A licence to suck - Part 1

Audio version of the article right below the paywall

Two weeks ago, all major and many minor media outlets published and republished a news report from Washington. The Biden administration had granted $1.2 billion to two projects that will test a nascent technology. A nascent climate technology, to be precise, because we now have climate analysts, a climate industry, and climate technologies.

The two projects, one in Louisiana and one in Texas, will suck carbon dioxide straight out of the air, a process the NYT referred to as “vacuuming greenhouse gases from the sky” and the Washington Post described as “giant carbon-sucking vacuums”.

In non-tabloid circles the technology is known as direct air capture but, to be fair to the abovementioned media outlets, it does seem to involve a vacuuming-like process. And that process is the only thing that distinguishes it from the older carbon capture and storage tech that is already being used in some power plants and heavy industry facilities.

Carbon capture is the technology of sucking carbon dioxide out of certain environments and storing it or, with some luck, reusing it. It has been the object of media attention for years, with that attention largely coming and going in waves.

When there’s nothing better to write about, we write about carbon capture and whether it can or cannot work. When there’s something juicier, such as green hydrogen, we drop carbon capture because it’s boring.

Lately, however, all the climate change-related reporting has been converging around the focal point that is terminal-stage climate alarm and the urgent sense of having to take action now. As the stage progresses, carbon capture has come into the spotlight in a very big way.

Because unlike other so-called climate technology such as wind and solar, carbon capture is controversial (Yes, I know wind and solar are, to the critical thinker, just as controversial, but we’re not talking about critical thinkers here.).

Because the industry that is already doing it is the Devil of all industries: oil and gas. And it’s now getting money from the United States’ very climate conscious federal government to do it.

This is certainly outrageous from the climate change centric perspective. What makes it even more outrageous is that not everyone is convinced carbon capture works at scale well enough to be worth the money.