Our understanding is that this report, from the University of Colorado, was delivered last year at a conference on technologies related to climate change hosted by Rutgers University.
The author addresses only the comparative economics of mandated Carbon Dioxide capture at the source of emission, versus the costs of remote sites established specifically for the purpose of CO2 capture.
It is lengthy, and replete with illustrations and calculations that are far beyond our scope.
We present it for two purposes:
To demonstrate that, if Carbon Dioxide capture is mandated, it can best be accomplished at places where environmental energies - solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, whatever - can be harnessed to accomplish the task, and, that, we would be far better off economically to recycle CO2, rather than bury it.
We'll summarize our conclusions, and what we believe to be their implications, following excerpts from the text, with some comment interspersed:
"An idealized assessment of the economics of air capture of carbon dioxide in mitigation policy
Roger A. Pielke Jr.
Center for Science and Technology Policy Research, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO
February 2009
This paper discusses the technology of direct capture of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere called air capture. It develops a simple arithmetic description of the magnitude of the challenge of stabilizing atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide as a cumulative allocation over the 21st century. This approach, consistent with and based on the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), sets the stage for an analysis of the average costs of air capture over the 21st century under the assumption that technologies available today are used to fully offset net human emissions of carbon dioxide. The simple assessment finds that even at a relatively high cost per ton of carbon, the costs of air capture are directly comparable to the costs of stabilization using other means as presented by recent reports of the IPCC and the Stern Review Report."
(The final statement of the introduction is all we really require for our purposes herein, as we explain, below, in our own summation. - JtM)
"This paper focuses on one approach to dealing with accumulating atmospheric carbon dioxide called ‘‘air capture,’’ which refers to the direct removal of carbon dioxide from the ambient air. Air capture has received remarkably little attention in debates on policy responses to climate change ... . By contrast, the capture and storage of carbon dioxide from power plants has received considerable attention ... with all major assessments of future mitigation assuming some amount of carbon capture from power plants and the subsequent sequestration of the captured carbon dioxide. In this paper I explore some of the economic considerations associated with air capture of carbon dioxide, and do not address issues of storage, which are explored in depth elsewhere, and represent one of numerous technical and social obstacles to deployment of air capture technologies."
(So, even though it has been, as we've elsewhere documented, demonstrated to be practical and feasible, "air capture", as opposed to point-of-emission collection, of CO2 has "social obstacles". Based on our earlier analyses and conjectures related to oil field sequestration of CO2, and the angry return fire those comments drew, we are confident in our speculations as to just what those "social obstacles" are. - JtM)
"The approach used in this paper is to introduce assumptions consistent with, and where possible derived directly from, the reports of the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC). This is not so much a reflection of the expected accuracy of the IPCC’s assumptions (which I and colleagues have challenged elsewhere ... but to place the present analysis on an apples-to-apples basis with the IPCC analyses. In situations where a direct replication of the IPCC’s assumptions is not possible, the analysis here seeks to err on the side of conservatism, that is, over-estimating future
costs of air capture. Relying on the assumptions of the IPCC will of course not eliminate challenges to the assumptions of the analysis, but it will mean that (if) the approach here is found to be flawed, then the same criticism must also be applied to the work of the IPCC and mitigation policies more generally."
(We interpret the immediately foregoing, by the way, as a very carefully worded insinuation about the IPCC's methodology, and the conclusions they have drawn. The author seems to be implying that, if his work, his results and his conclusions are wrong, then so must be the IPCC's. - JtM)
"Under the assumptions used in the paper, surprisingly, the costs over the 21st century of deploying air capture to fully stabilize greenhouse gas emissions are comparable to, and under some assumptions more favorable than, the costs of stabilization presented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2007) and the widely discussed Stern Review Report on the Economics of Climate Change (Stern, 2007).
Three conclusions follow from the analysis:
First, the greater the imperative to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, the greater the potential importance of air capture and thus the more attention to research, development, and deployment should be paid to the technology.
Second, air capture deserves a far greater role in debates about policy responses to climate change.
Third, if nothing else, discussions of air capture can help to focus debates on climate change by clearly distinguishing the means and ends of climate policies."
(A potent question, really: What, exactly, are "the ... ends of climate policies"? - JtM)
"The IPCC, both in its 2005 report on capturing and sequestering carbon dioxide and its 2007 Fourth Assessment Report mentioned air capture only in passing.However, in recent years the possibility of air capture in response to the build-up of anthropogenic carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has received increasing attention (e.g., Baciocchi et al., 2006; Yeboah et al., 2006; Broecker, 2007; Hansen et al., 2007; Hoffert et al., 2002; Keith et al., 2006; Lackner et al., 1999; Lackner, 2003a; LANL, 2002; Parson, 2006; Sachs, 2007; Zeman, 2007; AFP, 2008; Jones, 2008; Sarewitz and Nelson, 2008 - (We have cited some of these researchers in our reports, and intend citing more of them. - JtM)). The technology was studied as early as the 1940s and proposed in the 1970s as a source of energy (Zeman, 2007). In 2006, Al Gore and Richard Branson, owner of Virgin Group of companies, called more attention to air capture when they announced the Virgin Earth Challenge promising $25 million to the first 'commercially viable design which results in the removal of anthropogenic, atmospheric greenhouse gases.'
Unlike all other proposals to ‘‘geoengineer’’ the climate system by addressing the consequences of climate change, such as by seeking to offset average global temperature changes with particulates released into the stratosphere, air capture is fundamentally different in that it seeks to address one of the primary causes of climate change by directly reducing atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide.
It differs from proposals to capture carbon dioxide from power plant emissions in that it focuses on removal of carbon dioxide from ambient air."
(An actual reduction in atmospheric CO2, in other words. - JtM)
"Various proposals have been advanced for air capture, several have been operationally tested, and at least several are being commercialized ... . The most straightforward means of air capture is simply through photosynthesis. ... Keith et al. (2006) have developed a prototype system that uses sodium hydroxide and lime to remove carbon dioxide from the air. Lackner proposes an alternative absorption technology that does not use sodium hydroxide, but which is not described in detail due to its proprietary nature. Lackner, of Columbia University, is actively working to commercialize the technology with a company called Global Research Technologies Inc. located in Tucson, AZ. .
There are a range of technologies being explored for air capture, making some form of the technology likely to be developed in coming years. Thus, it is not premature to begin considering the economics of the technology.
The long-term storage of carbon dioxide is not trivial and, like the storage of nuclear waste, raises important questions about long-term sustainability and public acceptance. The analysis presented in paper proceeds with the assumption, following IPCC (2007b) and IEA (2008), that some considerable storage of carbon dioxide, e.g., in geologic formations or in the deep ocean, will be found feasible. To be absolutely clear, this assumption is not a prediction or evaluation of the ability to overcome future challenges of sequestration. If sequestration proves problematic for technical or political reasons, then not only will air capture be fundamentally limited, but so too will be carbon capture and storage, which is now a fundamental part of the climate policies of the EU, G8, United States, and present in virtually all mitigation scenarios of the IPCC, IEA, and other major assessments of mitigation policy. A comprehensive treatment of issues associated with sequestration ... goes ... well beyond the scope of the present analysis."
(Our contention: If geologic "sequestration proves problematic", there are alternatives, as we've documented, in such technologies as the "Tri-reforming" process explained by Penn State University, and others proposed by Sandia, Brookhaven and Los Alamos National Laboratories, among others. - JtM)
"Climate change and the challenge of reducing carbon dioxide emissions have been on the agenda of policy makers for at least two decades, with considerable attention having been devoted to the issue in the past 10 years since the initial agreement on the Kyoto Protocol in 1997. Since that time global emissions growth has shown no sign of abatement, and instead have increased by about 30%.
Successful stabilization at 450 ppm carbon dioxide, often equated with a target for global average temperature change of 2 8C adopted by the European Union, would require completely transforming the global energy system over the next 30–50 years, a challenge that faces enormous technological, social,
institutional, and political obstacles. To understand the magnitude of the challenge, consider the following observation of Caldeira et al. (2003):
--- To achieve stabilization at a 2 8C warming, we would need to install ... roughly the equivalent of a large
carbon emissions-free power plant becoming functional somewhere in the world every day. In many scenarios, this pace accelerates after mid-century...even stabilization at a 4 8C warming would require installation of 410 MW of carbon emissions-free energy capacity each day. ---
Hansen et al. (2007) suggest that the fate of the planet depends upon successfully deploying air capture technologies, 'a feasible strategy for planetary rescue almost surely requires a means of extracting [greenhouse gases] from the air.'
The effects of air capture on the atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide can be illustrated with a simple climate model called MAGICC which has been used by the IPCC to project future temperature change and sea level rise.
One conclusion from this simple exercise is that air capture is compatible with stabilization of atmospheric concentrations at very low levels. There is no reason in principle why air capture could not be used to reduce atmospheric concentrations by an amount greater than annual emissions, thus making any concentration target reachable. The examples shown here are also consistent with the assessment of costs developed in the next section."
(Note: "There is no reason in principle why air capture could not be used to reduce atmospheric concentrations by an amount greater than annual emissions, thus making any concentration target reachable." Air capture would, thus, be far more effective than any conceivable effort made to retrofit existing power plants with Carbon capture equipment. - JtM)
"Estimates vary for the cost of capturing carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere. Keith et al. (2006) suggest that using existing technology the costs could be as much as $500 per ton of carbon, and perhaps eventually under $200 per ton. In 2007 Keith suggested that the cost of air capture could drop below $360 per ton. Columbia University’s Klaus Lackner has suggested that the costs today are less than $360 per ton of carbon, and may eventually fall beneath approximately $100 per ton. IPCC discusses air capture only in passing ...
Here is Prof. Lackner on PBS Newshour, 8 June 2006: 'With off-the-shelf items we have right now, I can drive the cost of CO2 capture from air below $100 per ton of CO2. And I feel that, if you pursue this longer, the ultimate end game will be below $30 per ton of CO2 [$100 tC].' (Online NewsHour, 2006).
Zeman ... suggests that $100/tC may not be attainable before 2050. In an unpublished analysis Herzog (2003) suggested the cost to be $480 per ton."
(That is, it could wind up costing us "$480 per ton" or "as much as $500 per ton", according to a few of the experts above, of the Carbon content of CO2, to capture CO2 at power generation plants, ship it to and then hide it, for a time, in a leaky old oil well. Keep those numbers in mind. - JtM)
"Studies claim costs less than 75 US$/tCO2 [$275/tC] and energy requirements of a minimum of 30% using a recovery cycle with Ca(OH)2 as a sorbent. However, no experimental data on the complete process are yet available to demonstrate the concept, its energy use and engineering costs."
(In "energy requirements of a minimum of 30%", is that 30% of the power generated, in the first place, by the coal that was burned to create both the power and the CO2? Whew!!! - JtM)
"The IPCC provides no reference or justification for its cost estimate. The IPCC’s dismissal of air capture in this manner is surprising, because much of the IPCC’s analysis of the prospects for and costs of greenhouse gas mitigation depend upon policies and technologies whose implementation has not been proven successful in practice."
(Exactly. Geologic sequestration, according to other references we've seen, "has not been proven successful in practice". We are aware only of reports indicating the potential for leakage, and for the use of CO2 for secondary petroleum recovery with no monitoring to document containment, except in Louisiana law where that responsibility falls back onto the original generator of the CO2, after the oil company has injected it into sequestration for secondary petroleum recovery. - JtM)
"Making global cost estimates for any complex set of interrelated systems far into the future is a dubious enterprise. However, the analysis here shows that using very similar assumptions to the IPCC (2007a,c) and Stern (2007), air capture compares favorably with the cost estimates for mitigation provided in those reports. The main reason for this surprising result, given that air capture has a relatively high cost per ton of carbon, is the long period for which no costs are incurred until the stabilization target is reached. Further, a factor not considered here (nor, apparently, in Stern or IPCC) is that the economy would likely grow at a higher rate than with early, aggressive mitigation, meaning that the costs of air capture would be a smaller fraction of future GDP than comparable costs per ton of C requiring large costs early in the century. The cost of air capture under the assumptions examined here is also less that the projected costs of unmitigated climate change over the 21st century, which Stern (2007) estimated to be from 5% to 20% of GDP annually and IPCC (2007d) estimate to be 5% of global GDP by 2050.
To summarize, the idealized exercise conducted here finds that air capture using 2008 technology is of about the same costs as the costs estimates for stabilization at 450 ppm or 550 ppm carbon dioxide presented by IPCC (2007a) and Stern (2007). If the costs of air capture decrease to $100 per ton of carbon, then over the 21st century air capture would in fact cost much less than the costs estimates for stabilization presented by IPCC (2007d) and Stern (2007). This surprising result suggests, at a minimum, that air capture should receive the same detailed analysis as other approaches to mitigation.
The nominal 90% capture rate of most CCS technologies suggests that more than 50% of global emissions would remain unabated even if these were fully deployed.’
The values for offsetting U.S. carbon dioxide emissions from gasoline in automobiles may be easier to understand in terms of the cost of a gallon of gasoline. In 2005 the United States used approximately 140 billion gallons of gasoline (Energy Information Administration, 2007c). Assuming 150 billion gallons for 2007 equates to a gas tax of $1.15 (at 360 per ton) or $1.60 per gallon (at $500 per ton). These levels of taxation are smaller than gas taxes in many European countries. In principle, all of the emissions of carbon dioxide from automobiles in the United States could be removed via air capture using today’s technology at marginal costs that are of the same magnitude as the inter-annual variability of gasoline prices, and U.S. consumers would still have among the lowest gasoline prices in the world.
Conclusion
One way to think of air capture is as reflecting an unambiguous cost estimate of addressing the growing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. These costs are unambiguous because the processes are straightforward, involving costs that can be accurately quantified. Understanding the costs of air capture requires no complex economic models laden with layer upon layer of assumptions about the effects of government polices, social institutions, and human behavior. It is therefore quite straightforward to evaluate the costs of air capture. From this perspective air capture provides a fixed target against which to evaluate other approaches to mitigation, to the extent that they can demonstrate effectiveness (i.e., reducing concentrations in practice, not just in theory) at a cost less than air capture, they might be preferred. As much attention should of course be paid to practical effectiveness as to cost.
If nothing else, discussions of the merits of air capture may serve to help to better identify the distinction between the climate change justifications for pursuing mitigation, which air capture addresses elegantly, and the non-climate change benefits of mitigation, to which air capture offers very little (cf. Sarewitz and Nelson, 2008). Arguably, many advocates of greenhouse mitigation support aggressive action not simply because of the direct climate benefits, but also because of the ancillary benefits, including ‘‘limiting the aggregate scale of human population and economic activity’’ (Parson, 2006). To succeed in winning support, any significant policy proposal will require a coalition of supporters whose reasons for lending their support will be varied, and even contradictory with each other. However, if the differences between formal goals and actual reasons for support become too large, it may threaten the possibility for any action to occur. Air capture makes it more difficult for supporters of mitigation to import into the debate their environmental science & policy (and) underlying agendas unrelated to stabilizing carbon dioxide concentrations."
(Note: One of the agendas of "greenhouse mitigation" activists might very well be "limiting the aggregate scale of ... economic activity". And: "any significant policy proposal will require a coalition of supporters whose reasons for lending their support will be varied, and even contradictory with each other". Without further comment, we remind you of our earlier-published doubts about how, and why, the concept of geologic CO2 sequestration in nearly-depleted petroleum reservoirs became the seeming goal of CO2 abatement strategies and policies promoted most strenuously by environmental activist groups. - JtM)
"Air capture may or may not contribute to efforts to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations. But so long as scientists and policy makers frame climate policy as in terms of stabilizing concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide, then given current indications of its potential effectiveness and cost, air capture deserves to be among the options receiving attention in the international climate policy debate.
Roger Pielke Jr. is a Professor in the Environmental Studies Program at the University of Colorado at Boulder and a Fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Environmental Sciences."
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First, in the above, note that different references were made to what seemed widely differing costs of sequestration. Those must be read carefully. Some referred to the costs per ton of Carbon Dioxide as a total compound, others referred only to the total costs applied per ton of the actual Carbon contained in the Carbon Dioxide.
Our comments following relate specifically to the Carbon costs alone.
Air capture is certainly feasible. And, there are a number of things not addressed even in this thorough treatment of the subject.
Pielke did not, it seems, assess the costs of transporting CO2 to a place of sequestration. If those costs were added to his equations, then the costs of air capture should appear even far more favorable.
He also did not address the potential for use of environmental energy, and the reduction in collection costs that practice would result in, if an atmospheric CO2 collection facility were sited so as to have environmental energy supply options available to it.
Nor did he assess the costs of eternal CO2 sequestration site maintenance and monitoring, which, according to what is now Louisiana law, will be the responsibility of the power company that generated the CO2, and not the oil company that used the CO2 in secondary petroleum extraction processes while it was being sequestered.
With air capture, if a petroleum company wanted CO2 for secondary oil recovery, they could extract it themselves, on site, at their cost, and bear the ongoing responsibility of containment themselves.
And, most importantly from our point of view, Pielke did not address the actual return on investment that could accrue if CO2, once collected, were then, using environmental energy, converted into liquid hydrocarbons, including fuels, via Sabatier or Penn State Tri-reforming, and related, technologies. Recall from above that the actual cost of CO2 sequestration, likely impermanent sequestration, could reach $500 per ton of just the Carbon so treated. That is all "lost" or "sunk" investment that will be borne by taxpayers and the customers of electric utilities who generate power with coal - basically, US society as a whole.
Moreover, if Carbon costs are eventually applied, as they will have to be, to the CO2 emissions of our transportation fleet, the cost of a gallon of fuel will go up in the range of "$1.15 (at 360 per ton) or $1.60 per gallon (at $500 per ton)", with the "per ton" referring to the amount of actual Carbon emitted.
So, another buck-and-a-half tax on a gallon of gasoline is on the way.
What, we are compelled to ask, would the true costs of gasoline and plastics, made from recycled CO2, processed via one of the known technologies for that purpose, actually be, if the completely lost and sunken cost of $500 per ton of geologically-sequestered Carbon were deducted, as we believe it should be, from the cost of Carbon in fuel and plastics produced from recycled CO2?
That reduced amount, we insist - if the alternative is mandated geologic sequestration at a cost of $500 per ton of Carbon, with the costs passed on to taxpayers and consumers - would be the true cost of CO2-based fuels and plastics to our overall US society and economy.
Doesn't sound too bad, now, does it?
