The politics of carbon
Now that carbon has become a mainstream topic, it's about time we look at the various technologies on offer and voice some strong opinions.
One major improvement of the last few years over the preceding decades is that creating a carbon neutral or negative economy is no longer a niche topic. Mainstream parties have suddenly recognized that this is a topic voters care about, and are now scrambling to position themselves accordingly.
Luckily we have the good news of the first governing party in Germany that expressly mentions hydrochar in their carbon platform (fanfare!). Let’s grab the opportunity to assess the technologies on offer.
Carbon Capture & Storage (CCS)
This is likely the technology that sucked up the most attention and public funding so far. Beyond the unsurprising stance that we’re in favor of reducing the carbon foorprint of power-stations and other emission-heavy industries, CCS falls into our bracket of overengineered solutions that we ultimately expect to fail.
After a fairly long publicly funded runway, it seems to be stuck in the trough of disappointment and the recognition seems to set in that it simply doesn’t scale. And: who wants to live in the neighbourhood of a well in which huge amounts of CO2 have been stored and potentially release this suffocating gas again?
Direct Air Capture (DAC)
Orca, the direct air capture installation that recently went operational in Iceland, has received a lot of media attention and follow-up funding. As we mentioned before, we’re not happy about that. Of all the proposed solutions, it’s the one with the most energy-sucking and geographically limited technology. But it’s got some prominent backers, so we will see it around a bit longer.
Carbon Capture & Use (CCU)
Captured carbon in any form can be stored underground or can be put to a new economic use. This is true for all the technologies we look at, and the two options differ in that they potentially enable a carbon negative or a carbon neutral economy. Both better than what we have now, but clearly negative is better than neutral in this case, so there should be a mix.
If reaching an optimal mix between the two alternatives is possible is still an open question. But one thing is certain: we are too slow in decarbonising right now, so it is inevitable that we will have to be carbon negative for a while after carbon neutrality is accomplished in order to reach the 1.5 degree goal in the long term.
Pyrolysis
Simply put, as we mentioned before, we’re fans. Pyrolysis, the process that produces biochar (or pyrochar) is a technology that directly captures carbon and either stores it underground in an economically and ecologically useful way, or reuses it usefully as high end char. It has a number of limitations such as the requirement of dry biomass or the low conversion factor, which is why we don’t think of it as a standalone solution.
Which is also a major reason why we advocate for…
Hydrothermal carbonization (HTC)
HTC, the process that creates hydrochar, is a perfect complement to pyrolytic carbonization, but for some strange reason hasn’t gotten quite the same amount of attention outside research. Especially since it uses lower-value biomass as input and creates hydrochar, a type of artificial lignite, as output.
HTC is a simple technology that can be deployed decentrally, near the biomass source, including in emerging countries. Hydrochar has very promising economic and technical properties and, if deposited in the right way, can form a long-term carbon sink, as all natural carbon deposits have done for eons. And did we mention that HTC formation is exothermic?
Reforestation
We are, of course, fans of growing trees, even if we’re not big fans of the glossy “for every click a tree” clickbait. Forests are, as a rule of thumb, carbon neutral over a longer periods of time. But only if wood and plant biomass is transformed into biochar (pyrochar or hydrochar), carbon negativity can be obtained.
As mentioned before, peatland has far more attractive ecological properties as a stable carbon sink than forests, and if you ever visited one, they’re actually pretty cool nature protection and recreation areas. So more forests, yes, but more importantly, more moors!
And let’s keep them rich on water and poor on fertilizers…
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