Direct Air Capture Is a Waste of Carbon and Money

This comes to $58 x $35 = $1.514. Using scientific notation for this calculation emphasizes the amount of money involved. The result is $150 trillion, or more than the entire net worth of the United States, for an expenditure that adds costs but no value.

However, the biggest climate-related risks seem to be dysfunctional business decisions that expend billions of dollars—which rightfully belong to relevant interested parties like customers, investors, workers, and suppliers—on, for example, something known as direct air capture (DAC), a process that has been touted as a way to meet carbon neutrality and net-zero goals.

Direct air capture

Therefore, 200,000 trees will remove 4,800 tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere every year, and for a one-time outlay of $200,000 rather than $500 million plus operating costs. The trees, unlike the DAC plants, have no operating expenses, they increase their capacity every year, and they eventually make more of themselves. Even if we assume that only 50% of the trees survive,7 $400,000 for 200,000 surviving trees is still less than .001 the cost of the DAC plant.

Carbon dioxide is useful for enhanced oil recovery (by injecting it into the ground to force the oil to the surface); supercritical solvents; producing chemicals like urea; fire extinguishers; and carbonated beverages. It’s already a byproduct of other chemical operations.3 There’s a shortage of commercial carbon dioxide due to dysfunctional incentives to sequester it instead, which reinforces the image of pumping money into the ground.4

Footnotes

The same would go for recovering and reselling carbon dioxide from concentrated waste streams (such as from combustion and chemical processes that make this gas), assuming a favorable net present value analysis of the revenue stream vs. the capital and operating costs.

This reinforces the original proposition that direct air capture of carbon dioxide with sequestration is essentially no better than pumping money into the ground. On the other hand, carbon dioxide from concentrated process streams, including combustion of fossil fuels, is itself something that many companies need and for which they will pay.

Summary

1. Mills, Michael. “What Does ISO 9001 Have to Do With Climate Change?” Quality Digest, Feb. 6, 2024.
2. “Direct Air Capture.” International Energy Agency, July 11, 2023.
3.  “Tapping Both Industrial and Natural Sources for Flexibility of Supply and Mitigation of Carbon.” The Linde Group. 
4. Hedreen, Siri. “U.S. risks industrial CO2 shortage by paying suppliers to sequester emissions.” S&P Global Market Intelligence, Oct. 6, 2023.
5. Kamadi, Geoffrey. “Can Kenya become a direct-air-capture hub?” Chemical & Engineering News, Jan. 5, 2024.
6. “Tree Facts.” Arbor Day Foundation.
7. Bosman, Alison. “Half of plants used in reforestation projects do not survive.” Earth.com, Nov. 14, 2022.

منبع: https://www.qualitydigest.com/inside/lean-article/direct-air-capture-waste-carbon-and-money-031824.html

Chemical & Engineering News reports that Octavia Carbon, a startup in Kenya, intends to use abundant geothermal energy to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and then pump it into the ground.5 “Octavia’s long-term target is to permanently remove 1 million tons of CO2 from the atmosphere by 2030.”

More to the point, however, is the economic information in the article. “In contrast, Knauer argues that when fully commercialized, DAC plants will capture 4,000 tons per year of CO2 at a cost per plant of as much as $500 million. Some 300,000 of these plants will be needed to remove a mere 1.2 billion tons of carbon from the atmosphere.”

The International Energy Agency (IEA) explains, “Direct air capture (DAC) technologies extract CO2 directly from the atmosphere at any location, unlike carbon capture, which is generally carried out at the point of emissions, such as a steel plant.”2 The same source admits that this is the most expensive form of carbon dioxide capture, which is obvious from a chemical engineering standpoint. The driving force for mass transfer, such as for carbon dioxide from a gas stream to a liquid or absorbent, is a function of the concentration gradient between the gas stream and the liquid in question. The concentration of carbon dioxide in stack gases from power plants and steel mills is measured in whole percentages, while that in the atmosphere is less than 500 parts per million (0.5 parts per thousand, or 0.05%). This requires a much greater outlay in plant, equipment, and operating expenses than one needs to remove carbon dioxide from a coal, oil, or natural gas power plant’s smokestack, or from a chemical process of which CO2 is a byproduct.

A quality manual, even if technically optional, is recommended as a one-stop repository for the quality policy, context of the organization, identification of relevant interested parties and their needs, actions to address risks and opportunities, and similar information. (By the way, if your organization doesn’t have a process with which to address risks to continuity of operations, it should.)

This waste should lead to serious questions from stakeholders in supply chains that are involved with carbon sequestration in any form:
• If the carbon dioxide can in fact be recovered economically, why aren’t we selling it to those who can use it?
• If it can’t be resold, why are we spending money to capture it in the first place? Footnote 4 cites a company called CarbonQuest that will help building owners capture carbon dioxide from natural gas heating operations, liquefy it, and sell it to chemical manufacturers and other users.

This process is required by the automotive IATF 16949:2016 standard, which is worth study and emulation by ISO 9001 users even if they aren’t in the automotive sector. Clause 6.1.2.3, “Contingency plans,” requires organizations to plan for continuity of operations in the event of a force majeure or events over which the supply chain has no control. Henry Ford had such plans roughly 100 years ago, when rail shipments could be rerouted if an act of nature made a bridge unusable.

In his Quality Digest article published in February 2023, Michaels Mills1 reported that the next version of ISO 9001 will add to clause 4.1, “Understanding the organization and its context” the words, “the organization shall determine whether climate change is a relevant issue.”

Direct air capture is a costly and inefficient way to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, in contrast to carbon capture, which removes relatively concentrated carbon dioxide from process streams.

Avoiding energy waste, as encouraged by ISO 50001:2018, reduces costs to enable simultaneous lower prices (which are counter-inflationary), higher profits, and higher wages. For example, I assume that my house’s heat pump reduces my carbon footprint by drawing less electrical power every winter. But I know my electric bill rarely exceeds $160, even in January in northeast Pennsylvania. Light-emitting diode (LED) bulbs similarly convert electricity into light rather than heat to reduce electricity consumption. Any gap between the energy the process should use in the absence of waste, and what it actually uses, represents wasted money, regardless of whether the energy is renewable.

One thing in Octavia’s favor is Kenya’s abundant geothermal heat energy generating. One could easily envision a free source of heat as useful for chemical manufacturing processes that require it, or for generating electricity. If I had a free source of heat like that, I’d use it to make something I could sell rather than absorb carbon dioxide from the air to pump it into the ground.

CarbonCure, for example, mixes carbon dioxide with concrete to improve its compressive strength and therefore its value. Carbon dioxide recovery, and subsequent resale, from natural-gas heating systems also looks consistent with leadership in energy and environmental design (LEED).

If you want to sequester carbon, sponsor a tree

The only expected revenue seems to come from the sale of carbon offsets, which works only as long as organizations are willing to use stakeholder money in this manner. I would personally not remain a stakeholder or investor in any supply chain that spent money on carbon offsets. I would, on the other hand, favorably view a supply chain’s use of ISO 50001:2018 to reduce energy wastes, regardless of their source, because this enables lower prices, higher wages, and higher profits simultaneously.

With regard to the forthcoming ISO 9001 requirement, “the organization shall determine whether climate change is a relevant issue,” a one-sentence reply could be added to the quality manual or corresponding document that addresses the context of the organization. “The organization’s existing process (cite the process here) that addresses risks to continuity of operations covers all foreseeable risks related to climate change.” If the organization doesn’t have a process to address risks to continuity of operations, it should develop one. This should put the entire issue to rest.

Economic activity that circulates money in the absence of value is inflationary by definition. On Feb. 13, 2024, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed on a downward trend—524.63 (1.35%)—because of troubling inflation data. So this is the last sort of thing our economy needs.

If the sole objective is to remove carbon dioxide from the air and put it back into the ground, sponsorship of trees might be the most cost-effective way to do this.

The CarbonQuest website says, “CarbonQuest’s modular system liquefies the captured CO2 onsite before it is sent to off-takers, who utilize the recycled CO2 in environmentally beneficial ways. This can include use by concrete manufacturers or to displace petroleum with CO2 in jet fuel and chemical processes. This process provides building owners and operators with a new revenue stream while ensuring compliance with emissions guidelines.”

Carbon sequestration makes no more sense than pumping money into the ground. The cost of doing this must be built into the price of whatever goods or services are being produced, and costs in the absence of value are inflationary by definition. The whole purpose of lean manufacturing is to remove waste from supply chains, not to add waste to them. Recovering carbon dioxide for resale (and there is indeed a market for it), on the other hand, is an example of repurposing what was previously viewed as waste.

Don’t forget ISO 14001:2015, the environmental management system standard. Although it relates to environmental aspects, users will get far more value from it by recognizing that anything they throw away, regardless of whether there are disposal costs or costs of compliance with EPA regulations, is waste.

However, there’s proven and far less expensive carbon capture technology that’s been around for hundreds of millions of years. This may sound surprising because modern humans, and even technology as rudimentary as pointed sticks, have been around for only about 160,000 years. But trees predate the dinosaurs. The U.S. Forest Service will, for a minimum donation of $10, plant at least 10 trees. The Arbor Day Foundation reports, while citing the European Environment Agency, “During one year, a mature tree will absorb more than 48 lb of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and release oxygen in exchange.”6

Trees, unlike DAC plants, have no operating expenses, they increase their capacity every year, and they eventually make more of themselves.

There are, in fact, uses for carbon dioxide. But sequestering it by pumping it into the ground seems to make little more sense than pumping money into the ground—and the money must come from somewhere in the supply chain. This makes the product or service more expensive, which aggravates inflation, results in lower profits for investors, and lowers wages for employees.

What can we do with carbon dioxide?

Although nothing in this article constitutes formal engineering advice, my upfront recommendation to ISO 9001 users is to add in their quality manuals under clause 4.1 the words, “The organization’s existing process (cite the process here) that addresses risks to continuity of operations covers all foreseeable risks related to climate change.” Risks to continuity of operations include those related to climate change, such as hurricanes, flooding, and droughts, along with unrelated ones, such as earthquakes and acts of war.