Similarly, we see no advantage in using blue hydrogen powered by natural gas compared with simply using the natural gas directly for heat. As we have demonstrated, far from being low emissions, blue hydrogen has emissions as large as or larger than those of natural gas used for heat (Figure 1; Table 1; Table 2). The small reduction in carbon dioxide emissions for blue hydrogen compared with natural gas are more than made up for by the larger emissions of fugitive methane. Society needs to move away from all fossil fuels as quickly as possible, and the truly green hydrogen produced by electrolysis driven by renewable electricity can play a role. Blue hydrogen, though, provides no benefit. We suggest that blue hydrogen is best viewed as a distraction, something than may delay needed action to truly decarbonize the global energy economy, in the same way that has been described for shale gas as a bridge fuel and for carbon capture and storage in general.43 We further note that much of the push for using hydrogen for energy since 2017 has come from the Hydrogen Council, a group established by the oil and gas industry specifically to promote hydrogen, with a major emphasis on blue hydrogen.5 From the industry perspective, switching from natural gas to blue hydrogen may be viewed as economically beneficial since even more natural gas is needed to generate the same amount of heat.
We emphasize that our analysis in this paper is a best-case scenario for blue hydrogen. It assumes that the carbon dioxide that is captured can indeed be stored indefinitely for decades and centuries into the future. In fact, there is no experience at commercial scale with storing carbon dioxide from carbon capture, and most carbon dioxide that is currently captured is used for enhanced oil recovery and is released back to the atmosphere.44 Further, our analysis does not consider the energy cost and associated greenhouse gas emissions from transporting and storing the captured carbon dioxide. Even without these considerations, though, blue hydrogen has large climatic consequences. We see no way that blue hydrogen can be considered “green.” ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This research was supported by a grant from the Park Foundation and by an endowment given by David R. Atkinson to Cornell University that supports Robert Howarth. We thank Dominic Eagleton, Dan Miller, and two anonymous reviewers for their valuable feedback on earlier drafts of this paper. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ese3.956
Assessing Carbon Capture: Public Policy, Science, and Societal Need Published: 06 October 2020 Abstract
From typhoons to wildfires, as the visible impacts of climate change mount, calls for mitigation through carbon drawdown are escalating. Environmentalists and many climatologists are urging steps to enhance biological methods of carbon drawdown and sequestration. Market actors seeing avenues for profit have launched ventures in mechanical–chemical carbon dioxide removal (CDR), seeking government support for their methods. Governments are responding. Given the strong, if often unremarked, momentum of demands for public subsidy of these commercial methods, on what cogent bases can elected leaders make decisions that, first and foremost, meet societal needs? To address this question, we reviewed the scientific and technical literature on CDR, focusing on two methods that have gained most legislative traction: point-source capture and direct air capture–which together we term “industrial carbon removal” (ICR), in contrast to biological methods. We anchored our review in a standard of “collective biophysical need,” which we define as a reduction of the level of atmospheric CO2. For each ICR method, we sought to determine (1) whether it sequesters more CO2 than it emits; (2) its resource usage at scale; and (3) its biophysical impacts. We found that the commercial ICR (C-ICR) methods being incentivized by governments are net CO2 additive: CO2 emissions exceed removals. Further, the literature inadequately addresses the resource usage and biophysical impacts of these methods at climate-significant scale. We concluded that dedicated storage, not sale, of captured CO2 is the only assured way to achieve a reduction of atmospheric CO2. Governments should therefore approach atmospheric carbon reduction as a public service, like water treatment or waste disposal. We offer policy recommendations along this line and call for an analysis tool that aids legislators in applying biophysical considerations to policy choices.
Conclusions
Our overall policy finding is that the scientific literature does not support the use of public funds to subsidize the commercial development and deployment of ICR, especially those methods that have been shown to emit more CO2 than they sequester, thereby adding to the existing stock of atmospheric CO2. In specific, these methods are (1) any process in which captured CO2 is used for enhanced oil recovery (EOR); and (2) direct air capture (DAC) when fossil fuel-powered. Furthermore, the current ICR path disregards known risks of chemically intensive, industrial carbon removal, and the adverse side effects and subsurface storage uncertainty at scale.
It is troubling that the biophysical issues of operating ICR at scale are insufficiently addressed or analyzed in the ICR literature. Legislators, too, have neglected to address the biophysical requirements for and consequences of operating ICR at climate-significant scale. As DAC increasingly takes prominence among carbon removal advocates, it is problematic that the issues of DAC energy consumption are short-shrifted. Scientific and technical papers increasingly acknowledge that fossil fuel-powered DAC is thermodynamically counterproductive, yet these same papers fail to tackle the consequential question of whether renewable energy should be funneled to DAC rather than used to directly supply energy for buildings and transport. Virtually ignored in legislation, and unacknowledged in many reports advocating CCS/CCUS and DAC, are the massive land requirements for DAC operation as well as land requirements (acquisition and occupancy) for pipelines for CO2 transport. Also slighted or ignored in both policymaking and most of the literature are other biophysical costs like the prodigious amount of chemicals needed for direct air capture (DAC) to operate at scale. In addition, one must consider the adverse biophysical impacts of massive CO2 transport and storage operations and infrastructure, including potential fugitive emissions, groundwater contamination, air pollution, and earthquakes. Lastly, both legislation and most of the literature ignore the “wartime level of effort” that would be required to scale-up to a climate-significant level of operation.
Our review of legislation, policy actions, and policy-oriented reports shows that government decisions on carbon removal are largely driven by the question of commercial viability. Public policy decisions are being finance-driven, not science-driven. The market frame is pervasive even though, as many studies show—and almost all acknowledge—no viable market exists for the amount of CO2 that must be removed and sequestered in order to have climate-significant impact. Although clothed in the mantle of the market, studies call for government subsidy. Also illogically, papers advocating CO2 “utilization” frequently employ a partial LCA that ignores emissions from the commercial uses to which captured CO2 is put. The history of government subsidies for renewable energy development is frequently advanced as the rationale for why government should subsidize the private development of industrial carbon removal. Early-stage subsidies built the platform for later-stage market success of solar and wind, and, it is argued, the same should be done for DAC. This argument is faulty. Unlike energy generated from solar or wind, for which there is a market, there is not, and cannot be, a “market” for burying CO2. (The dubiousness of an effective market for “carbon credits” has been widely documented; regardless, that is not the same thing as a market for captured carbon.) Paying the cost of CO2 subsurface storage is a non-market transaction. There is no “customer;” there is only the single payor—government—which pays for the service from the collective resources of the polity (Studenski 1939; Ranson and Stewart 1989; Stretton and Orchard 1994; Sekera 2016).
The current path also foregoes the benefits of biological carbon sequestration, which in the U.S. in particular has been dismissed by many policymakers and legislators. Public subsidy in the near-term of commercial ICR methods can create long-term “lock-in” (Erickson et al. 2015; SEI, IISD, ODI, Climate Analytics, CICERO & UNEP 2019) of the fossil fuel industry as the holder of the expertise and owner of the infrastructure (Buck 2018) and the intellectual property (IP) that would be necessary should governments decide that scaling up to a wartime level of mobilization is necessary.
Dedicated storage, not sale, of captured CO2 appears to be the only assured way that mechanical–chemical CCS could meet the societal need of absolute reduction of atmospheric CO2. A carbon removal process in which captured CO2 is merely injected into underground strata for perpetual storage (rather than being sold for commercial gain) may be net CO2 negative overall. However, simply injecting captured carbon into the earth is not commercially viable. (See Online Appendix 4)
We conclude that governments should approach atmospheric CO2 reduction as a public service like water treatment or waste disposal. Some have alluded to this public-interest approach, in which atmospheric carbon dioxide reduction is seen as a “public good” (Mulligan et al. 2018b) or a “collective social good…[wherein] carbon capture and sequestration would be the world’s most massive pollution clean-up operation, conducted as a public service” (Buck 2018). Buck hypothesized “public funding for research and development, public ownership of carbon removal technologies and data [and] public sector jobs in carbon removal”. Importantly, one of the early developers of direct air capture, Klaus Lackner, has said that CO2 removal should be treated like waste removal: CO2 needs to be collected and disposed of like garbage or sewage (Lackner quoted in Magill 2016; Kolbert 2017; Temple 2019a, b).
If massive, government-funded carbon reduction is deemed essential, then a more coherent assessment of alternative methods is needed than has yet taken place in the public policy arena. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs41247-020-00080-5
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