Shell sold millions of carbon credits for reductions in greenhouse gas emissions that never happened, allowing the company to turn a profit on its fledgling carbon capture and storage project, according to a new report by Greenpeace Canada.
Under an agreement with the Alberta government, Shell was awarded two tonnes’ worth of emissions reduction credits for each tonne of carbon it actually captured and stored underground at its Quest plant, near Edmonton.
This took place between 2015 and 2021 through a subsidy program for carbon, capture, utilisation and storage projects (CCUS), which are championed by the oil and gas sector as a way to cut its greenhouse gas emissions.
At the time, Quest was the only operational CCUS facility in Alberta. The subsidy program ended in 2022.
Rant in a totally different direction. Carbon Capture Is Not Sustainable!
Unless you can capture 1 ton of carbon using less energy than is extracted by burning 1 ton of carbon, you can not capture carbon. Carbon capture will ONLY work if the energy you use to capture the carbon does not add more carbon to the atmosphere (nuclear, wind, solar) but having to run a supplementary power generation tech just to negate the effects of your primary tech is just stupid, fossil fuels no longer a viable option.
Carbon capture will ONLY work if the energy you use to capture the carbon does not add more carbon to the atmosphere (nuclear, wind, solar)
Even in this case carbon capture is stupid. Why not use that “green” energy to replace carbon-emitting power plants?
Carbon capture is basically a form of energy storage. If it’s energy that we wouldn’t otherwise be able to capture, or if it’s more energy than we need for consumption at a given moment in time, then it makes sense to store it instead. I don’t know enough to say if these would apply in practice, but it’s plausible that it’s better to capture than to use the energy.
Pedantic, but you can do this by planting a forest (in a currently not forested area).
Agreed. Forestation can be a large contributor to reducing climate change, but any scheme that is offered by polluting companies should be viewed with extreme scepticism.
No, you can’t. There are trillions of trees on earth and the impact they have on carbon emissions is relatively minimal, planting a forest or even many forests isn’t going to cut it.
Not to mention that for trees to be an at all viable long term carbon capture method, you can’t ever cut those trees down. If we can’t leave the fucking Amazon alone, what makes you think we won’t chop up that artificial forest in 50 years?
This is the same issue with kelp. Kelp has a ton of uses, and is an even better carbon sink than trees are, but to be a carbon sink you have to forgo all of those other uses because you have to literally sink the kelp to the bottom of the ocean and leave it there, because actually using it for anything just rereleases the carbon.
You can cut down the trees and they’ll still hold on to their carbon. Just don’t burn them.
Molten Salt Reactors run at the perfect temp for CO2 sequestration. Should be building these things. Can do this while producing electricity
Molten salt reactors have this little problem that they’re digesting themselves. The salt is so aggressive that it eats through the reactor before the building costs amortise. Unless you are a time traveller capable of giving us the material science of 200 years into the future fusion is going to be here first.
Unless you can capture 1 ton of carbon using less energy than is extracted by burning 1 ton of carbon, you can not capture carbon.
Is this not already the case that these processes are net negative in carbon released? How much does it currently cost, in energy, to capture carbon at these smokestacks?
TL;DR it’s not possible.
We burn carbon based fuels because the reaction between carbon and oxygen releases energy that can be used to generate electricity. It would take EXACTLY as much energy to turn the released CO2 back into oil/coal/carbon except that this is not a perfect world, there are losses at every step. The only way to lower CO2 levels is to globally stop burning fossil fuels for heating and electrical loads (hydrocarbons are needed for a bunch of very specific chemical processes).
Um, nobody is talking about chemically converting the released carbon dioxide back into chemical compounds with stored chemical energy, like hydrocarbons and graphite. They’re talking about physically sequestering CO2, or binding the carbon into materials that aren’t combustible (like calcium carbonate).
Put another way: if I burned some hydrocarbons in a fireplace and put a balloon over the flue, I’d capture some carbon dioxide (and probably some water) in that balloon, and the carbon in that balloon would’ve cost me less energy to capture than was released in burning the hydrocarbons to begin with. So long as I could keep the balloon from leaking or deflating.
Breaking news oil company that lies at every opportunity wasn’t held accountable and choose to lie for bottom line.
Stop subsidising profitable companies, they just use that money to slap us in the face. Stop corporate welfare!
Privatize the profits, socialize the risk. Seems to be the motto Canada likes to follow.
one of my favorite fun facts, is that apparently a non insignificant number of “carbon credits” come from unsealed oil wells being sealed up. Which sounds good and all.
Until you realize that leaving oil wells unsealed is literally illegal and not to regulation standards what so ever. So you are literally paying for carbon credits, that remove carbon, that never should have been in the environment to begin with.
I love capitalism.
Well, if big companies can get carbon credits, why can’t I? Biking a few miles a day should yield me some, shouldn’t it? Because I’m not using a car? Sure, I breathe more, but it’s still less CO2 than by using a car.
Think bigger. You need to offset the carbon you’ll save by not burning hundreds of tons of garbage at the local landfill. Do you own the landfill? Hell no. Will you burn it? Not if they pay you not to.
Lets say that you’re married but you want to cheat on your wife. That’s not good, you don’t want to upset your wife and I don’t want you to upset your wife. So I’m gonna do you a favour, I’ll not cheat on my wife and sell you the credit! Now when you cheat on your wife it’s ok, because you have a credit that negates it! Zero sum, no harm!
And you know what, I wouldn’t want anyone to upset their wife so out of the goodness of my heart I will not cheat on my wife as much as I can so that I can sell the credits to other men, that way it’s ok if they cheat on their wives. They don’t have to worry about upsetting anyone and my good behaviour is rewarded with money!
And all I had to do was nothing, then sell the credit for it…
The carbon credit system is designed to make companies responsible for emissions to pay money to companies who are reducing emissions. It’s a financial incentive to produce less emissions AND on the other side, a financial incentive to invest in green tech.
Using your metaphor…if you stopped cheating on your wife you could avoid spending ten grand on wife cheating credits. That’s a financial incentive to stop cheating on your wife. So many people will stop cheating on their wives. Meanwhile, people who were thinking about cheating on their wives could instead collect ten thousand bucks for being faithful. So…many of those people won’t cheat on their wives.
Get it now?
I get how it’s supposed to work but who is keeping track of how many times I was going to cheat but then did not? Who says I even have a wife? Who says I REALLY was going to burn all that coal but then decided not to? Giving credits for not doing a thing is just too easy to abuse.
