Elon Musk’s $100M Problem
FLASH READER
Elon Musk announces $100 Million prize for the best Carbon Capture technology
Green House Gases accelerate global warming at alarming rate
CO2 hangs in the atmosphere for 300 to 1000 years
Global Warming Potential (GWP) is the radiative effect of a gas with respect to that of CO2. Usually measured for a 100-year period
Introducing a new term called Global Warming Potential Parts (GWPP) — Normalized measure of radiative effect of gases and also their concentration in atmosphere irrespective of its source, man-made or otherwise
Carbon Capture is the process of capturing waste CO2 in atmosphere
Some Carbon Capture technologies are CO2 Chemicals, CO2 Fuels, Microalgae, Concrete building materials, CO2 enhanced Oil Recovery, Forestry and Soil sequestration
One of the major challenges we face as humans is climate change. Some say we need to call it Climate Catastrophe. By that they mean it’s not something that will happen sometime in the distant future but rather something that’s been affecting us both directly and indirectly already and it would get uncontrollable and deadly if we do not do something about it soon. It’s not a surprise that there are skeptics about the fact that climate change is man-made. Just as I write this article there are so many educated people around the world who believe that COVID pandemic is a hoax or doubtful about the good nature of COVID vaccine even though half a million people have already passed away from it just in US. Be it rising sea level, forest fire, drought, severe storms and floods, Climate Change has different facets which are hard to understand and quantify precisely even for climate scientists so I am not bothered by the climate change skeptics, even in the science community.
But I believe there needs to be a better approach especially when discussing policies like banning fossil fuel power plants or banning gasoline cars. Of the 1.9 Million jobs in the Energy sector as of 2016 in US, 56% of that was in fossil fuel companies. Although 46% in renewable energy was a pleasant surprise for me, we are morally obligated to take into consideration the impact of any transformative infrastructure policies would have on the 56% i.e one million workers in the fossil fuel industry. For example, job guarantee and training should be offered for them in new clean energy industry.
Elon Musk is seen as a savior of humanity by many and to his credit he has not just come up with solutions to most challenging problems of 21st century but also successfully commercialized them which matters more than the solution itself. On the energy front he has Tesla solar (SolarCity) on one end of the spectrum and Tesla electric cars on the other end and of course Tesla batteries that complements/completes the cycle. These commercial technologies will help us transcend from the fossil fuel era to sustainable, clean energy era.
Green House Gases
Even if we can successfully emerge into a clean future, effect of our past deeds would still be present then — more of this later. EPA says human activities are responsible for almost all the Green House Gas emission increase in the last 150 years and the major sources are burning fossil fuels for transportation and electricity.
My view on this is that we need not look at this as a sin but rather as a stepping stone. As we advance as a society, our technologies become more efficient. Nobody loves coal but if it weren’t for steam engine (powered by coal) during industrial revolution we wouldn’t be here in the digital age in 21st century.
But not realizing the ill effects of coal and other fossil fuel burning soon enough was a fatal mistake. Even some major oil companies have been accused of hiding or tampering the results of internal studies on climate change. But scientist say its still not too late. Public must be aware of the consequences and embrace cleaner energy. For starters, CO2 hangs in the atmosphere for 300 to 1000 years which means even if we stop burning fossil fuels now, CO2 would still be around when we are flying in our cars.
I guess that’s why when Elon Musk became the richest man on Earth during a pandemic, he wanted to put some of $$$ to good use like announcing $100 million dollars prize for the best carbon capture tech.
Before we get to know more about Carbon Capture let’s look at why Carbon.
As we all know climate change is the most pressing problem in hand for us all.
Forest fires, floods and storms have gotten more severe, more often — and that’s just the start. But we still can do something about it. Targeting the root cause is the smart thing. That brings us to Green House Gases (GHG). There are several Green House Gases and they are present in different quantities in the atmosphere as shown in percentages in below pie chart.
The following table shows the quantity of these gases in PPB. Parts Per Billion (PPB) tells us how many parts of a gas is present in billion particles of air [1][2].
These gases have different lifetimes in the atmosphere and also their potential to absorb heat energy varies.
To make it easy to compare these gases, scholars at Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) of the United Nations have come up with a metric called Global Warming Potential (GWP) [3].
Global Warming Potential (GWP)
Global Warming Potential (GWP) is a measure of the radiative effect of each unit of gas over a specified period of time, expressed relative to the radiative effect of carbon dioxide (CO2). The period of time considered is usually 100 years. This is because different gases have different lifetime as mentioned before. CO2 is so common that it is used as a baseline for comparisons like GWP [4].
For example, methane is 25 time worse than CO2 regarding global warming.
Global Warming Potential Parts (GWPP)
We have a table of Green House Gases ordered by their Global Warming Potential (GWP) and now we also have a table ordered by their quantity present in atmosphere. In order to really see which is the biggest culprit of them all we need to consider both those variables together.
I multiplied these two variables (GWP and PPM) and normalized it to 1 Million with CO2 as baseline of course. I call it Global Warming Potential Parts (GWPP).
Now we get a clear picture of the potential of major Green House Gases and how they compare to the worst of them all — CO2. Nitrous Oxide comes second with ~1/4th the GWPP of CO2 and Methane comes third with ~1/10th the GWPP of CO2.
Its important to note how significantly different the order and % breakdown of the GHGs in the above pie chart versus that are in EPA, NASA and NOAA — Methane and Nitrous Oxide switch places. That is because only man-made emissions in a particular year (2018 in above EPA’s pie chart) were considered versus what’s present in the atmosphere irrespective of its source, man-made or natural like volcanic emissions.
NASA — ‘Scientists consider it(CH4) the second most important contributor to human caused global warming of all greenhouse gasses’.
The above NASA statement is true but the key word here is ‘human caused’ i.e only gases emitted due to human activities were considered. It certainly helps to understand the extent of global warming due to individual gaseous emission from human activities but global warming/climate change and its deadly effects doesn't care if its human caused or otherwise. From solution perspective we need to know the total amount of each GHG present in the atmosphere irrespective of its source, man-made or not.
On a side note, GWP is also used in the metric measurement called CO2 equivalent or CO2e. It is used to standardize the different gaseous emissions. It is expressed as million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents (MMTCDE).
MMTCDE = (million metric ton of a gas) * (GWP of the gas)
For example, In 2018, Germany, Europe’s biggest carbon dioxide emitter, released 760,0 million metric tons of CO2. But if you include other gases in the equation, the country’s total emissions are actually higher and work out at 854.4 million tons of CO2e [5][6].
Water Vapor
Water vapor is the most abundant greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. Effect of water vapor in global warming is a complex topic. First, naturally formed water vapor is a condensable gas and so with increasing temperature it condenses and forms clouds which comes down as rain thus bringing down the temperature in the process. Along with water vapor, naturally formed non condensable gases (at atmospheric temperature and pressure) like CO2, NO2, CH4 have been keeping the planet warm enough (Green House Effect) for the human civilization to develop over the past several millennia. But when the same gases along with other F-Gases were added in tons by humans very rapidly, the global warming gets accelerated. Now due to that higher atmospheric temperature more water vapor gets collected in the atmosphere leading to higher temperature. This is called Positive Feedback Effect.
But the small amount of water vapor created by humans only stay in the atmosphere for only few days and so not considered as a major cause for man-made global warming [7].
Carbon Capture
All this explain why our topmost concern should be CO2 and Carbon in Carbon Capture refers to CO2. Carbon Capture is the process of capturing waste carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and either storing it (Carbon Storage) or utilizing it to produce a product like fuel or fertilizer (Carbon Utilization).
There has been development in this frontier for decades and there are different ways to achieve Carbon Capture. The best way is to create a utilization for it, so that it can be commercialized. Two things that need to be considered is how cost effective the method is and the scalability.
Since lifetime of CO2 in the atmosphere is hundreds of years, they are pretty much evenly spread out all over the world.
That emphasizes a problem that does not get much attention is how disproportionately the non-developed countries are affected by this even though they have low CO2 emissions.
Some of the Carbon Capture technologies are CO2 Chemicals, CO2 Fuels, Microalgae, Concrete building materials, CO2 enhanced Oil Recovery, Forestry and Soil sequestration.
CO2 Chemical method uses catalyst to convert CO2 to methanol, urea, polymers etc. This way we could utilize 0.3 to 0.6GtCO2 a year in 2050, at costs of between -$80 to $300 per metric ton of CO2 [8].
Chemical CO2 method which uses catalyst seems one of the most viable. There are millions of cars around the world that are equipped with filters to clean the outside air. Though they are not good enough to capture CO2. It’s good to note that when you have your car’s HVAC system setting to let outside air in, you are actually letting in CO2 and NO2 emissions from vehicular exhaust even as it comes through the filters. So, it may be a good idea to set them to re-circulation especially while sitting in traffic.
I was wondering if we could have a special filter/catalytic converter that could also filter/convert CO2 using some catalyst that would be great. Of course, its way easier said than done. Although the automobile industry has all the resources and scientists and engineers to make something a reality. And to incentivize it there could be policies that enable such automobile companies (even EV) to collect carbon credit for capturing carbon from the atmosphere. Well, that’s my million dollar idea free for anyone to commercialize (wink).
In conclusion, our technologies have developed over last few centuries to a point where renewable energy and storage are cost competitive with fossil fuels in major parts of the world. Electrification of transportation and industrial processes would lead to one day elimination of fossil fuel usage all together. But the effects of our lesser efficient technologies that helped us get here will linger for centuries if we do not succeed in commercializing technologies like Carbon Capture. Hopefully, policies and visionaries like Elon Musk would help us get there faster. And remember to be courteous and empathetic when discussing closing coal plants or banning gasoline cars. There are 5.9 Million people whose lives depend on both fossil fuel industry and motor industry [9]. Hopefully they would be provided necessary training and guaranteed new green jobs like how solar supports the veterans. Only together can we bring a change in the scale that’s necessary to tackle global warming.
