If you heard a distant wailing this week, don’t worry—it was just The New York Times realizing their beloved carbon capture techno-fantasy is, once again, face-planting in the real world. In a recent Climate Forward newsletter piece titled “Carbon Capture Comes Back Down to Earth”, Times writer David Gelles practically had to mop his keyboard with tears over the news that the carbon removal market—once projected to be a trillion-dollar juggernaut—is now wheezing toward irrelevance.
Not that we mind. After all, here at Watts Up With That, we never bought into the carbon panic to begin with. CO2 isn’t a pollutant—it’s plant food. But watching the climate-industrial complex flop around trying to vacuum molecules out of the sky is pure entertainment.
From “The Next Big Thing” to Layoff Bingo
Just a few months ago, the hype machine was at full throttle. Bill Gates was investing. Google, Amazon, and Airbus were snapping up “carbon credits” like trendy NFTs. McKinsey—ever the oracle of bad ideas—declared carbon capture a $1.2 trillion market by 2050. One venture capitalist even called it “the single greatest opportunity I’ve seen in 20 years.” You almost have to admire the brazenness of the grift.
Fast-forward to now: 24 government grants worth $3.7 billion have been scrapped, Climeworks axed 22% of its staff, and permit applications have tanked. The “market” is imploding because—brace yourself—no one wants to fund something that doesn’t work.
Meanwhile, Climeworks’ headline-grabbing Iceland plant managed to remove only a sliver of its projected CO2. Naturally, the execs blame “ramp-up issues.” Of course they do. It’s never the technology’s fault—it’s always “early days” or “transitional challenges.” You’d think they were launching a moon mission, not running industrial shop vacs for the atmosphere.
The Laws of Physics Want a Word
Let’s be crystal clear: carbon capture is a thermodynamic clown show.
Pulling CO2 from ambient air—where it exists at a wispy 0.04%—is like trying to find a particular grain of sand on a beach… using tweezers… while blindfolded. It takes more energy to remove CO2 from the air than was released burning the fossil fuel in the first place. And even then, you still have to compress it, transport it, inject it underground, and pray it doesn’t leak back out.
This isn’t cutting-edge climate tech. It’s an energy-intensive Rube Goldberg machine designed to appease green investors, virtue-signaling corporations, and bureaucrats allergic to basic physics.
Bonus: It Boosts Oil Production!
Now here’s the kicker: the CO2 some of these companies do manage to capture is often used for enhanced oil recovery. That’s right—after spending billions to “fight climate change,” the carbon is injected into wells to squeeze out even more oil.
And yes, Occidental Petroleum—the same company running a giant DAC project in Texas—openly touts this as a feature, not a bug. The Times, ever reverent, quotes CEO Vicki Hollub promising that the project will help achieve “energy security” and “produce vital resources and fuels.” Translation: we’re going to burn more hydrocarbons and call it green.
The NYT’s Tiny Violin Section
What really makes this article sing is the melodramatic tone. The author laments layoffs, canceled subsidies, and a “retrenchment” in the industry like it’s some noble cause under siege.
And when the DOE finally did something rational—canceling $3.7 billion in vaporware grants—the Carbon Capture Coalition, which is about as unbiased as a pharma lobby, called it a “major step backward.” For whom? Rent-seeking climatepreneurs?
Even Climeworks now admits they’re going into “consolidation mode” and focusing on “efficiency.” Translation: the gravy train is slowing, so it’s time to pretend we’re tightening belts while keeping the PR spigot open.
Final Thoughts: Not Our Problem
Let’s be honest: the entire carbon capture craze was never about saving the planet. It was about:
- Making rich people feel less guilty about flying private.
- Giving bureaucrats a talking point.
- Creating a new market for companies like Microsoft to “offset” emissions without changing a single behavior.
The NYT can whimper all it wants about Trump pulling the plug, but the real villain here is reality. Physics doesn’t care about good intentions, ESG scores, or narrative arcs. It just keeps tallying the kilowatt-hours.
So while The Times continues wringing its hands over CO2 removal dreams deferred, we’ll be here pointing, laughing, and perhaps warming ourselves with the comforting glow of all that wasted taxpayer cash being vaporized in yet another doomed climate gimmick.
Coming Soon:
- Direct Air Capture vs. a Leaf: Guess Which One Works Better
- Climate Grifters, Part VII: Where Are They Now?
- Bill Gates’ Carbon Unicorn: Anatomy of a Bad Idea
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Sequestering CO2 also sequesters Oxygen.
Why would anyone want to do that?
News to me.
What do you think the O2 part of CO2 stands for?
Be more curious, George
Plant Trees and market them as Natural Carbon Capture Machines
Please stop buying into their imaginary CO2 problem.
There are lots of reasons why planting trees is a good
idea, but capturing CO2 isn’t one of them.
But it works. And gives us oxygen in return
The oxygen is the important factor.
Shade is nice. I like trees.
Canada’s disgraced / dumped ex prime minister Justine Trudeau promised to plant 2 billion trees to save the planet.
Turned out that all the spare land in Canada was already covered in trees, so nowhere left to plant another 2 billion of the buggers.
That darn reality / rationality just keeps smacking ideology down.
(Just as it always has)
Somebody pointed out that some study said the permafrost line was moving northward 75 km per year causing CO2 and methane release…probable Climageddon. Someone else pointed out that they knew where the permafrost line was because the boreal forest was advancing northwards in unfrozen ground…someone else calculated how many trees must have sprouted to cover the area…Someone else calculated that Canada’s 300 billion trees only had to grow by 1.2 Kg of cellulose and lignin per year per tree to completely offset Canada’s entire anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Pretty soon the room went silent, and they changed the topic to how they could further greenwash getting more carbon taxes out of the oil and gas industry in Western Canada and rewarding their voter base in Ontario and Quebec for using electric heat pumps, and subsidizing electric cars.
“Oh what a tangled web we weave
When first we practice to deceive”
Sounds like some of our democrats have migrated up north.
We have plenty of our own greenie weenies, thank you.
Our new PM (Carney) is going to sell “decarbonized oil” to Asia.
Forests are carbon (dioxide) neutral of course (trees die/burn/rot)
It is really hard to come up with a worse idea than downgrading perfectly good electricity into hydrogen through electrolysis, but DAC and CCS (as “climate” mitigation) take the prize.
This article is far too kind to CCUS schemes and purposes. There is NO good feature, period.
Engineered and built a few AGI systems (acid gas injection) …if you are producing sour natural gas, containing H2S and CO2, sequestering it underground is very good solution in most cases compared to the expense of building and operating a sulfur plant.
The earth is geologically active.
How do you prevent leaks? Long term.
Despite the hype, there is no real evidence that CO2 has any meaursable effect on our global climate system. The AGW hypothesis has been falsified by science. Spending money trying to fight climate change is just a big waste of funds.
Climeworks
Very close to Slimeworks, home of the famous Slimeburger, the ubiquitous ever miltipling fast food chain in the Craig Shaw Gardner’s Neatherhell novels. I think they knew all along.
Every time I see the name, I think Crimeworks.
Ha!
In the enviro case Crimeworks does. It lines there pockets
I just saw an article that exposed the Obama EPA’s refusal to introduce their study on carbon capture and storage because it concluded that process was not a viable technology. The policies implemented required a proven process to mitigate the “pollution” they controlled. This could be a story tip if I could find the article.
Dilbert Dude, Scott Adams loves the idea of carbon capture. He’s proud of his economics training. What a tard.
Nobody’s perfect. Doesn’t sound like him, either.
Story tip.
Consider my comments on carbon capture from a Wall Street Journal article below:
Subject: Occidental Petroleum’s CO2 Reduction Plan
In the April 11, 2023 edition of the Wall Street Journal, an article by Benoit Morenne described a plan by Occidental Petroleum to extract massive amounts of CO2 out of the air. Occidental is spending more than $1 billion to build the first of a planned fleet of plants. The plant will remove 500,000 metric tons of CO2 from the air per year. Occidental intends to build up to 135 more of these plants by the year 2035. Occidental claims that its initial cost to remove a metric tonne of CO2 would be between $400 and $500. Using $400 a metric ton, the total cost by 2035 would be $2,400,000,000, excluding possible cost reductions due to efficiencies of scale, for removing 810,000,000 metric tons of CO2. Tax incentives will subsidize 45% of the initial costs, thanks to Bidens’ climate package that was signed into law last year.
Consider how this plan will cut global CO2 levels from now to the year 2035. Assume that all 135 plants are on line and operating today. By 2035, these plants will have removed 810,000,000 metric tons of CO2. The atmosphere weighs 5,500,000,000,000,000 (5.5 quadrillion) metric tons. 810,000,000 metric tons of removed CO2 is 0.0000147% of the atmosphere. CO2 currently constitutes about 0.04 % of the atmosphere. Removing 0.0000147 % of CO2 would reduce atmospheric CO2 levels to 0.03999%, which when rounded to two decimal places yields 0.04%. Ergo, there will be no significant percentage reduction in CO2 levels.
Occidental expects to generate between $400 and $630 in revenue per metric ton, which includes a $180 per metric ton tax credit. So, even without the tax credits, Occidental expects to earn between $220 and $450 a metric ton. It should be noted that cost estimates for untested new technologies tend to escalate. Occidental’s projections of costs and potential revenues may be a bit too rosy in my opinion. Time will tell.
At 2.4 billion dollars, Occidental’s project may or may not be a technical or financial success. But the anticipated removal of 810,000,000 metric tons of CO2 by 2035 from the atmosphere will not measurably change the global percentage of atmospheric CO2.
I don’t know what the current price is but in 2022 the water plant I worked at paid $140.60 a ton for Liquid CO2.
Unless the price has skyrocketed, $400 to $630 a metric ton doesn’t sound like a bargain.
(Our supplier got the CO2 from ethanol production.)
How does one generate a revenue from such a system without government funding?
“Pulling CO2 from ambient air—where it exists at a wispy 0.04%—is like trying to find a particular grain of sand on a beach… using tweezers… while blindfolded. It takes more energy to remove CO2 from the air than was released burning the fossil fuel in the first place.”
Sounds thermodynamic. But as often, emphasis rather than quantitative. And wrong.
The free energy difference between CO2 at 0.04% and 100% is
RT*log(.0004)=8,3*290*log(.0004)=-18832 J/mol
The heat of combustion of carbon is 393,500 J/mol.
Are you talking about the heat of combustion of Carbon Dioxide molecules (CO2), or the heat of combustion of the Carbon (C) element here Nick?
CO2 does not burn.
It will burn with Fl2 or O3, won’t it?
Yeah I get that – fire extinguishers.
but why mention anything about Carbon when the subject is Carbon Dioxide?
The claim was
“It takes more energy to remove CO2 from the air than was released burning the fossil fuel in the first place.”
OK, but the whole exercise was / is an idiotic pursuit in the first place, yes?
And a flagrant waste of taxpayers’ dough.
Nick, I think you win the battle but not the war. It does take less energy to sequester carbon than is produced by burning fossil fuels. But it takes so much energy, e.g., as a parasitical load in a coal-burning power plant, that sequestration becomes uneconomical. That is how I understood the article.
Here in West Virginia AEP did a pilot CO2 sequestration project a decade or so ago and found it just won’t work.
Actually, it did work. But the Virginia utility regulators refused to put their share of the costs into the rate base (AEP serves western Virginia). They also refused to pay the for the engineering study for the new 240 MW demonstration project (the pilot was 20 MW).
So AEP shut down the project and wiped all of the pilot equipment off the site.
What does the free energy difference have to do with extracting the molecules from the atmosphere?
It’s the “basic physics” that this WUWT article says people are allergic to, but which WUWT doesn’t seem to have any idea about.
So, instead of answering a legitimate question you chose to go with insults.
Nick,
Your argument will not convince anyone that plucking CO2 molecules from the atmosphere is a great idea. You might better spend your time planting trees. Meanwhile, I have some to cut** and dry for next year’s firewood. Just keeping up with their growth, dying, and decay is exhausting – – growth is relentless. **when I’m not planting little ones
Just responding to
“Let’s be crystal clear: carbon capture is a thermodynamic clown show.”
It is Gelles who can’t get the thermodynamics right.
Confusion there – it wasn’t Gelles (NYT), it was the WUWT writer.
Your figures seem to assume that the removal process is 100% efficient. What is the actual energy consumption involved in the process?
You are correct, Nick. 18.8 kJ/mol is much less than 393,500 J/mol.
There, I fixed it.
Very nice, more good news.
If CO2 is removed from the air, CO2 will bubble out of all bodies of water, especially the cold polar oceans, to replace the captured CO2 molecules.
What were the OXY chemical engineers thinking?
Remove CO2 from the atmosphere, all other factors being equal, the oceans and earth will emit CO2 to replace it to maintain equilibrium of the partial pressure.
Shoveling against the tide.
Comedy is the wrong word. Tragedy is more appropriate.
This a loaded question. One works and one doesn’t.
To my knowledge, no one has developed technology that has captured more carbon than was released in making the facility to capture the carbon.
It is the same thing with wind turbines and solar panels. They do no more than shift the location where the carbon gets burnt. They do not reduce it.
HOW? How could anybody be so stupid as to think such a scheme could work? How?
Stupid? Maybe. Greedy? Definitely.
Correction:
“carbon is injected into wells to squeeze out even more oil”
No. CO2 is injected.
The Iceland plant did not extract even one gram of molecular carbon. It did manage a pissant amount of CO2.
MIT researchers a while back came up with a very interesting process.
Similar to photosynthesis, they passed are over a chemical element and in the presence of sunlight produced methane. I lost the link.
Typo: they passed CO2 over a chemical element….
All of this nonsense is no different than Solyndra. It’s an unsophisticated money laundering operation where left wing politicians use taxpayer money to fund obviously non-viable projects coincidentally run by their friends. Eventually all the taxpayer money vanishes into the pockets of the politicians and their friends. There is no accountability or oversight, just a bunch of truly terrible people getting rich off the taxpayers.
How much CO2 “needs” to be captured for “carbon capture” to work? What will be done with it? How much space will all that CO2 take up? Where will it be put?
Some of this may have been addressed in posts I’ve missed, but they’re questions I’ve had for a while about this approach. Leaving aside whether it’s actually needed, it seems quite impractical to do at any scale that would make a difference globally.
I lived in Iceland where the pictured scrubbers are. I find this very odd. They have geothermal heat everywhere. The Blue Lagoon is a tourist attraction driven by geothermal heat. If the scrubbers aren’t next to a volcano they are useless.
I was lucky enough to visit Hekla when it erupted in the early 70’s. An awesome sight. There are lots of volcanoes that spew lots of CO2 in Iceland.