Africa’s first carbon-removal plant stokes questions about responsible climate solutions
Africa’s first carbon-removal plant stokes questions about responsible climate solutions
A joint venture between Swiss company Climeworks and Kenya-based Great Carbon Valley has been billed as a springboard for creating a new, green economy in Africa.
I think it's clear we need to remove carbon from the atmosphere in addition to moving away from carbon-producing energy sources entirely. It's also obvious that these systems will only have net-negative carbon impacts if they're powered by renewables. At this point it's much more carbon-removing and cost-effective to transition to renewables than for energy companies to "offset emissions" by buying "carbon credits" in the form of running these technologies while still producing CO2 etc. At the same time, many countries in Africa have ample renewable resources and would benefit from investment in electrical infrastructure, and if there's incentive to choose renewable instead of fossil fuel to develop Africa and bring up the quality of life of the people living there while industrializing, I think that's ok, and might lead to fewer emissions overall (assuming African countries' industrialization follows the trend of other developing nations).
This comment is well reasoned. Carbon capture is worth continued development and research, it should be a long-term goal once we have moved to 100% renewable sources of energy, until that point it’s just wasteful to spend money on this where it would better be spent on provisioning more renewables or infrastructure as you very rightly point out.
I have to disagree with you because we need to invest now, if for no better reason, to advance carbon capture technology. It needs to advance in parallel. Otherwise we are just pushing that can down the road.
As much as I want to be 100% renewable/clean, that is never going to happen. Not at our population, not at our power demand level, not at our rate of growth.
Hell, we can't even get people to accept nuclear power as part of the solution.
Wouldn't it be more effective in terms of cost and GHG levels to replace coal plants with renewables?
That's gotta happen regardless, and co2 has an atmospheric half life of thousands of years, so we need to get it out somehow to get back to 0°
Im waiting for the mountains of coal we’ve burned (and continue to burn) everyday to be re-extracted from the atmosphere. I think i need something comfortable to sit.
@Blake@feddit.uk thought you might be interested in saving Africa some cash
Yep, carbon capture, much like nuclear, isn’t cost efficient. Investments in electrical infrastructure in Africa should be the top priority there, they still predominantly use paraffin fuel for lighting and other combustibles for cooking and heating. The main issue there is infrastructure rather than energy production. But rolling out energy infrastructure isn’t sexy and profitable so it’s low priority for these capitalist monsters haha