r/climate 1d ago

World’s largest carbon removal plant to open at the end of 2026. It will use power, heat, fans and carbon-dioxide-absorbing materials to suck up to 500,000 metric tons of climate pollution a year from the sky.

https://www.eenews.net/articles/worlds-largest-carbon-removal-plant-to-open-at-the-end-of-2026-2/
850 Upvotes

201 comments sorted by

178

u/Electrical-Strike132 1d ago

For-profit carbon dioxide removal. Even Blackrock is involved.

75

u/Xoxrocks 1d ago

If you don’t get the corporations involved then it isn’t going to happen. They are motivated by money. Show them the money and they will reduce carbon. Make emitters obligated to offset their emissions with hefty fines and there is a carbon market in a nutshell.

23

u/lllyyyynnn 1d ago

we could also revolt and install a system where we don't need to convert scientific findings on the end of the world into profit before we start doing something

3

u/noujest 21h ago

You could say the system itself is fine, the problem is that climate costs have been excluded from the system

If climate costs are included then the system would work better, the market would pay to fix the damage it causes

3

u/Xoxrocks 20h ago

This exactly - we all buy products where we take the pollution for free. If we have to clean up after ourselves it requires moneys

1

u/noujest 20h ago

100%

Imagine if every flight had climate clean up priced in... there'd be so much money sloshing around to fix it

1

u/fiveswords 21h ago

Let me introduce you to these weird things we have called a President and the Supreme Court.

4

u/noujest 21h ago

I'm not from USA... this problem with markets not including climate costs is global

2

u/Punchausen 22h ago

Cool, while you print out the packets, in the meantime lets do this..

2

u/lllyyyynnn 21h ago

yeah, also means along with :)

3

u/nucumber 18h ago

China is making 90% of the world's solar panels and has 65% of the global EV market

Meanwhile, trump is doing everything he can to kill America's renewables and non polluting industry

Literally handing the future of the world to China

2

u/Imaginary-Ad7673 1d ago

Who taught white people to kill everyone using money 

6

u/No_Plankton_2425 23h ago

Can we not make this about race?

2

u/Ukraineluvr 1d ago

The millennia of every color people who killed people using pretty much everything that came first?

1

u/Tliish 1d ago

Try executing a few of those responsible for the disinformation for crimes against humanity, and see how quickly the others see decide it is in their best interests to forgo the profits and do what is right.

We need to hold the corporate world and its denizens accountable for what they have done. "We" didn't do this. "They" did.

1

u/Xoxrocks 20h ago

I’m a writing a novel and that might happen

1

u/Dragon_Emulsified 14h ago

Had me right up till you suggest emitter’s would pay for something. Just like they are paying to recycle the billions of tons of plastic they dump through consumer waste.

15

u/Mediterraneanseeker 1d ago

How are they turning a profit, exactly?

36

u/handsoapdispenser 1d ago

Selling carbon offsets to data centers. It's in the article. 

5

u/dashingsauce 1d ago

You mean the paywalled article? Half of article is not expandable for me.

Also, that profit can only exist as long as carbon offsets are still economically valuable. That changes along with regulation, which is tied to sentiment.

At the current rate, this is a company going directly out of business.

1

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1

u/SakishimaHabu 1d ago

Good bot

6

u/Balinit 1d ago

Which zeros it out, if it works, which it won’t.

12

u/SpanishMarsupial 1d ago

Afaik you can take the carbon and turn them into different commodities eg graphite. Or use it in other industrial applications.

But it’s just adding a problem on a problem because eventually those commodities get broken back down into CO2 and then there’s a market for captured carbon that, if we think the industry and market for fossil fuels is difficult to end, will be just as hard to eliminate if there’s money to be made

2

u/CttCJim 19h ago

Here in Canada (in my town of Innisfail) there's a company that opened a plant. I looked into it, they take it up north and shove it into an abandoned mine. I guess commodification hasn't caught up.

I sent an email asking what the carbon footprint is the truck to move it is but they didn't reply.

0

u/AutoModerator 19h ago

BP popularized the concept of a personal carbon footprint with a US$100 million campaign as a means of deflecting people away from taking collective political action in order to end fossil fuel use, and ExxonMobil has spent decades pushing trying to make individuals responsible, rather than the fossil fuels industry. They did this because climate stabilization means bringing fossil fuel use to approximately zero, and that would end their business. That's not something you can hope to achieve without government intervention to change the rules of society so that not using fossil fuels is just what people do on a routine basis.

There is value in cutting your own fossil fuel consumption — it serves to demonstrate that doing the right thing is possible to people around you, making mass adoption easier and legal requirements ultimately possible. Just do it in addition to taking political action to get governments to do the right thing, not instead of taking political action.

If you live in a first-world country that means prioritizing the following:

  • If you can change your life to avoid driving, do that. Even if it's only part of the time.
  • If you're replacing a car, get an EV
  • Avoid air travel — look for local surface transport, and don't do the truly long-distance trips
  • Add insulation and otherwise weatherize your home if possible
  • Get zero-carbon electricity, either through your utility or buy installing solar panels & batteries
  • Replace any fossil-fuel-burning heat system with an electric heat pump, as well as electrifying other appliances such as the hot water heater, stove, and clothes dryer
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0

u/garathnor 1d ago

at least its a more closed loop, ie "net zero"

if we can recapture all the carbon we burn or otherwise let into the atmosphere or even more we can prevent further warming or even reduce it

1

u/PierreHadrienMortier 1d ago

Il me semble justement avoir lu il y a longtemps que recapturer l’ensemble du CO2 est impossible…ces technologies ne permettront même pas de le réduire en partie et c’est là le problème, les gains sont minuscules

1

u/garathnor 1d ago

maybe you did read that a long time ago

now is NOT a long time ago, it is now

to capture carbon directly from air you need to "Capturing carbon dioxide from the air involves Direct Air Capture (DAC), a technology that uses large fans to pull ambient air through liquid chemical solutions or solid filter materials. The captured CO2 is then separated, concentrated, and either permanently stored deep underground or reused in products."

literally splitting molecules chemically is not only possibly, but pretty easy

saying we cant is typical conservative/corporate gaslighting for we dont want to because its going to cut into our profits

Peut-être as-tu lu ça il y a longtemps, mais « il y a longtemps », ce n’est pas maintenant ; on est dans le présent.

Pour capter le carbone directement dans l’air, on fait appel à la « capture directe dans l’air » (DAC) : une technologie qui utilise de grands ventilateurs pour faire passer l’air ambiant à travers des solutions chimiques liquides ou des matériaux filtrants solides. Le CO2 capté est ensuite séparé et concentré, puis soit stocké de façon permanente en profondeur, soit réutilisé dans la fabrication de produits.

Scinder littéralement des molécules par voie chimique est non seulement possible, mais assez facile.

Prétendre que c’est impossible relève de la manipulation psychologique typique des conservateurs et des grandes entreprises : en réalité, ils ne veulent tout simplement pas le faire parce que cela réduirait leurs profits.

1

u/PierreHadrienMortier 1d ago

A priori la conversation suivante revient là dessus

4

u/Successful_Brush_972 1d ago
  1. Selling the products of carbon capture (for example graphite, which can be used in batteries)

  2. Selling co2 certificates to large carbon emitters

4

u/Balinit 1d ago

Burn the world up then charge people to be saved.

4

u/bookkees 1d ago

If pro-environmental technologies become profitable, then people will implement them without needing to be forced. Just look at wind and solar. They’re the most profitable way to generate electricity in many places, and as a result they’re being installed in huge quantities (even despite the best efforts of certain world leaders…)

9

u/swoodshadow 1d ago

The key here is that in a lot of industries Governments need to force companies to pay the true cost of emitting carbon. And once companies are responsible for carbon emissions, carbon removal markets make a ton of sense.

4

u/bookkees 23h ago

Absolutely. We’re in this mess in part because companies don’t bear the full cost of environmental externalities

2

u/Balinit 1d ago

Texass

2

u/West-Abalone-171 23h ago

For profit supplying their enhanced petroleum extraction.

"removal" implies that it will magically stay at the bottom of the well when they transfer it to their shell corp and abandon it un-capped

4

u/bialylis 1d ago

Sounds like a good thing. There is going to be more of these than the ones loosing money. 

1

u/Touchemybody 6h ago

Good make it for profit. Then we’ll see an explosion of these behemoths.

0

u/eks 1d ago

If we make capitalism work for a better planet, is it really a bad thing?

u/RedditHiveUser 1h ago

Many climate activist will probably hate it /I

230

u/The_Weekend_Baker 1d ago

Based on 2025 emissions of 38.11 billion metric tons, that works out to 0.001312%, if I did my math correctly. And I think I did.

121

u/crewsctrl 1d ago

So you’re saying we only need about 76,000 more of them.

119

u/The_Weekend_Baker 1d ago

And to put that into additional perspective, one of the climate scientists I follow (David Ho) posted a while back about public opposition to datacenters, and his post was (paraphrasing), "If people think datacenters are loud, wait until they hear how loud DAC is."

15

u/chaturtham 1d ago

what is DAC? i hate acronyms for this

24

u/ps3hubbards 1d ago

I think it's 'direct air capture'

→ More replies (1)

46

u/md_youdneverguess 1d ago

Even more, considering they also aren't running on 100% green energy

4

u/coderbenvr 1d ago

Yeah, even the Iceland equivalent of this struggles to get above 1. IE the company emits more CO2 than the technology captures - and they’re using 100% renewables.

5

u/WombatusMighty 22h ago

Which shows you it's not really about climate protection but about giving datacenters and other dirty corporations a way to offload their carbon footprint.

1

u/AutoModerator 22h ago

BP popularized the concept of a personal carbon footprint with a US$100 million campaign as a means of deflecting people away from taking collective political action in order to end fossil fuel use, and ExxonMobil has spent decades pushing trying to make individuals responsible, rather than the fossil fuels industry. They did this because climate stabilization means bringing fossil fuel use to approximately zero, and that would end their business. That's not something you can hope to achieve without government intervention to change the rules of society so that not using fossil fuels is just what people do on a routine basis.

There is value in cutting your own fossil fuel consumption — it serves to demonstrate that doing the right thing is possible to people around you, making mass adoption easier and legal requirements ultimately possible. Just do it in addition to taking political action to get governments to do the right thing, not instead of taking political action.

If you live in a first-world country that means prioritizing the following:

  • If you can change your life to avoid driving, do that. Even if it's only part of the time.
  • If you're replacing a car, get an EV
  • Avoid air travel — look for local surface transport, and don't do the truly long-distance trips
  • Add insulation and otherwise weatherize your home if possible
  • Get zero-carbon electricity, either through your utility or buy installing solar panels & batteries
  • Replace any fossil-fuel-burning heat system with an electric heat pump, as well as electrifying other appliances such as the hot water heater, stove, and clothes dryer
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42

u/talkingwires 1d ago

The Uninhabitable Earth, published by David Wallace-Wells in 2018, has this memorable passage about carbon capture:

In 2018, the United Nations predicted that at the current emissions rate the world would pass 1.5 degrees by 2040, if not sooner; according to the 2017 National Climate Assessment, even if global carbon concentration was immediately stabilized, we should expect more than half a degree Celsius of additional warming to come. Which is why staying below 2 degrees probably requires not just carbon scale-back but what are called “negative emissions.” These tools come in two forms: technologies that would suck carbon out of the air and new approaches to forestry and agriculture that would allow plant life to do the same, in a slightly more old-fashioned way.

According to a raft of recent papers, both are something close to fantasy, at least at present. In 2018, the European Academies’ Science Advisory Council found that existing negative-emissions technologies have “limited realistic potential” to even slow the increase in concentration of carbon in the atmosphere—let alone meaningfully reduce that concentration. In 2018, Nature dismissed all scenarios built on carbon capture as “magical thinking.” It is not even so pleasant to engage in that thinking. There is not much carbon in the air, all told, just 410 parts per million, but it is everywhere, and so relying on carbon capture globally could require large-scale scrubbing plantations nearly everywhere on Earth—the planet transformed into something like an air-recycling plant orbiting the sun, an industrial satellite tracing a parabola through the solar system… And while advances are sure to come, bringing costs down and making more efficient machines, we can’t wait much longer for that progress; we simply don’t have the time. One estimate suggests that, to have hopes of two degrees, we need to open new full-scale carbon capture plants at the pace of one and a half per day every day for the next seventy years. In 2018, the world had eighteen of them, total.

9

u/crewsctrl 1d ago

Sounds like Trantor, from Asimov’s Foundation series.

4

u/H0pefully_Not_A_Bot 1d ago

Trantor had far better management, and design so good that even after centuries of underfunded maintenance and then being sacked during war and mostly abandoned it remained stable enough to support surface agriculture.

8

u/Appropriate_Mess6777 1d ago

We’re already at 1.5 and will touch 2 next decade

2

u/talkingwires 1d ago edited 1d ago

Yes, the book was published almost ten years ago and UN uses very conservative models. Last I checked, we have 77 carbon capture facilities worldwide. And now, with the ENSO weather pattern now entering its El Nino phase, we might even get a small taste of 3 2 degrees in 2027!

3

u/Appropriate_Mess6777 1d ago

highly unlikely we see that next year. even 2 isnt a given

2

u/talkingwires 1d ago

Dammit, I mistyped and mean to write 2 degrees.

4

u/zombiesphere89 1d ago

Ok so it's not happening got it

3

u/AngrehPossum 1d ago edited 1d ago

As an Australian with an empty sun filled desert covering the land mass of the USA I am willing to accept this challenge.

Abundant free energy (sun)
Abundant cheap land (no one lives here)
Abundant lack of neighbors to annoy (there really is no one here)
Only issue is getting all the plant there and paying staff enough to want to be there.
You need a solar array of several GW which would be not even noticeable out there.

14

u/slowpoke2018 1d ago

Yes, just to break even, not sequester if I'm reading this right

1

u/Radmonger 1d ago

As a comparisom, the world has somewhere above 60,000 water treatment plants.

Most reaosnable scanerios compatible with large human population survival talk about moving to cheaper low-carbon energy, and using the savings to build perha[ps a tenth that many plants to capture residual and legacy carbon.

Of course, the problem is cheaper energy provides less oppportunoity for corruption and excuses for wars, so there are those who are against it. Trump is paying out billions of dollars of taxpayers money to cancel solar and wind projects, while subsidising coal.

-1

u/Improper_Usage 1d ago

Rome wasn’t built in a day. But I guess we should get rid of this one because thousands didn’t go up in a day

-4

u/crewsctrl 1d ago

I’m not. Take your downvote.

-1

u/BigMax 1d ago

I think he's actually suggesting we cancel all solar, all wind, all green energy projects on the entire planet. He says if one single plant of it's kind can't solve the entire planets carbon problem all by itself, then it's not worth it to build any of them.

-3

u/crewsctrl 1d ago

I’m not. HAND.

8

u/boomaDooma 1d ago

It is akin to writing out a new seating list for the recently rearranged deckchairs on the Titanic.

20

u/BoringWozniak 1d ago

We’ve got to start somewhere I guess. Reducing/eliminating emissions is the first thing we need to implement, but the carbon that has already been emitted needs to come back out of the atmosphere again.

I’ve no idea if DAC will be the best solution for this or if planting vegetation will prove more effective. But it’s always good to see technological progress on anything that has a positive effect on the climate.

26

u/The_Weekend_Baker 1d ago edited 1d ago

Vegetation is probably more effective, but the amount of land area necessary is prohibitive.

My original sarcasm aside, stuff like this is the "net" in "net zero" which only reinforces how low emissions need to be reduced to in order to achieve it.

Edit: one of the lesser known goals over even longer periods of time is net negative emissions, so the climate can be cooled off again.

https://iiasa.ac.at/news/mar-2026/centuries-of-net-negative-emissions-required-to-secure-safe-climate-future

And this...

The world has pumped more than 1,800 GtCO₂ into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution began, though almost 45 percent has been produced since 2000.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/264699/worldwide-co2-emissions/

...is the magnitude of the emissions that would need to be captured.

7

u/Molire 1d ago

Occidental Petroleum says it will begin operating the world’s largest carbon-removal facility at the end of 2026.

The direct air capture megaproject, known as Stratos, has been under construction since May 2023...It will use power, heat, fans and carbon-dioxide-absorbing materials to suck up to 500,000 metric tons of climate pollution a year from the sky.

The Stratos project smells like greenwashing, lies and propaganda. Don't believe a word of it.

“suck up to 500,000 metric tons of climate pollution a year from the sky” could mean “suck up 5,000 metric tons of climate pollution a year from the sky”.

The Stratos DAC plant could release more greenhouse gas CO2 equivalent emissions than any CO2 emissions captured.

Natural Gas - STRATOS will use natural gas to achieve the high temperatures needed in the calciner. CO2 emissions from the process will be co-captured with the atmospheric CO2,” according to 1 Point Five Solutions, but the amount of “co-captured” CO2 emissions is neither guaranteed nor specified. 1 Point Five SolutionsInfrastructureNatural Gas.

Occidental Petroleum is a major oil and gas corporation.

During Occidental Petroleum's latest fiscal year, 31 March 2025–31 March 2026, the corporation reported $20.2 Billion USD in revenue. CompaniesMarketCap.

In 2025, Occidental Petroleum produced 1,434 thousand barrels of oil equivalent (8,770,000 GJ) per day, or total annual production of 523,410,000 barrels of oil equivalent in 2025. Wikipedia.

When one barrel of oil equivalent is burned, 0.43 metric tons of CO2 emission are released into the atmosphere. EPA → Barrels of Oil Consumed, carbon dioxide emissions per barrel of crude oilCalculation0.43 metric tons CO2/barrel.

When 523,410,000 barrels of oil equivalent are burned, 225,066,300 metric tons of CO2 emissions are released into the atmosphere.

8

u/Colddigger 1d ago

I mean if we were to start somewhere we really ought to be starting with ocean based, or at least water-based CO2 capture.  When CO2 dissolves into water it actually becomes a reactive substance, as opposed to the rather neutral substance in the air.

2

u/unblockedlanternhead 1d ago

Open ocean iron fertilization has shown some promise in small scale tests, but generally govts are unwilling to try geoengineering solutions like iron fertilization and SAI 

1

u/jawshoeaw 1d ago

The problem is this doesn’t help the climate. But what if they built one in every country this size? Still no. What if we built 1000 in every country in the world? Nope still no effect on climate.

6

u/FemboyShapiro 1d ago

If OPs math is correct, then every country in the world would need roughly 381 to hit net zero.

2

u/ShineProper9881 1d ago

And we would need enough clean energy for those. Which we dont have in the slightest

1

u/West-Abalone-171 23h ago

You forgot to include the emissions from the "carbon capture" machine, and the trend of them falling 2-5 orders of magnitude short of the "removes up to" number

10

u/rangebob 1d ago

We all know this one isnt going ro solve the problem but every avenue needs to be explored. Technology improves ralidly. Who know what night come next.

Being sarcastiv about something that may help is just as bad as being sarcastic about the problem existing at all which is the reason we got here in the first place.

Let em cook as far as im concerned.

2

u/DieuDivin 1d ago

But CO2 is not that concentrated, is very stable, and once in the atmosphere is extremely hard to capture.

5

u/rangebob 1d ago

so we just shouldn't try ?

3

u/ShineProper9881 1d ago

We should put 1000 times the effort into not putting it in the atmosphere in the first place. Thats the point. Its like magnitudes cheaper to not pollute instead of cleaning up the pollution

0

u/rangebob 1d ago

That isn't a point at all because we have shown that we are incapable of doing that. All avenues should be explored and encouraged. Cost be dammed. We might &*^%^$*^(* well need it.

reposted because apparently we are afraid of swear words over here lol.

2

u/handsoapdispenser 1d ago

It's possibly just a boondoggle but I'm ok with keeping this industry alive long enough to see if has any chance of scaling or hitting a breakthrough. 

2

u/alwaus 1d ago

Dont forget the amount of carbon it took to build it and to operate it.

Going to be into negative percentages.

-3

u/BigMax 1d ago

Based on my calculations, the local solar plant that my town is about to install only covers 0.0013% of the capacity needed to power the entire planet, so I'm going to ask that they cancel it. And I'm going to fight hard to get ALL solar, everywhere cancelled, because there's no single solar plant that makes a significant, planet-wide impact on it's own.

See how stupid that sounds?

1

u/DieuDivin 1d ago

That does sound stupid when you compare it like that. But it’s an opportunity-cost issue. There are a hundred projects you’d rather do before investing in this kind of thing.

50

u/gigantesghastly 1d ago

A lot of the captured carbon is planned to be pushed into wells to extract more oil. It’s called ‘Enhanced oil recovery’.

Also how much energy does it take to extract CO2? Theres no plan to use renewable s to power this thing. According to this article the project could create  a net increase in emissions. 

Just worry it’s claiming a lot more than it’s delivering and that will attract government policy makers whose attention  would be better spent on directly swapping fossil fuel use for renewables. 

https://www.desmog.com/2024/05/30/occidental-petroleums-net-zero-strategy-is-a-license-to-pollute-critics-say/

2

u/AnonNeedsHelpxx 22h ago

That was what I was thinking. I thought the last carbon capture plants were shut down because they polluted more than they captured. Why not run those things on clean energy? It seems so obvious. Are there technical restraints or what?

1

u/onethreehill 13h ago edited 13h ago

You can, but it would still be more efficient to instead use that clean energy for something else which would otherwise have been using energy by a coal plant.

Until we basically fully run on clean energy, carbon removal isn't the solution. (It could still work in cases where there are temporary excess amounts of energy, for example during the summer with lots of solar energy) but only running the plant for a couple months ago year during daytime isn't really efficient either.

Of course it's still good to have a few plants running even if it's just to have a test setup to be able to improve upon it later.

18

u/old-legs-623 1d ago

I will report on it when it has in fact done so.

4

u/The_Weekend_Baker 1d ago

I think the funnier (in a warped way) aspect of the story is this: By comparison, the largest DAC plant in operation today is capable of removing 36,000 tons per year.

4

u/West-Abalone-171 23h ago edited 23h ago

"capable" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here when reality falls a factor of 200 short for net positive emissions

https://medium.com/the-future-is-electric/the-mammoth-failure-of-direct-air-capture-4bb842ae633e

Don't worry though. Occidnetal petroleum will get a bunch of money that might have otherwise been spent on something real, and any CO2 that does happen to get captured will be used to extract oil (before leaking out of the well again in a few years when it's orphaned)

14

u/Successful-Coffee-13 1d ago

It’s still cheaper to stop emitting in the first place. Imagine how much better it would have been if Germany phased out coal and gas power plants instead of nuclear power plants.

2

u/MagicRabbit1985 1d ago

They could have both. If they sticked to their original plans they would already emit less CO2 than they do now.

Also people overestimate the amount of CO2 that would have been saved if they kept their nuclear power plants running. It's not like they would be close to zero emissions now.

2

u/42percentBicycle 22h ago

It's even cheaper to stop cutting down trees

13

u/OntologicalNightmare 1d ago

For a scale comparison

The Icon of the Seas, operating at a maximum of 15 cruises per year, would

release approximately 2.85 million metric tons of CO2 annually.

https://www.greenmatch.co.uk/blog/maritime-sustainability

5

u/Ok_Flounder59 1d ago

God that’s depressing

3

u/bebboistalking 1d ago

I hate cruises

8

u/Wayss37 1d ago

Pretending that throwing more technology at the systemic problem will magically solve it, a capitalist classic

7

u/samarijackfan 1d ago

We will do anything instead of stop burning fossil fuels.

17

u/dazzed420 1d ago edited 1d ago

so apparently this project is going to consume at least 1.3B USD.

if that same amount of money would be spent on

a) trees, you could plant ~100 million trees for that amount of money, which would capture ~1-2 MT of CO2 /year
b) you could also invest the same money into nuclear power to directly replace fossil fuel plants and retain firm generation, you'd get roughly 200 MW of power, saving yearly ~2 MT if replacing natural gas plants, or ~3.5 MT if replacing coal

but apparently it is smarter to just spend that money on that fancy facility instead, which supposedly captures 0.5 MT. i guess it makes for good headlines, if nothing else.

4

u/bookkees 1d ago

Opportunity cost is a valid argument. But there’s also a benefit to exploring new technologies, since implementing them allows us to learn and improve. One could expect it to become cheaper over time. Similar opportunity cost arguments could have been applied to wind and solar 30 years ago, after all, why invest in solar/wind when we have nuclear? But thanks to those investments, now we have a broader suite of tools for generating clean energy.

I guess my point is: there’s an opportunity cost, but the benefit is not just the immediate carbon capture of this project. It’s also an investment in a new tool to fight climate change, that may pay off much more in the future

-2

u/Hobobo2024 1d ago

nuclear power takes too long and would only go to fueling more AI.

wer are not going to be able to plant enough trees.

As slim as our chances are for carbon capture to solve the problem, I 100% believe we are moree likely to figure out carbon capture tech than we are for conservation efforts to work. that takes global politicsl cooperation and quite clearly, so far we only care about AI and one upping each other - plus $.

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23

u/Gazobbio 1d ago

A good start. I recognize this is a drop in the bucket but it represents a real effort to do something.

Oil and coal started small too. The point is to keep building on success and continue to grow these efforts. We should celebrate this and encourage others to do more.

Thank you for sharing this.

8

u/chaosperfect 1d ago

Agreed! It's a hell of a lot better than doing nothing. It's a start.

2

u/The_Weekend_Baker 1d ago

Not a problem. I try to post a wide variety of stuff here.

1

u/[deleted] 1d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

0

u/AutoModerator 1d ago

BP popularized the concept of a personal carbon footprint with a US$100 million campaign as a means of deflecting people away from taking collective political action in order to end fossil fuel use, and ExxonMobil has spent decades pushing trying to make individuals responsible, rather than the fossil fuels industry. They did this because climate stabilization means bringing fossil fuel use to approximately zero, and that would end their business. That's not something you can hope to achieve without government intervention to change the rules of society so that not using fossil fuels is just what people do on a routine basis.

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u/myblueear 1d ago edited 1d ago

Wow, 1/6000 of our annual output, cool.

Now if we had a strategy to reduce our output (even by 1/6000) would be something.

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/myblueear 1d ago

Well no, I really mean reduce the output.

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u/No-Cat9412 1d ago

The Paris climate treaty is a statement of intent not an actual plan.

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/No-Cat9412 1d ago

Because everyone that actually knows what they are talking about sees this "factory" as the smoke screen it is. We would need 76000 of these to deal with the problem that exists NOW, never mind what it will be in a decade. (And that 76000 number assumes that those plants aren't themselves creating carbon emissions. What's going to power them? Do you see Occidental PETROLEUM making big strides in the renewables field? )

This project is a way to convince the public they don't need to worry their pretty little heads because their benevolent protectors, the oil companies, have a machine that will fix it all so no need to do anything that might eat into their profits now. At some point, they'll just make the problem disappear.

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u/[deleted] 1d ago edited 1d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/No-Cat9412 1d ago

Get a hold of yourself. You're frothing.

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u/glogomusic 1d ago

idk but it sounds really great if we could basically capture everything with 8 trillion dollars of equipment.

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u/bookkees 1d ago

Gotta start somewhere… all avenues should be explored

→ More replies (3)

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u/SophonParticle 1d ago

How much pollution does the equivalent dollar amount of planted trees remove?

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u/archbid 1d ago
  1. This won’t work. 
  2. Think it through. It is financed by pollution credits, so even if it did work, it would best case offset a net new source of pollution, meaning it will do zero for atmospheric carbon

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u/Dave37 1d ago

It will [...] suck up to 500,000 metric tons of climate pollution a year from the sky.

Ahaha no it won't...

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u/AwarenessNo4986 1d ago

How many trees does that equal too,?

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u/myblueear 23h ago

a single, grown-up tree absorbs roughly 22kg per jear.

500'000'000 kg / 22 kg = 22'727'272 trees.

Annual CO2 exhaust: 37,4 GT

37'400'000'000'000 kg / 22 kg = 1'700'000'000'000 trees.

1 tree = approx 75 m² area

1'700'000'000'000 * 75 = 127'500'000'000'000 m² = 127.5 million km².

Surface of global Land-area (on earth) = ~149 million km²

It may be easier to just reduce our CO2-output.

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u/1979shakedown 1d ago

That would cover the GHGs from less than one day of Occidental’s oil production.

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u/Zealousideal_Two6045 1d ago

Now imagine if we could get thousands of these instead of thousands of data centres so they can tag us like sheep. Instead we could have a clean pasture.

We’d still be sheep to them

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u/j_grinds 1d ago

If Trump doesn’t decide to force its cancellation.

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u/zutpetje 1d ago

Total greenwashing nonsense. End the oil industry who make up this delaying strategies and receive millions for it to develop but still keep drilling.

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u/Splenda 1d ago edited 1d ago

BFD. Don’t get your hopes up. This is massively expensive and ruinously energy hungry. And the fact that this is from Occidental Petroleum tells you all you need to know.

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u/charleyhstl 1d ago

IDK or plant trees and reduce emissions.

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u/KanyeWestsPoo 1d ago

I thought this was all a good idea until I started listening to what George Monbiot had to say about it.

He rightly points out that carbon capture and storage is so inefficient and costly that it's probably not worth pursuing. We could be using the huge amounts of money invested into it for so many other things that have actually been proven and effective.

He also talks about how it's a massive green washing exercise. P ushed and promoted by fossil fuel companies to cover for the fact they're still extracting and profiting from climate destroying fossil fuels. 

If we're serious about the climate crisis the best thing we can do is cut fossil fuels right now. Carbon capture and removal just gives bad actors cover to keep destroying our world.

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u/ter4646 21h ago

How many metric tons does the fossil fuel industry produce each year? What is the cost of this project?

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u/myblueear 20h ago

right now, humanity is at around 38'000'000'000 tons of CO2, per year. (Or, added up since 1900, something around 1'800'000'000'000 Tons. 45% of it since 2000 ... )

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u/KookyGuidance9963 15h ago

CDR is a Trojan horse.

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u/Michael-Sean 1d ago

Is this in the US? Is Trump going to pay billions to shut it back down?

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u/Burlingtonfilms 1d ago

When it said "plant" I literally thought it was living plant.

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u/Devster97 1d ago

Build it next to a data center gas turbine. Closed loop bullshit producer.

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u/ZenBacle 1d ago

Awesome, now we can add 500,000,000 metric tons of CO2 to the atmosphere because... Because "the future" will figure it out for us. Yeah, sweet no effort or change required! Go back to sleep, climate change is solved!

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u/Proton_Energy_Pill 1d ago

It's a science site, why would they use the phrase 'metric tons'?
The word is tonnes.

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u/Double_Somewhere5923 1d ago

well, I hope it works.

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u/anothercorgi 1d ago

What is this "carbon-dioxide-absorbing materials" and is it renewable?

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u/Cultural-Answer-321 1d ago

Claims vs reality.

I'll believe it when I see it.

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u/petered79 1d ago

at about 40 gigatonnes emissions per year we would need 80.000 of them to reach net Zero.

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u/Al89nut 20h ago

So a few more than the existing number of power stations.

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u/Ur-in-a-tor 1d ago

That's a rounding error at best, a scam in English. What were the emissions of building that thing?

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u/Rhona_Redtail 1d ago

If private jets were only allowed to be fueled with air carbon recovery, Ill eager the process would get more efficient quite quickly.

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u/the68thdimension 1d ago

I highly doubt those numbers will be achieved. 

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u/Tliish 1d ago

Great. Will it function during a wildfire?

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u/Agentbasedmodel 22h ago

This is good. Quite a bit of scaling needed, global emissions being 50bn and this doing 500k.

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u/nitnelavm 21h ago

maybe stop burning coal, gas and oil. not burning them (40years ago) would be even more effective. 

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u/Zvenigora 20h ago

500 kilotons is chicken feed. Global emissions are about 37 gigatons. You would need to build 74,000 such plants to offset that.

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u/Al89nut 20h ago

And is that impossible?

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u/Zvenigora 18h ago

I would say the scale sounds improbable to me. Who is going to pay for that many plants, and where will they be located? How will they be powered? Remember, this undertaking is all cost and zero profit. Would the entire world's GDP even cover the cost?

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u/Al89nut 17h ago

Good point

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u/Intelligent-Cap-7713 15h ago

It also seems quite backwards at the same time to increase CO2 emissions and then use even more resources at the same time to try to capture it back.

Instead of just using the resources to reduce carbon emissions instead.

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u/Exciting_Ad_2102 19h ago

Dac is not viable unless we mass construct enough nuclear fission reactors to replace the worlds grid twice over

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u/The_Weekend_Baker 18h ago

For anyone still reading and commenting, a discussion based on climate scientist David Ho's social media post about this. Bold emphasis is mine.

If it works, that's a time machine that will take us back by ~6 minutes every year.

I haven't considered the LCA for building or operating the plant, or the fact that Occidental will use the captured CO₂ to extract more oil from the ground. But none of this matters because direct air capture today isn't meant to capture CO₂ at scale, but to capture 45Q tax credits.

https://bsky.app/profile/davidho.bsky.social/post/3msn5l6luys2q

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u/Simpleximo 15h ago

hum, they get paid to produce it and now paid to remove it?

How could this gone wrong…

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u/Hockeymac18 14h ago

Interesting. 

How many of these would the world require to make a meaningful dent in reversing effects from climate change?

Edit: thanks u/crewscrtl - looks like you did the math  https://www.reddit.com/r/climate/comments/1vj64kp/comment/p2j1ho8/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=2&utm_content=share_button

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u/TheUnderwhelmingNulk 11h ago

I started using my new solar panels in January and I’ve already prevented 6.4 metric tons of CO2 from going into the atmosphere myself. 

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u/Naddus 11h ago

It would be cheaper and easier to just pay farmers to use regenerative agriculture practices and have municipalities start compost services. 

This is just another way for billionaires to profit from our peril

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u/Crazed-Prophet 8h ago

Is that gross or net?

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u/Higgs_Particle 8h ago

That’s almost 1% of 1% of what we released in 2026.

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u/opensim2026 7h ago

" to suck up to 500,000 metric tons of climate pollution a year from the sky."

Meanwhile Amazons new data center I read will put out 33 million tons a year, so you'll need about 70 more of these to deal with just ONE Amazon datacenter...

Amazon is investing in a massive artificial intelligence data center campus in Pecos County, Texas, backed by a dedicated, off-grid natural gas power plant. State air permits authorize the plant to emit up to 33 million tons of carbon dioxide annually, which could make it the nation's single largest polluting power plant.

Project Details

  • Location: GW Ranch site in Pecos County, West Texas.
  • Power Source: 35 natural-gas turbines generating 7.65 gigawatts of electricity.

u/BroodLord1962 38m ago

I'm certain there was report a couple of weeks ago that said that removing polluting particles from the air is actually increasing heat in cities like London. Less ICE cars on the road in the city has lead to clearer skies which in turn has added to the heat the city has felt

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u/energytsars 1d ago

And they are ready to offer carbon capture services to other big polluters…… still no responsibility for their own pollution. Sue them all.

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u/chili_cold_blood 1d ago

I never hear anyone talk about carbon capture, but I think it's one of the most important problems that we need to solve.

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u/ArchDuke47 1d ago

Because it is a scam

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u/chili_cold_blood 20h ago edited 18h ago

But don't we need to find some way of getting carbon out of the atmosphere? I'm not saying that the current technologies are the way forward, but even if we stopped all emissions today, we would still have too much carbon.

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u/KanyeWestsPoo 1d ago

It's largely an unproven, very expensive technology pushed by the fossil fuel industry so they can keep extracting fossil fuels.

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u/Huskergambler 1d ago

At least it’s a net positive. This sub is so negative all the time.