From spitting in the wind to making a meaningful contribution
It is all about hope…
On a sinking boat, far far away from the coasts, would you rather ladle water out, or run for a safety boat before others…?
If you were promised to death by an incurable disease, would you take care of yourself (not smoking, no drinks or excess food…) as doctors hypothesized that this might slower the evolution of the disease? Or rather burn the time you have left in all kind of crazy experiences…?
Now what if you know that another boat is close and aware of your sinking vessel…
Or if you read in the news that the cure has been found and will soon be commercialized: your disease is no longer incurable.
Would you react the same way in those contrasting situations? Before and after getting hope back?
Ongoing debate
With the emergence of carbon capture technologies, there is an ongoing debate on whether those technologies should be deployed as soon as possible, or if there is no point in doing so until we completely cut anthropogenic carbon emissions.
For sure, there is a strong case: what is the point of cleaning the house while kids are still playing. Let put them to bed first.
An unfortunate mix-up
First, we need to overcome the confusion on who is who by differentiating “traditional” carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) from direct air capture (DAC). Indeed, this mix-up appears again and again, recently in a (otherwise) very good post from Inside Philanthropy.
The frontier between the two is clear:
CCS has been around for more than 40 years and consists in scrubbing CO2 out of exhaust gases from heavy industry and coal/gas fired power plants. CCS can generate nearly carbon neutral electricity, significantly lower the carbon footprint of steel, cement, fertilizers industries. The recovered CO2 then need to be redirected to be used or stored for CCS to achieve its mitigation potential. CCS is a powerful mitigation technology, but won’t help to get rid of fossil fuels nor to draw down CO2 atmospheric concentrations. It does not belong to negative emissions technologies (NET).
DAC on the other hand actually removes CO2 from the atmosphere and has the potential to generate true negative emissions. It can operate almost everywhere as it doesn’t need for a concentrated CO2 source (more on Carbon A list). DAC is a NET.
This clarification is important because the debates on each of the two are very different. CCS is accused by some opponents of granting coal, oil and gas fired power plants a seat in the group of sustainable energy sources, slowing the phasing out of fossil fuels.
DAC on the other side is newer and has nothing to do with fossil fuels. Still, some opponents argue that revealing/developing the DAC capacity would give our societies a license to keep emitting greenhouse gases and thus slow down the mitigation efforts to cut down emissions to zero.
In the rest of this post, I will no longer talk about traditional CCS but rather focus on the debate on DAC.
So then, should we or should we not deploy and support the scaling up of DAC ?
It is about hope
I grew up with the looming threat of the Climate Change (CC). I even blamed my parents’ generation at some point, convinced that my generation will do differently. But basically, whoever fault’s it was, we were doomed, and the world would only get worse. Quite a burden.
Now that some more years passed by, I realize my generation is not doing quite better than the former. Why is that? If the message is crystal clear and consistent ever since the mid 80’s:
more CO2 = more global warming = more problems.
I suspect that this has to do with the drivers of the motivation of people for changing.
A desperate situation fuels selfish behavior
Going back to our sinking boat and hopeless patient, it is clear that the way people would behave in the desperate or in the hopeful situation significantly differs.
The same happens with CC, just that we are still in the desperate chapter of the story. The vast majority of planet Earth’s inhabitants still believe that CC is irreversible. So yes, they agree on the principles. The right thing to do is to change our way of life and reduce our emissions. But eventually for them, it is a drop in the sea, and overall were are doomed anyway.
Even worse, as time passes by, and our carbon budget gets worse and worse, there is less and less point in moving. Many of us have heard and know that even if humanity as a whole would stop emitting greenhouse gases today, we are still on track for a +1.5 or +2°C world, where so many things will be different. So what is the real incentive for action in such context?
The whole thing changes when you know that CC is actually reversible. Because of hope. If your efforts contribute to a meaningful struggle that has some chances of success, you are much more willing to cooperate.
And that is why it is so important to talk about DAC today and to spread the word that climate change is reversible (check project Drawdown for a comprehensive assessment of existing solutions and their potential).
“Big fishes” are also individuals
When talking about the need for a change in our attitudes, habits and way of life, there is always a strong focus on the individuals (lambda people to say so). With sometimes an associated frustration because we all know how hard it is to make people change their habits, and that even if you end up convincing somebody to change, each individual has a tiny impact.
Guess what: decision makers, investors, large clients… are all individuals at some point. They may have children, they may have outdoors activities and beloved natural sites, or even wise grandmas… Their decisions are not 100% mathematics but are also guided by beliefs, trust or mistrust in the future…
So hope is something they also feel. And without hope, they behave as poorly as any other human.
DAC is hope and emergency now rules
Back to our main question: should DAC be deployed and promoted right now? I say yes, and here are some reasons:
First because DAC is the best proof that CC is reversible, and that can give hope back to people, of all kinds. Hope can potentially unlock the motivation people are missing to take bold action in their lives, businesses and communities. People’s actions will accelerate mitigation and help to cut emissions more rapidly, which is what we need the most.
Second because DAC combined with renewables can generate carbon neutral liquid fuels that could make airplanes and other hard to decarbonize sectors, carbon neutral (check Carbon Engineering, a company on its way to commercialize such fuels before 2020). This will further help to cut emissions faster.
Third because DAC will need to deploy incredibly faster than most of nascent technologies. To achieve that, there is learning curve that cannot be neglected. So the sooner we deploy, the faster we will learn.
Fourth because, we want it or not, transition to carbon neutral economy (and reaching net zero emissions) will take time, and meanwhile, CO2 keeps on accumulating in the atmosphere. But the concentration at which we will peak is important, especially due to the risks of triggering positive feedback loops that could annihilate all others efforts. Early implementation of massive DAC can buy us some time and allow us to transition at lower CO2 levels, thus avoiding extra destruction of ecosystems, biodiversity losses or even to lose the control. Check this excellent post form the Center for Carbon Removal for further detail on the duck and elephant curves conundrum related to this transition issue.
Indeed, if we are serious about reversing climate change, we need to take into account how bad will our planet be harmed by our “fossil fuels junky century” in order to evaluate our chances once the storm is over. Because it will not be the same to find us back at 300ppm of CO2 with or without coral reefs and healthy ecosystems, and with a 1 or 5 meters sea level rise.