[ad_1]
Photo-example: Intelligence; Photos: Getty Images
Many of the provisions in the $369 billion inflation-reduction bill moving through the Senate include incentives for electric vehicles already on the road, such as renewable energy programs that support existing industries like tax credits that power major cities. But one important policy is designed for an industry that hasn’t yet been implemented: The bill includes a big boost to fledgling carbon capture programs by revising the tax credit known as 45Q, which in some cases triples the reward for eliminating companies. tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
The goal of carbon capture is straightforward: capture CO2 from industrial sources or directly from the air and store it underground or convert it into a solid form. So far, the technology is too expensive to scale, costing up to $600 per ton of carbon. In the year With global emissions of more than 36.3 billion tonnes in 2021, this price must drop significantly for future emission reductions to grow the industry sufficiently. Experts say that the incentives of this bill – includes a credit of $ 180 per ton for direct capture, from $ 50 – will help to start commercial scale carbon capture. I spoke with University of California, Irvine chemist Jenny Y. Yang to understand how the bill will affect the industry.
2020 study found More than 80 percent of projects to commercialize carbon capture have failed. What does it take to achieve success? Is failure the only goal?
Existing technologies are very expensive, which is unexpected for new technology. But they are generally not very effective. The biggest obstacle so far is the lack of incentives for it. The Act provides incentives that generate those revenues.
A program called 45Q originally provided incentives for carbon capture, and the new bill provides incentives beyond 45Q and extends infrastructure credits from 2025 to 2032, which is significant. The technology will take time to implement. With a longer timeline, you can incorporate more new and upcoming infrastructure. So we’re still building more fossil fuel plants, and it would be more efficient to have time to incorporate carbon capture. In addition, many technologies are still under development, so they cannot be deployed in a short time.
Can you explain your research on electrochemical carbon capture?
It is a good example of technology in its early stages. Most carbon casting ever developed has used thermal energy. When you combine that with a fossil fuel plant, it makes sense because there is waste heat to recover to fuel the process.
But if we want to think about direct capture of point sources, such as cement production, it is not very effective if we want to drive the process or reduce costs because it has no residual heat source. What we do is use electrochemistry or electrochemical potential – maybe Electricity It’s the simplest term for it – CO2 capture and concentration driving. This is relatively new, but since it doesn’t require heat, it has the potential to be highly efficient and inexpensive. And as renewable energy gets dirtier, so does its price. It has a very high ceiling in terms of cost and overall efficiency, but it is still in its infancy, compared to traditional methods with, for example, pilot plants.
We need that investment. What we have now is not very good, I think it’s fair to say. Before we get to the point where we can put these things everywhere, we need to invest.
Will this bill affect studies like yours?
We will try to do more basic research, therefore it will encourage investment in technologies that have the potential to be cheap, because this creates a value for the carbon captured and gives us a goal for efficiency and overall process costs. . What’s really important is that the DOE announced last year that it had a carbon negative shot initiative and set a price for carbon sequestered in 2030. And that’s very effective because that money or that initiative, in my understanding, to deploy the basic science to pilot plants – all departments can apply for this money.
That’s important because I don’t know if we’ve all done the best basic science first. But we don’t want to wait either. Maybe we don’t have the best, and we just have to make do with what we have, but if we have the potential to do something much better in ten years, we should invest in that.
The largest credit is $180 per metric ton of carbon for direct air capture. Why are lawmakers giving the biggest boost to that technology?
A lot of industrial capture is what we consider carbon neutral because you’re using a carbon source, not emitting it, but direct air capture is what we have to do after we’ve eliminated everything else. That makes it carbon negative, which helps reduce the worst effects of climate change.
People are excited about live airing. But if we have the energy to do that, we have to fossilize, decarbonize. When our infrastructure stops emitting carbon, we can think about direct air capture.
What did the US do before this bill to promote carbon capture?
It’s an improvement over the way things were before 45Q. It’s not perfect, but it’s important to take these steps forward. There was no incentive before 45Q.
It’s hard, but think about how much we invest in our current industries. Our investment in carbon capture pales in comparison. We haven’t tried hard enough, and some of you can’t do it without carbon taxes, carbon credits or any of these incentives. She wasn’t making money. If it’s free to put carbon dioxide into the air, why don’t we keep doing what we’re doing?
That federal funding shortfall is staggering. We already are Bank on this technology It will help us reach our excellence goals, but we haven’t started putting serious money into that.
It’s techno-enlightenment: someone somehow knows it, and we believe it. I’m worried about that, working to catch live air. Although I think it’s a useful technology in 20 years after we decarbonize, it won’t save us. It takes energy and money to do this. And since we’re not crying in the first place, we need to think about how we can reduce carbon dioxide emissions. I really like the investment in reducing emissions in this bill.
Do you think this bill could be a game changer for carbon capture? I’m wondering how. Solar Investment Tax Credit The industry has seen tremendous growth since its inception two decades ago. I’ve never seen anything like this, and out of the blue – even if it’s not what you originally wanted – it’s still a worthwhile investment. I think it could be a game changer. Not to be pessimistic, but we wouldn’t do anything, would we? We had very little to do. We were 45Q. Game changer It might be too strong, but it definitely makes a big difference. The possibility of electrochemistry is very high. You can approach significantly higher efficiency, you can operate on a small scale, you don’t need heat, and when the prices of renewables fall, you can use excess renewable energy to run it or put a solar panel on it. The caveat, of course, is that unlike other technologies, there is no plan to demonstrate that it actually works at scale. But the potential is significant.
This discussion has been edited for length and clarity.
[ad_2]
Source link
