Lethal Heating: 03/03/21

03/03/2021

(AU) Energy Minister Angus Taylor Launches $50 Million Fund For Carbon Capture Projects

ABC Newcastle - Ben Millington

Angus Taylor (right), Mark Rayson (left) and Marcus Dawe at the launch of the carbon capture and storage fund. (ABC Newcastle: Ben Millington)

Key points

$50 million fund for carbon capture announced
The fund is open to all projects that capture carbon
Project that reuse CO2 will compete with those that store it

The federal government has launched a $50 million fund to support the growth of carbon capture projects, which will include projects that reuse carbon dioxide emissions to make new products.

The Carbon Capture, Use and Storage fund was announced by Energy Minister Angus Taylor this morning in Newcastle at the pilot site for Mineral Carbonisation International (MCI).

The company is using carbon dioxide (CO2) captured from a nearby ammonia plant to make building products like plasterboard and cement.

"Carbon Capture and Utilisation (CCU) has really, in the past seven years, struggled to get as much air time as other technology solutions," MCI chief operating officer, Sophia Hamblin Wang, said.

"This is the biggest show of faith and funding that the government has ever provided for the CCU technology group.

"This is incredibly exciting and will encourage other technologies in our ecosystem to develop."

A carbon reactor system being developed by Mineral Carbonation International in Newcastle. (Supplied: Mineral Carbonation International)

MCI needs funding to build a scaled-up version of the Newcastle plant to further prove the commercial viability of the concept at scale.

Ms Hamblin Wang said it could ultimately be used to capture and use the emissions from the steel and cement factories that would be needed in a low-emissions future, but had so far struggled to find a CO2 solution.

The fund will be open to a broad spectrum of players including other CCU projects looking to produce fuels and chemical from CO2, as well as those in Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) — which have been criticised for significant investment for little return over several decades.

'Australia has much to add to this area' Mr Taylor said he would like to see the fund invest in both CCU and CCS.

He dismissed concerns about the viability of capturing and storing carbon underground. "Sequestering is part of the answer — sequestering in soil, in geological formations, and sequestering in products is a fantastic solution as well and offers us great opportunities," Mr Taylor said.

"The great benefit of utilisation is that you can reduce the costs even further, that's why there's a lot to like about it, and that's the beauty of what they're doing right here.

"Australia has so much to add in this area, and this region with its background.

"We have smart people who can solve hard problems and that's ultimately what is going to get emissions down and strengthen the world economy at the same time."

Mr Taylor said the government's investment would reduce technical and commercial barriers to deploying these technologies and identify potential project sites.

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(USA) 'Run The Oil Industry In Reverse': Fighting Climate Change By Farming Kelp

NPR - Fred Bever

Adam Baske (left) and Capt. Rob Odlin of Running Tide Technologies in the Gulf of Maine. They release rope that's entwined with early-stage kelp, a fast growing seaweed that will soak up carbon dioxide. Fred Bever/Maine Public

In the race to stall or even reverse global warming, new efforts are in the works to pull carbon dioxide out of the air and put it somewhere safe.

One startup in Maine has a vision that is drawing attention from scientists and venture capitalists alike: to bury massive amounts of seaweed at the bottom of the ocean, where it will lock away carbon for thousands of years.

The company is called Running Tide Technologies, and it's prototyping the concept this winter. On a recent day in the Gulf of Maine, boat captain Rob Odlin says the task itself isn't much different from any other in his seafaring career, whether chasing tuna or harvesting lobster.

"We're just fishing for carbon now, and kelp's the net," he says.

AUDIO: 'Run The Oil Industry In Reverse'

Running Tide CEO Marty Odlin — the boat captain's nephew — comes from a long line of Maine fishermen, and once imagined he would continue the tradition. But he watched as the warming climate drove major shifts in fish populations, while regulators put a lid on how much could be taken from the sea.

"It just got really hard for me to go into crazy debt to buy a boat to catch fish that were swimming away," Odlin says.

The Dartmouth-trained engineer did start an oyster farm. But he also started thinking about how to stop the damage in the Gulf of Maine, one of the fastest warming bodies of water on the planet.

"Essentially what we have to do is run the oil industry in reverse," he concluded.

As Odlin notes, the fossil fuels we burn for energy started out as plants millions of years ago. Much of it was ocean algae that sank to the bottom of ancient seas, where chemistry and water pressure transformed it into oil, over geologic timescales.

Olivia Mercier runs the kelp hatchery at Portland's Running Tide Technologies. She raises sporophytes, or early-stage kelp, on a pipe wrapped with biodegradable string; the string will be placed in the ocean. Fred Bever/Maine Public

Odlin wants to mimic those natural processes, and do it in a hurry. He envisions an armada heading hundreds of miles offshore each fall, to deploy millions of free-floating cellulose buoys, each tethered to a kelp-bearing rope.

The kelp will soak up carbon — gigatons of it — via photosynthesis. Months later the mature plant blades will grow too heavy for their biodegradable buoys.

"So the kelp will sink to the ocean bottom in the sediment, and become, essentially, part of the ocean floor," Odlin says. The ultimate goal is that it will stay there, sequestrated for millions of years, turning back into oil.

This year's goal is more modest: an on-the-water experiment, floating about 1600 single-buoy "micro-farms" to gather data and prove the concept.

Low-tech elegance

The company is part of a new wave of big-thinking about removing carbon from the atmosphere at a planetary-scale.

Microsoft last year committed a billion dollars to kick-start research and development in the emerging field of carbon-removal tech. It also promised to find ways to remove all the CO2 its operations have put in the air since it was founded.

High-tech carbon-removal innovations are emerging around the world. Towering banks of fans that can pull CO2 from the sky. Pumps injecting plant-based biofuels into the earth. But Running Tide seems to be capturing attention — and investment — because of its low-tech elegance.

"When we started learning about Running Tide's approach, I was blown away by the simplicity," says Stacy Kauk, who directs sustainability efforts at Shopify, a $150-billion e-commerce company which will be Running Tide's first customer for carbon-capture credits.

She says Shopify is willing to pay a premium for the credits now, in hopes the technology can ultimately be brought to a price-point that would attract broad buy-in from other businesses and governments.

"They're not relying on expensive equipment, or energy-intensive processes," she says. "It's very simple, and the economies of scale associated with that make Running Tide's solution have huge potential."

Marty Odlin, CEO of Running Tide Technologies, in its workshop on Portland's waterfront. The Dartmouth-trained engineer comes from a fishing family and once wanted to be a fisherman. But after seeing global warming's effects on the Gulf of Maine fisheries he decided to try and reverse the damage. Fred Bever/Maine Public

At a large scale, though, Running Tide is mindful there could be unwanted consequences. It's modeling whether, for instance, a multitude of free-floating micro-farms could entangle whales, hinder shipping, or foul beaches.

Outside experts are pitching in: A consortium of oceanographers from MIT, Stanford and other top research outfits will review the project and its environmental risks. But executive director Brad Ack says all that will be weighed in the context of the urgency of combating climate change.

"We have to compare them against the no-action alternative," he says. "And in this case, the no-action alternative is very grim."

Running Tide's Marty Odlin says it will take a World-War II level mobilization to remove a major chunk of some 200 years' worth of humanity's CO2 pollution, whether via his model or any others that show real-world promise.

"We're kind of in a cage-match with it right now," he says. "I'm not in this to give Godzilla a paper-cut."

For now, from his uncle's re-purposed lobster boat off Maine's coast, the Running Tide team is tending the buoys, making sure they survive the winter storms. They'll return in the spring to sink this test-crop of carbon-removing kelp a thousand meters deep, hopefully to stay there for millennia.

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(AU) Passionate Young Voices Demand To Be Heard On Climate Crisis

Sydney Morning Herald - Editorial

It was more than a decade ago that former prime minister Kevin Rudd declared climate change “the great moral challenge of our generation”. Regrettably, the generation that has walked the halls of power since that time, most notably in Federal Parliament, has largely proven not up to the task. And those who will be most affected by a warming planet – the younger generation – are not happy.

In pre-pandemic times, the most public display of this was the tens of thousands of students who took time out from school to flood the streets in protest across Australia. Despite being criticised by some politicians, it was a striking display of the passion that many younger people brought to the issue.

Anjali Sharma, 16, and her litigation guardian Sister Brigid Arthur, 86. Ms Sharma is the lead claimant in a group of eight teenagers from across Australia driving a landmark climate change class action in the Federal Court. Credit: Justin McManus

While collective action has been curtailed by COVID-19, eight teenagers from across Australia have taken their demands for stronger action from the streets to the courts. In a landmark class action that begins in Melbourne’s Federal Court on Tuesday, the group is challenging the federal Minister for the Environment, Sussan Ley, to protect young people from climate change and the future harms of coal mining.

The five-day trial will determine the future of the proposed Vickery open-cut coal mine extension in NSW. The proposal would increase the mine’s coal production by about 25 per cent and emissions by 100 million tonnes of greenhouse gases over its lifetime. The teenagers want the minister to call a halt to the mine’s expansion.

The principal lawyer in the case, David Barnden, described it as public interest litigation, saying politicians and other people in power have specific rights and responsibilities to protect the vulnerable. “We are asking the court to recognise that the Environment Minister has a duty to protect younger people from the impacts of future climate harm. It’s the first time the court has been asked to recognise such a duty,” he said.

While it may be new in Australia, there have been many similar cases in a range of countries, most notably the United States. They rarely appear to get the backing of the judges involved but, to a degree, that is not the point. This is a generation taking a stand – whether it be on social media, with placards on city streets, or in the courts – against our political leaders who, in their view, have failed to act with the urgency and decisiveness that is needed.

The teenagers are under 18 years old. Without the ability to make their voices heard at the polls, they are using whatever means they have at hand. For a generation that will have to live with the full consequences of climate change, it is hardly an unreasonable level of concern.

The Environment Minister, in her submission to the court, does acknowledge that “the Earth’s climate is changing and humans are primarily responsible” and that “increases in temperature affect the environment, economy and society”. But Ms Ley has no intention of conceding ground on the broader responsibility government may have for not acting quickly enough. She puts it bluntly: “The minister does not owe a duty of care as alleged.”

In a legal sense, there is little doubt that Ms Ley has the stronger case. It would take a brave judge to set such a precedent. But if Australia’s political leaders think they can ignore the effort, they do so at their peril. These passionate young Australians may not be able to vote yet, but when they can, they are sure to have little time for those who have dragged their heels tackling climate change.

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