On May
31, 2017 the world’s first commercial atmospheric carbon-capture plant opened
for business in Hinwil, Switzerland.
The
plant, designed and operated by a Swiss company called Climeworks,
is different from existing carbon-capture facilities because it filters carbon
dioxide out of the ambient atmosphere using proprietary technology, rather than
from industrial exhaust, which is quite common.
Climeworks
claims their facility will be able to remove
900 tons of carbon from the atmosphere every year. Furthermore, its
modular design will allow it to be scaled up as the demand for carbon dioxide
increases.
What
do they plan to do with said carbon? Some of it will be pumped into nearby
greenhouses to help the plants grow better, some will be used in carbonated
beverages, and the rest will be sequestered deep underground in Swiss mines.
The point? To stop climate change. Whether or not this is a worthy goal is
beyond the scope of this article, but for the sake of argument, assume that
climate change is a clear and present danger--even an existential threat. Does this project make sense?
No.
First
of all, given the quantity of carbon Climework’s plant is able to filter from
the atmosphere, it would take some 250,000 such facilities to meet even the
relatively modest carbon sequestration goals recommended by the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change--that is 1% of total emissions by 2025. Presumably
building these would cost a lot of money (although in fairness, Climeworks had
not disclosed the cost of its project).
Also,
in order for the company to be profitable, the carbon must be sold to
greenhouses and pop manufacturers. Has it occurred to any of these
“environmentalists” that the moment the lettuce is shipped out of the
greenhouse, or the can of Sprite is opened that the carbon dioxide simply
returns to the atmosphere.
This plant will mostly just move carbon around, and is therefore useless.
The
only way this facility actually removes carbon from the atmosphere is via
sequestration, which is clearly not profitable. This means taxpayers will
inevitably be on the hook for this “business” venture. Of course, carbon is
used in oil wells, but more than enough of that is harvested locally from
exhaust--no one needs Swiss atmospheric carbon.
Finally, Climeworks, and the entire
green technology industry for that matter, appears to have forgotten that trees
exist. Yes, trees. Trees naturally remove carbon from the atmosphere, and
give us beautiful breathable oxygen. They basically do exactly what Climeworks
does, except they are free--or dirt-cheap at the very least.
The best part is that trees are also
very good at what they do. Depending on the
climate and the type of tree, they can remove enormous amounts of carbon from
the atmosphere, and lock it away for centuries. In numerical terms, it only
takes98
“mature” trees (trees that can grow at least 20lb per year) to remove
one ton of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and this number is for
Canadian trees, which are not particularly verdant.
This
means that Climeworks’ facility does the work of just 88,200 trees per year.
This is nothing, in the grand scheme of things: there are non-profit groups
that will plant saplings for pennies, and at most, dollars. One relatively
large tree-planting
charity estimates that their all-in costs are roughly $1 per
tree. If this is the case, then Climework’s facility has a fair market
value of just $88,200.
Of
course, given the scale of the project, and the research that went into
designing the proprietary technology, the Hinwil facility probably cost
millions.
Interestingly, planting trees is not
even the best, or most economical way to tackle the “problem” of atmospheric
carbon levels. A better option would simply be to stop clearing vast swathes of
virgin land for new agricultural and urban development. Take Australia for
example: they could meet their obligations to the Paris Climate Agreement by
doing nothing other than prohibiting new land-clearing projects.
The cost would be negligible when compared to switching to renewable energy.
The
same is true in America, Russia, Indonesia--all over the world, as it turns
out.
But of
course, cheap, commonsense approaches like this lack the sex-appeal that green
technology proponents crave. Not coincidentally, they also lack the
wealth-redistribution component that has made welfare billionaires like Elon
Musk rich. And that gets to the heart of the
matter: green
energy schemes are not about helping the environment, and never were.
They are about getting rich. This is why the focus is always on expensive
solutions, like thickening the Arctic ice sheet by refreezing
it with thousands of wind turbines for a cool $500 billion--yes, that
is a real idea.
Climeworks’ carbon-capture facility is
no different than any of the other failed climate fixes. It is just an
expensive way to do nothing.
Spencer
P Morrison is a JD candidate, writer, and independent intellectual with a focus
on applied philosophy, empirical history, and practical economics. Author of
America Betrayed and Editor-In-Chief of the National Economics Editorial.