from trees, the process essentially sequesters CO2 that those trees drew in through photosynthesis during their lifetimes.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/12/23/24328158/paper-sewage-carbon-removal-google-salesforce-frontier-crew-co280?utm_source=chatgpt.com
The pitch is simple: trap carbon emissions at the source, theoretically reducing the environmental impact of these industrial processes. But these are industries that don’t even crack the top tier of global emitters, raising questions about why this is the focus. Is this really about environmental benefit—or is it just low-hanging PR fruit?
Carbon Capture: A Technology in Search of a Purpose
Carbon capture technologies are a favorite among policymakers and corporations because they give the appearance of action without requiring much sacrifice. But in practice, the approach is plagued by problems:
- High Costs, Questionable Returns: Retrofitting facilities is expensive, and the amount of CO₂ captured is often negligible compared to the costs.
- Energy-Intensive: Running these systems requires significant energy input, which can reduce or even negate the supposed environmental benefit.
- Narrow Focus: Targeting small industrial sectors like paper mills and wastewater plants won’t make a dent in global emissions.
Despite decades of development, carbon capture has yet to prove itself as a scalable or efficient way to address emissions—if that’s even the goal.
What’s Driving This?
For companies like Google and Salesforce, this investment isn’t about solving so-called climate problems; it’s about optics. Supporting cutting-edge green technology offers a way to polish their image and divert attention from their own contributions to energy consumption.
Google, for instance, runs massive data centers that guzzle electricity. While the company boasts about renewable energy purchases, those claims often rest on dubious accounting tricks like renewable energy certificates (RECs), which don’t guarantee actual reductions in emissions. Salesforce’s operations, meanwhile, depend on cloud computing infrastructure with similar energy demands.
Rather than focus on streamlining operations or truly reducing energy use, these companies find it easier—and more lucrative—to invest in a splashy technology that aligns with public expectations about climate action.
Climate Uncertainty: The Elephant in the Room
This entire effort assumes that reducing CO₂ emissions is both urgent and universally beneficial. But the science surrounding climate change remains riddled with uncertainties, from the accuracy of long-term models to the complex interplay of natural climate systems.
This focus on carbon capture is premature and likely impotent, given these unknowns. Even if reducing emissions were proven to yield significant benefits, there’s little evidence that capturing CO₂ at wastewater plants or paper mills would be an effective—or necessary—contribution to global efforts.
The Real Beneficiaries
As usual, the main winners here aren’t the environment or the general public. Startups like CREW and CO₂80 stand to gain substantial funding to develop technologies that might never deliver on their promises. Meanwhile, tech giants secure glowing headlines and a veneer of environmental responsibility.
Taxpayers and consumers, on the other hand, are likely to bear the costs, whether through subsidies for these projects or higher prices for goods and services.
A Fad, Not a Fix
At its core, the push for carbon capture feels more like a corporate trend than a genuine response to environmental concerns. By targeting small-scale emitters with expensive and inefficient technologies, this initiative sidesteps larger questions about whether such efforts are even needed.
As tech giants race to outdo each other in the climate virtue-signaling game, the public would do well to remember that these projects often serve corporate interests far more effectively than they serve the planet. Instead of looking for real solutions—or asking whether solutions are even necessary—this is just another example of companies chasing headlines and staying on-trend.
Sequestering carbon dioxide for any reason is totally without merit.
It’s the champagne of idiotic ideas.
Perfection is unobtainium.
One cannot put CO2 in anything that will contain it forever. Sooner or later it is back in the game.
So what again is the point? CO2 now or CO2 held prisoner for 20 years are released on “probation?”
While I am in no way in favor of the idiotic idea, the “sooner or later” may well be measured in the hundreds of millions, if not billions of years. The evidence says atmospheric CO2 levels were once much higher than currently. Obviously the CO2 that used to be in the atmosphere went somewhere, and not just to coal and petroleum production, and has not come back. This suggests the idea is not only the brain child of idiots but possibly quite dangerous if successful.
Limestone and dolomite is where most of it went. The white cliffs of Dover and such.
A large portion of the CO2 went into the oceans (pH=8.1) where it was converted to bicarbonate anion which was used to form CaCO3 of the many species of shellfish. The massive deposit of limestone and marble were formed from CO2 in the air. The time scale for these processes is billions of years.
The fixing of calcium and magnesium carbonates both chemically and biologically poses a real threat to ALL life on Earth! This is why CO2 levels have been dropping for over 150,000,000 years! Without some sort of intelligent intervention, ALL life will die from CO2 starvation during the next or a subsequent period of glacial onset!
Only idiots, the ignorant, or the insane would be in favor of reducing a gas necessary for Life itself! Which explains why Marxists are such a big part of GangGreen!
What’s the Plan?
To look virtuous and caring. The Tech people have way more money than sense. They can take the hit when it goes belly up.
Yep. They know their data centres are going to require massive amounts of electricity and this will mostly have to be provided by reliable fossil fuel or nuclear energy as unreliables are so fickle. So they propose a chimera to placate the woke.
Climate Capture Utilisation and Storage as the IEA likes to put it. CCUS – Completely Crazy Utterly Stupid
What would be much more reasonable, but most likely even more prohibitively expensive, would be to turn the captured CO2 into some hydrocarbon compound that can be recycled to produce more energy. Of course anyone with any physics or chemistry knowledge realizes this is a downward spiral, but it still makes more sense than “sequestering” the CO2 long term.
MIT has developed a process that converts CO2 to methane using sunlight. The process is somewhat similar to photosynthesis. What is unknown is if the process is scalable to any useful degree.
The alarmists consider Methane worse than CO2. The next logical step is to burn the methane in a gas engine generating CO2. The loss of efficiency is significant.
“They can take the hit when it goes belly up.”
Every bit of money wasted on this nonsense ends up as a small extra cost to the consumer.
Well maybe.
Google spent $1 billion on the Ivanpa solar concentrator to burnish their green reputation only to scrap it with their own engineers saying it was impossible (try and find THAT via a Google search!).
But did they spend $1 billion? No. Well over half of that was funded by government grants and subsidies. Its the kind of spending we can only hope DOGE kills, but beware ANY spending on ANY green project. Dig under the covers and you will find a hand firmly planted in your pocket.
I used MS Bing for the search and got at ton of info.
The title of the article is incorrect. Instead of “Carbon Capture: Tech Giants Throw Money at the Latest Green Trend,” it should read “Carbon Capture: Tech Giants Want Government Money for the Latest Green Trend.” You can be absolutely certain that they would not spend their own money without the promise of lots of tax money.
This is exactly what will happen. We know this because it already has happened.
Can you say “Solyndra”? How about “Sunpower”?
Or Ivanpa.
And when it comes to CO2 capture, (see what I did there?), $80 million is chump change. The PetraNova capture project cost over $1 billion in capital costs for a 240 MW slipstream from a coal plant.
ESG shakedown tactics result in more ad money going to NGO climate pseudoscience.
“Sure is a nice Google you got here, it’d be a shame if there was a fire..” or a strike, or a politcal hack taking potshots.
Shutting down part of the carbon cycle makes as much sense as cutting off the water. But just think how much more could be donated to the poor and homeless if these companies would just fire the ESG board members and DEI staff.
“Shutting down part of the carbon cycle makes as much sense as cutting off the water.”
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Yes, thanks for the reminder. CO2 + H2O and Sunshine yield the hydrocarbon Glucose
They will be selling carbon credits, just another Subsidy Farm.
The carbon credit ‘market’ is i think already pretty much dead..
A lot of big companies have distanced themselves from it..
It is probably one of the most fraudulent markets ever invented.
AL Gore made billions playing in that sandbox.
CCS in my understanding means Carbon Capture Sisyphos, it is an never ending job. Because the CO2 sequestered from the air will be raplaced by CO2 emitted from the sea. It is just an application of Henry´s law!
Many years ago, a US Congressman or some other federal politician stated that what we need to do is get all the CO2 out of the atmosphere. My reaction? Well, you may use your imagination and probably will get most of it right.
Breathing and food being the top of the list.
I don’t mind people that stupid wasting O2 by breathing, as long as they don’t exhale!
This article addresses on the climate things I get angry about. In fact carbon capture covers several “angry items”.
Waste of time and money
Lying
Companies caving in
I wonder about the Board of Directors of these companies, such as Google and Salesforce. Others?
Do none express the view that these are worthless endeavors and not in the best interest of the stakeholders?
You left out, Do they care?
‘Do none express the view that these are worthless endeavors and not in the best interest of the stakeholders?’
I wouldn’t be surprised if ‘stakeholders’ didn’t include the woke / airhead trophy wives and girlfriends that many board members are eager to impress, in which case these relatively small beer endeavors are far from worthless.
Three observations.
Leave the CO2 alone…. let it free to be in the atmosphere where it belongs.
“Symbolism over substance.” Said by a once prominent radio talk show host.
There is also form over function.
For those who do not want lengthy discussions, the book Mere Christian, Mere Scientist has a chapter that states essentials of climate issues.
I find the article rather tendentious. 80 million dollars investment by tech companies sounds like a wee plaything to signal their virtue. Is that really going to make consumer prices go up? Rather doubtful. And subsidies? If you consider the overall humungous amounts of funds going into the Green Pit already, under Trump these type of subsidies will surely be stopped. Now, if states decide on this its up to them. As it stands i dont care..
Only if we get the House and Senate Republicans to go along.
$80M is the upfront investment. The total cost was not stated, nor were the operating costs.
Why is it so difficult for people to understand that carbon is absolutely REQUIRED for photosynthesis which feeds ALL life on earth? Why would any intelligent person want to limit what is the basis for all life on earth?
Whoever claimed the alarmists and virtue signalers were intelligent?
We live in an era where “what is a woman” cannot be answered by a Supreme Court Justice, men can play in women’s sports because they “feel” like they are a woman, and parents have surgery on their children because at 5 years of age they have determined that they were born in the wrong body.
You want these people to understand photosynthesis?
Well said, hoff 🙂
Nope. You don’t get to make rude sarcastic angry insulting remarks across multiple threads and then make nice because I said something you agree with.
You’re an angry little troll spewing garbage on the internet from the safety of anonymity, screwing thread after thread to the point no two other people can have any kind of civil discussion. The alarmists are ascendant because fools like you discredit us all.
Meanwhile. each active volcano on this planet, of which there are thousands, emits in a year, more CO2 than they can possibly capture in total.
I wonder.
Could we get a grant to pour 1 million tons of concrete into an active volcano to suppress its CO2 output?
Lest any of you science illiterate climate crazies get the wrong idea, it is totally in jest, such an effort could only end in tragedy, please don’t do it.
😎
And how much CO2 would be released in the process of making the cement?
Ssssh!
The average alarmist has no idea cement releases CO2. We should keep that quiet or they’ll try and ration that too.
Don’t forget the thousands of kilometres of undersea ridges and subduction zones doing exactly the same thing, with the active spreading zones warming up the deep water as well. These are the undersea versions of what is happening in Iceland.
‘This entire effort assumes that reducing CO₂ emissions is both urgent and universally beneficial. But the science surrounding climate change remains riddled with uncertainties, from the accuracy of long-term models to the complex interplay of natural climate systems.’
What uncertainty? There’s absolutely no evidence from the geological and ice core records that varying levels of CO2 has any effect on surface temperatures, let alone the Earth’s climate. As for the ‘models’, they’re demonstrably unfit for any use beyond supporting the dystopian goals of the Left.
In banana republics you see many abandoned grandiose projects. $80 million does not even qualify as a grandiose project.
What’s Driving This?
Greed
insecurity
Greed gets my vote.
“the amount of CO₂ captured is often negligible compared to the costs”
No cost is too much when promoting your religion.
Any technology that is aimed at purposely removing CO2 from the atmosphere is the very opposite of green !!
What is wrong with these arrogant people? When top physicists like Nobel Laureates publish that CO2 has little warming potential, they ignore the physicists or even try to denigrate them. When top engineers demonstrate that carbon capture and storage has difficulties that question the engineering practicality, they ignore or belittle the engineers. When even run-of-the-mill economists can demonstrate poor results from benefit:cost analysis of carbon capture, they create reasons to do CCS at an economic loss.
It is frightening to see large corporations so dedicated to the promotion of ignorance. What is wrong with them? Too many drug users at the top, paid enough to support mind-bending habits? Or uncontrolled hubris allowed to prosper by lack of devices like laws to restrain stupidity?
Geoff S
Faith overcomes all.
The malignant narcissist sees only wisdom, beauty, and perfection when they look in the mirror! Thoughtful observers just see Dunning-Kruger in full effect!
I asked google and AI answered
“For corporations, investing in carbon capture technology can provide several financial advantages, including: access to carbon credits, … potential for new revenue streams through carbon utilization, reduced regulatory burdens, … and access to government incentives like tax credits, thereby enhancing profitability and future competitiveness in a carbon-constrained market; essentially allowing them to … while potentially maintaining or increasing profits.”
That AI must have been hallucinating.
/sarc
Correction:
Carbon Capture: Tech Giants Throw Money at the Latest Green
TrendTurd