Review of Suck It Up, by Marc Gunther

Review of Suck It Up, by Marc Gunther.  Published as a Kindle Single.

The idea that we can solve the problem of global warming by sucking CO2 out of the air is like a wonderful magic bullet.  Suddenly, we could bring the CO2 level down from its current level of 392 parts per million to a safe level of 350 ppm, and we could go on burning coal, natural gas, and oil with only the relatively minor consequences such as wars for oil, polluted air and water, and a political system controlled by oil companies. 

Gunther's short, well written book does not deny the seriousness of the problem of global warming.  Nor does he deny that renewable energy and electric cars would be a great solution, and that we should support such efforts.  His strongest argument is that the obstacles to a carbon free future are too great to overcome.  His points include:

·         "the transition away from gasoline and diesel in the transport sector will take many decades"

·         It is impossible to ask developing nations to use less energy

·         Politicians can only afford to think short-term

·         Nothing has remotely worked to slow down emissions so far

He also considers other methods of geoengineering, comparing them to chemotherapy--i.e. something you only do under desperate circumstances.  But the side effects of geoengineering are potentially as bad as global warming--e.g. acidification of the oceans and other less predictable but equally dire consequences. 

By contrast, capturing CO2 from the air would have much less of a downside--it just returns CO2 to a safe level.  Gunther looks at three startup companies who are trying to suck it up:

• Carbon Engineering, run by David Keith in Calgary.  Keith envisions carbon-capture plants that can combine CO2 with hydrogen to make gasoline or diesel fuels.
• Global Thermostat, formed by Peter Eisenberger and Graciela Chichilinisky.  Their process uses excess heat from power plants to drive a chemical process that binds CO2 from the air.  Their model machine is designed to capture about four or five tons of CO2 per day.   17 million of these machines could counteract the 30 billion tons of CO2 that earth produces per year.

• Kilimanjaro Energy, founded by Klaus Lackner.  Their plan is to use algae to convert CO2 to fuel.

Each of these companies has technology that can pull CO2 from the air.  The question is whether they can do it at an affordable cost.  Also, there is the problem of volume.  First, there is the 30 billion tons of CO2 per year that we currently produce annually.  And if we reduce CO2 by 40 ppm, that will give us another 280 billion tons of CO2 that we will need to deal with.

As mentioned, one option is to pull the CO2 from the air, and then process it back into a fuel.  This would qualify as renewable, so it would be a great breakthrough, but it wouldn't actually reduce the level of CO2 in the air.  

Estimates of the cost of these technologies vary from $50 per ton to $1000 per ton.  Since one gallon of gasoline creates 20 pounds of CO2 when it is burned, it takes 100 gallons to create a ton of CO2.  So if the cost of removal of CO2 from the air is $1000 per ton, that would come to $10 per gallon.  If the cost could be brought down to around $200 per ton, it would only cost $2 per gallon to remove the CO2.  The cost of storing the CO2, or processing it back to gasoline would need to be added, but it seems to me that the costs/benefits are at least in the realm of possibility.

While these efforts are very worthwhile, we should not let them sidetrack us from the need to cut back on fossil fuel use.  Counting on a magic bullet to save us from global warming is foolhardy.  We already have the technology to provide our energy with solar and wind, and convert our transportation to electricity.  We should do that as rapidly as possible.  All the scientists and entrepreneurs that Gunther interviews for his book agree that "it would be a terrible mistake to view any negative emission technologies as a license to continue to burn fossil fuels."