
Personal CO2 Removal as a Service - jatsign
https://climeworks.shop/
======
valw
If you want make your money work against climate change, I wouldn't recommend
this service - it's simply not competitive compared to voluntary carbon
markets, in which well-certified projects can offset a teqCO2 for less than 10
USD (that's _100 times_ more efficient carbon offsetting than ClimeWorks, for
_high-end_ projects), and do so with additional co-benefits in terms of
biodiversity and livelihood of local communities. REDD+ projects such as
[https://www.standfortrees.org](https://www.standfortrees.org) are good
examples of that.

The differentiating factor of this service is that it's "Permanent: turn CO2
into stone". That benefit is mostly psychological, not pragmatic. Aside from
that, the 'small land and water usage' metric is also biased. Yes, rainforest
protection projects use land, and you know what else they do? Protect
rainforests!

It's also not that promising as a CCS technology. Just like energy, CO2 is
most efficiently captured where its concentration is highest - that is in
power plants, steelmaking plants, etc.

I know we love revolutionary startups and shiny new things here, but there are
scientific bodies and certification standards which have already done the work
well in this space, looking at the problem with a holistic approach and _with
numbers_.

I know people mean well here, but for climate change what matters is results,
not intentions - so run the numbers before you throw your money out of the
window. Cool startup branding is not what makes a project impactful.

~~~
dwild
Why not both?

Planting tree is nice, but theses solutions you give have limits, which will
only make the cost higher. This is a technological solution, sure it has
limits too, but its cost will only go down by being done more efficiently and
at one point, we will need to do theses things too, thus the sooner we reach
lower price, the better we will be.

As you said, it's 100x more expensive, thus no industrial client will consider
this solution yet, but you can afford it. Be the first stone that allow them
to become 50x more expensive, etc...

Being client to them show also that we are ready to put money where our mouth
are. That push toward more investment in theses spheres because there's money
in the game. Investing into planting trees at 1/100 the cost... well except
exploiting even more cheap labor... there's no money to be made.

~~~
valw
There's a common misconception that voluntary carbon market projects solely
consist of planting trees - that's not the case. There are also forest
protection projects, energy transition projects, and so on. ClimeWorks'
project could be certified as well... but then carbon credit buyers would
realize it's just less effective than the alternatives. I guess that's why
ClimeWorks's go-to-market strategy is 'high-tech' branding: they go after
technology lovers rather rather than informed investors.

Also see what I mentioned about CCS. AFAIK, the most promising CCS technology
consist of burning biomass in power plants, and then using geological
confinement of the sequestered carbon. The reason it's more effective, as I
mentioned, is because the carbon is captured where its concentration is high -
less entropy to fight.

It's absolutely true that current offsetting methodologies won't always stay
so cheap - and as prices rise, new innovative methodologies will develop.
Buying carbon credits is not an impediment to innovation; but it has the
advantage of rewarding projects for being efficient, rather than
"technologically cool".

~~~
dwild
> There are also forest protection projects

Same constraint as planting tree... at one point there's no more forest to
protect (or the cost of protecting one just increase). It will just get more
expensive.

> energy transition projects

This one is interesting, again, will just get more expensive with time, but
that one I never seen any project that allow to buy carbon credit for theses
kinds of projects.

> AFAIK, the most promising CCS technology consist of burning biomass in power
> plants, and then using geological confinement of the sequestered carbon.

Where can I offset my CO2 emission that way?

I don't care about investing in a solution that has no future. If what I pay
for it means that it will just make the next ton more expensive, when it's
already hard to make people pay for it already, I'm not for that solution.

Sure that one is 100x more expensive, but the cost can only go down with
scale, and if it doesn't, well it will just push other technological solution
to be developed because it's a proof there's money in sustainable solutions.

~~~
valw
> This one is interesting, again, will just get more expensive with time, but
> that one I never seen any project that allow to buy carbon credit for theses
> kinds of projects.

And yet Gold Standard reports renewable energy projects are a high share of
their pipeline:
[https://www.goldstandard.org/sites/default/files/documents/m...](https://www.goldstandard.org/sites/default/files/documents/market_report_2017.pdf)

> Where can I offset my CO2 emission that way?

That's still at an experimental stage AFAIK (like most CCS technology), so
unfortunately not yet available for such purposes.

> I don't care about investing in a solution that has no future. If what I pay
> for it means that it will just make the next ton more expensive, when it's
> already hard to make people pay for it already, I'm not for that solution.

A more optimistic way to look at it is as such: if we commit to offsetting our
emissions by buying carbon credits, rising prices will pressure us towards
reducing our emissions.

That's where we want to be headed, because there is NO future where emissions
remain high and are totally offset.

I would encourage you to rethink your approach as follows: invest in the
transition, not in the destination.

> Sure that one is 100x more expensive, but the cost can only go down with
> scale, and if it doesn't, well it will just push other technological
> solution to be developed because it's a proof there's money in sustainable
> solutions.

What makes you so sure that ClimeWork's solution can scale better? Their
solution requires huge energy expenditures, and its not like we have a lot of
geologically favourable sites for their solution.

If you want long-term innovation, why not fund general CCS research instead?
It's much more likely to yield impactful and well-thought solutions.

~~~
dwild
> Gold Standard reports renewable energy projects

How does renewable energy project have anything to do with athmospheric carbon
capture? It's a way to lower carbon emission into the atmosphere sure, but we
got 100 years of CO2 to take out of it too. I also already do everything I can
to go toward renewable energy.

> That's still at an experimental stage AFAIK

Okay... so not an alternative for me right?

> A more optimistic way to look at it is as such: if we commit to offsetting
> our emissions by buying carbon credits, rising prices will pressure us
> towards reducing our emissions.

We aren't all the same person you know? We are currently talking about someone
that can afford 100x the price to offset his emission and is ready to do it.
I'm not too far from being that person, I'm already trying to reduce my
emission, why not both?

I have nothing against planting tree, it's an amazing solution, but its limit
are well below what needed right now.

People don't want to pay more right now, it's a HUGE issue. Go look at Canada
carbon taxes, most of the provinces are currently fighting it in court, they
are putting sticker on gas stations to tell people that they'll have to pay
hundred more. 100% of that tax which is MUCH lower than the true environmental
cost of that CO2 will be used to refund people. I'm already ready to pay more,
100x even, but planting more tree won't make theses people more likely to
offset their emission if it make it more costly, that solution though not only
offset my emission, but also invest into a potential solution and show there's
a market for atmospheric carbon capture.

> That's where we want to be headed, because there is NO future where
> emissions remain high and are totally offset.

Which come back to my first answer, why not both. There's no future where we
don't take out the CO2 already in the atmosphere either. I have seen multiple
article talking about how the current warming is enough already that what get
naturally released from glacier melting is more than what we release.
Something being too expensive is no longer a reason to not research toward a
solution, we need to research them all.

> I would encourage you to rethink your approach as follows: invest in the
> transition, not in the destination.

I never talked about destination, I talk about what we will need during the
transition.

>What makes you so sure that ClimeWork's solution can scale better?

Where did I say their solution will be the right one? Excluding it from being
the right one is a much bigger issue. What I'm sure about is that if there's a
solution that scale better, but also allow to scrub atmospheric level, but
still not viable, seeing any investment into ClimeWork's solution will make
them much more likely to go toward that, instead of waiting for tree planting
initiative to become costly enough to finally justify researching their
costlier solution.

>If you want long-term innovation, why not fund general CCS research instead?

As a private individual earning in the mid 5 figures, that's the best I can
do. I can surely pay 100x more carbon capture than I consume, but that's not a
viable solution if it will just make it costlier for someone else, and won't
actually solve the issue. Instead I vote with my wallet, and that's one that
seems viable to me.

------
quicklime
If I've calculated correctly, this service costs $1100 per ton. A flight from
New York to London emits about 1 ton of co2.

The site talks about averages, but averages can be deceiving. Most people
don't fly, and those that fly fly a lot. If you fly, you should probably try
to overshot the average (by a lot) when you offset.

~~~
gambiting
I flew from UK to Canada recently, and KLM was offering to "offset my CO2
emissions" for something stupid like $5. Surely....that's not actually a
thing? What can they do for $5 that would offset so much CO2?

~~~
Tuxer
absolutely nothing. If the cost of carbon removal was 5$/ton, we wouldn't be
having this climate change problem whatsoever.

~~~
londons_explore
In europe the carbon cost is EUR24/ton right now.

~~~
asdfasgasdgasdg
The quality of offsetting programs varies drastically. For example, if I just
say I'm going to offset your emissions then do nothing, I can offer that
service for $1EUR/ton. At the other end of the spectrum would be something
like methane recapture tents over abandoned mines, where there is no risk of
addition or gaming (because it costs so much to build mines in comparison to
what this earns). And in the middle is something like planting trees. It's not
clear where on the quality spectrum the program you're referring to is, but I
would guess it is not going to be at the high end.

The other thing to keep in mind is that we are only looking at low-hanging
fruit right now. That's actually one of the really appealing things about this
climeworks idea. It can be scaled indefinitely. Carbon capture from mines and
manure digesters can only scale so much, because there are only so many
abandoned mines and only so much undigested animal manure.

------
frandroid
Can we destroy bitcoin first??

[https://twitter.com/bascule/status/1234493080583143424?s=20](https://twitter.com/bascule/status/1234493080583143424?s=20)

Bitcoin energy consumption hits a new all time high of nearly 9GW, comparable
to Chile, a country with 18M people. Carbon footprint is ~37 Mt CO2 annually,
about that of New Zealand. And yet it still does ~4 transactions per second...

~~~
SilasX
Sure, as long as we're going to be even-handed about resource-wasting products
rather than singling this one out. There are a billion things that produce no
net social value but are ignored. And even if we did target Bitcoin, then --
like everything else -- it should be a matter of "are you paying your
environmental cost? Cool, then carry on", not "hey I didn't like this for
unrelated reasons, so this is my pretense for shutting it down regardless of
how much its users are willing to pay for the damage they're doing".

My longer comment on this point:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19193938](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19193938)

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _There are a billion things that produce no net social value but are
> ignored._

Was going to reply "name three", but I see you covered that in your other post
- well, two out of three; "Ferraris for show-off producers in LA, or Hello
Kitty backpacks".

But those other things don't have a superlinear growth in energy consumption
baked into the fundamentals of operation. A Hello Kitty backpack doesn't need
schoolchildren to keep burning electricity just to secure its contents.

Most things are O(n) - O(n log n) in energy use to general utility provided,
and top out at some point. Proof of Work chains need that just to keep the
network working, regardless of any utility provided on top (which arguably is
near-zero for any legitimate use case).

But I agree with the general point - pricing in full externalities of energy
use would go a long way towards fixing things, including Bitcoin's existence.

~~~
SilasX
>But those other things don't have a superlinear growth in energy consumption
baked into the fundamentals of operation. A Hello Kitty backpack doesn't need
schoolchildren to keep burning electricity just to secure its contents.

Unrestricted social signaling games absolutely have runaway costs and zero net
social benefits; if we're going to address those, we're right back to "charge
for externalities", which was the solution anyway, and completely unspecific
to Bitcoin.

Edit:

>But I agree with the general point - pricing in full externalities of energy
use would go a long way towards fixing things, including Bitcoin's existence.

Why do you say that? it would just change the total equilibrium expenditure on
mining, not render it pointless, since the blockchain just has too be too
expensive to attack, and the same constraints would apply to attackers and
miners.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _Why do you say that? it would just change the total equilibrium expenditure
> on mining, not render it pointless, since the blockchain just has too be too
> expensive to attack, and the same constraints would apply to attackers and
> miners._

I feel it would significantly slow its growth, perhaps making it not worth the
while relative to alternative solutions.

Also, the way I understand it, PoW has its growth limited only by a) how fast
can you provision the hardware, and b) how much energy you can throw at it. I
worry that we'll never arrive at the point of having clean energy too cheap to
meter, if we have a black hole fueled by pure, refined greed, which can suck
all the energy surplus pretty much instantly.

~~~
SilasX
Mining expenditures are limited by the benefits relative to the cost.
Increasingly expensive mining is added until the expected revenues of bitcoins
sold don't make up for them. At the moment right now, more mining could come
online, but isn't taken online because it wouldn't pay for itself.

If energy becomes more expensive -- say, by pricing in the externalities of
some energy sources -- that decreases the equilibrium expenditure, because
marginal mining can't pay for itself anymore.

The concept of "pricing out miners" doesn't even make sense to begin with.
Miners are competing with other miners (including malicious ones). Any
resource constraint affects all of them; it can't make all of them give up. To
the extent that other coins become popular, that (again) just prices out
marginal miners.

------
pacoverdi
Maybe I didn't read the site thoroughly enough but... how do we know that they
are doing their part of the bargain? How do we/they measure how much carbon is
effectively removed from the atmosphere?

~~~
imglorp
My thoughts too. How do we know it's not just a website? An annual,
independent auditor report would be nice, at least confirming their number of
subscribers and estimating the capacity of their chemical process.

~~~
cmutel
Climeworks is a Swiss startup in business since 2003; they have built multiple
pilot plants in Switzerland, and are well known here. See e.g.
[https://www.climeworks.com/about/](https://www.climeworks.com/about/)

------
aresant
Does this system have the potential for substantial improvements in efficiency
if we support it?

Are the efficiencies gained in manufacturing scale or can the actual process /
hardware be substantially improved?

------
sporkland
I've been a subscriber for over a year due to my belief that me doing
something in this space is better than me doing nothing. But I didn't do a ton
of research first. I'm curious about what options are out there and how they
break down in terms of cost effectiveness for sequestration.

This service is like 26 Euros for 46% of average travel. I know some companies
use this company to offset their travel.
[https://pachama.com/](https://pachama.com/). Anyone have advice on others?

~~~
valw
Frankly, this service is basically reinventing the wheel of volontary carbon
markets, and doing so much, much less efficiently, and with fewer co-benefits.

Well-certified projects can offset emissions at a price of about 10$/teqCO2. I
personally recommend
[https://www.standfortrees.org](https://www.standfortrees.org).

------
magic5227
It might be nice to show how many others have subscribed. This is one of those
services where people may think,

"i'll do this but i don't want to be the only one." Seeing the scale can be
motivating.

It would also be nice to know how this would work at scale. If 100k people
sign up, can they support that?

------
PaulHoule
If I calculate that right, it is about $1100 a ton.

I just gave a presentation on BECCS w/ Brazilian Ethanol which comes out
closer to $30. I haven't put it up, but here is one of the papers I based it
on

[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030626191...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306261916308194)

~~~
tantalor
TerraPass offers $10/ton

[https://www.terrapass.com/product/productindividuals-
familie...](https://www.terrapass.com/product/productindividuals-families)

~~~
oneplusone
Carbon offsets is not the same as co2 removal.

~~~
lapink
If carbon offset is done well, wouldn't it be equivalent?

~~~
kohtatsu
AFAICT offsets are "We stopped one tonne from going in", removal is "We took
one tonne out".

~~~
throwaway894345
Unless I'm missing something, that sounds like the same net effect. Why is one
better than the other apart from price?

~~~
kempbellt
+0 tonnes is not equivalent to -1 tonne of C02 emission, because maths.

Reducing current C02 levels is more difficult and expensive than just reducing
C02 output, and has a greater impact on overall reduction, but both are moves
in the right direction.

~~~
throwaway894345
> +0 tonnes is not equivalent to -1 tonne of C02 emission, because maths.

Right, but we're talking about -1 tonne (reducing emissions) vs -1 tonne
(taking carbon out of the atmosphere) and last I checked, -1 tonne _is_
equivalent to -1 tonne.

> Reducing current C02 levels is more difficult and expensive than just
> reducing C02 output, and has a greater impact on overall reduction

It makes sense to me that it's easier/cheaper to reduce C02 output (at least
as long as there is lots of low-hanging fruit), but it doesn't make sense to
me that one would have a greater impact than the other.

~~~
kempbellt
If you look at "reducing 1 tonne" of emission as -1 to the current emission
_output_ , sure. But if you see it as +0 to the current C02 levels, it's
different math.

-1 tonne (active output) is not equivalent to -1 tonne (overall C02 levels)

It's splitting hairs over what we consider to be better. Either is an
improvement that I am happy to see.

~~~
sporkland
I don't follow.

Pretend we have 5 tonnes of co2 in the air. If I have an emitter, say someone
wanting to burn a forest. That would emit 1 tonne. Or I have a sequestration
process that would remove 1 tonne.

I can pay $X to either #1 or #2. In #1 case I stop the addition, e.g. 5 tonnes
total. In #2 the forest gets burned so I'm up to 6 tonnes, but I've pulled
down 1 tonnes so back to 5 tonnes.

As mentioned by other posters, there are a _ton_ of side benefits of the
different approaches (burn forest for agriculture) vs other benefits of
forests. But it seems like from a pure CO2 in atmosphere the two approaches
should be similar?

~~~
kohtatsu
This reminds me of that one gag; let's both put $20 in a box, and I'll sell
the box to you for $30. (I can't find the relation to what's at hand tho)

Back on topic; in one we stop someone making a mess, in another we start
cleaning it up.

Eventually it ought to start getting cleaned up. i.e. CO2 has to fall.

Developing technologies for that now is good. Stopping people from making
messes is also good, and cheaper.

------
jseliger
One important question is not just "Where is CO2 removal now?" but "Where can
CO2 removal companies go if they get adequate funding and consumer uptake?" I
subscribe to Climeworks and think of it a bit like an ongoing Kickstarter.

A lot of articles about climate change also leave one with an unfortunate
sense of helplessness. This is something an average person can do.

~~~
sporkland
That's what I'm doing as well. I assume if climeworks is successful then there
will be others interested in the space as well.

------
shinryuu
This cool. This kind of carbon removal is still very expensive.

------
tdons
Plant a tree.

~~~
philshem
Trees that grow and die and decompose release their carbon back into the
atmosphere. The only way to make tree-growing carbon negative* is to sequester
the grown trees underground.

*edited from “neutral”, sorry, typo

~~~
ehnto
We use trees though. We build all kinds of things with them. Granted I would
rather see native revegitation, often not great for building with depending on
where you live. But given the circumstances and timescales involved, planting
trees may give us some buffer time in the form of an initial dip in carbon.

~~~
notabee
Trees can be one element of many to mitigate emissions, but too often trees
are bandied about as a complete solution, and it's greenwashing that distracts
from the true scope of the problem at hand.

------
christiansakai
I wonder if plants can absorb the Carbon directly via their roots from the
CO2-made-stone?

~~~
philshem
Plants get their carbon from the air (CO2) via photosynthesis.

------
k__
Would be a good franchise.

People probably prefer if CO2 was removed in their cities and not at some
location kilometers away.

~~~
devonstopps
You need clean, low-cost electricity near your city to support this.

And to scale to a impactful level this will also require a very large amount
of new, clean electricity generation...

~~~
k__
Sure thing.

But how big is the benefit otherwise?

