
How do we cut down on emissions from steel, cement, and plastic? - Reedx
https://www.gatesnotes.com/Energy/A-question-to-ask-about-every-climate-plan
======
bryanlarsen
My climate change plan is simple: a ratcheting carbon fee with dividend[1],
together with a carbon tariff as part of a climate club[2]

The industries where it's easy will take the easy way to avoid the carbon fee.

The industries where it's hard will pay the fee but will see the ratchet
coming and will be furiously researching alternatives. Worse come to worse, at
some point the fee will be more than sequestration costs so they'll take that
option.

I don't have to talk about any specific industry like steel because there is
always sequestration as a backstop.

edit: of course my plan only works because there are lots of people like the
companies Bill Gates linked to working on the details.

1:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_fee_and_dividend](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_fee_and_dividend)
2: [https://issues.org/climate-clubs-to-overcome-free-
riding/](https://issues.org/climate-clubs-to-overcome-free-riding/)

~~~
einpoklum
"Fee"? "Dividend"? That's not a plan to stop and reverse climate change,
that's a plan for financiers and capitalists to trade in the blame for
continuing climate change.

No no, emissions need to be cut - for real. There need to be schedules and
(tax-based) funding to help make this happen. And - an expropriation of
intellectual property so that technologies developed to help this happen
aren't controlled by any single company or cartel - or nation.

~~~
bryanlarsen
The plan takes from the rich and gives to the poor. It could also be called a
"Carbon Tax & Benefit". But instead we use right-friendly words for a very
left-friendly plan.

~~~
einpoklum
You can take from the rich and give to the poor all day long - but that in
itself doesn't reduce emissions. The rich will pay some taxes, or more
probably, evade them, offshore stuff etc, and emissions will continue.

~~~
bryanlarsen
The rich can hide money, but it's a lot harder for them to hide consumption,
and the carbon tax is a consumption tax.

~~~
einpoklum
So what? So they'll pay consumption tax. They're rich, after all, they can
afford it.

------
dev_dull
> _Some industrial processes can’t easily be electrified because they require
> too much heat. One possible alternative is to get the heat from a next-
> generation nuclear plant._

Glad to see this. I take any future large-scale green energy initiative as
unserious if it doesn’t take an honest look and consideration at new nuclear
energy power plants.

~~~
godelski
There's three necessities I see in a green scale initiative: carbon tax,
nuclear, and sequestration (CC).

I also have a hard time taking anyone serially if they don't talk about how we
need a diversified energy portfolio nor understand the difficulties of energy
density. I feel like many repeat popular points but do not spend time trying
to understand. I think that's how we get politicians that consider climate
change as one of their top priorities saying that geoengineering and CC are
"false solutions". I also don't know any climatologist who isn't pro nuclear
(which means nuclear + renewables, not nuclear vs renewables).

The IPCC endorses the use of nuclear power too[0]. Being anti nuclear seems to
me, as a scientist, anti-scientific. Since it is against what the scientists
studying this are recommending.

[0] [https://www.world-nuclear.org/press/press-statements/the-
ipc...](https://www.world-nuclear.org/press/press-statements/the-
ipcc-1-5c-special-report-nuclear-energy%E2%80%99s-impo.aspx)

~~~
smackthatthro
Anti-scientific, or we learned from our mistakes? We can barely build a bridge
that lasts for 50 years, but somehow we are going to magically build
containment units for waste which last 1,000s?

The science has shown us that Nuclear electricity is incredibly dangerous, and
that humans are mostly too incompetent to maintain it safely. I say this as
the child of a Nuclear Physicist who spent half of his life working on
weapons, and half at a power plant. Dad didn't think we were up to the
responsibility either.

I was just in Belarus, a friend of mine told me that since Chernobyl 20
members of her family have died of cancer. Cancer isn't fun, I will tell you
from experience.

There's more to consider than "does it work in the lab?" and "will it be
cheaper"?.

~~~
roenxi
Options for death are basically either heart attack, cancer or other [0].
Cancer is horrible, but that isn't a very telling example without more detail.

> We can barely build a bridge that lasts for 50 years, but somehow we are
> going to magically build containment units for waste which last 1,000s?

We've had nuclear power for ~70 years. There is a very high likelihood that if
we push on with nuclear power we will either be reprocessing that 'waste' for
fuel at some point or it will be inert enough that it doesn't really matter.

The idea that we in 2019 need to take responsibility for the next 15
generations is absurd. Anyone who tried that at any point in the past would
have been at best wasting their time; technology has moved too quickly. Our
ancestors might as well have worried that by 2019 we'd look back on them with
contempt for not leaving us a strategic 10t reserve of bronze for forging our
swords and shields.

The biggest risk is that in 60 years they will dig it up and hurl it at their
enemies, on purpose, as a dirty bomb.

[0] [https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-
death.htm](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/leading-causes-of-death.htm)

------
tomComb
He says that Steel (and some other materials) are the most important issue
because we don't yet have any proven good or easy way to reduce the CO2 impact
of their production.

That leads me to the opposite of Gates' conclusion.

At this point there are many low hanging fruit, so until we have a good way to
address steel production, we should keep the focus on those other measures.

We should certainly be doing research on the issue that he is focused on, but
we shouldn't let ourselves get distracted by it.

Getting to zero carbon emissions overall (the goal he brings up to justify his
focus) is a great long-term goal but I think our success in this challenge
will be determined in the short and medium term.

~~~
garmaine
This isn’t something more research will solve. Metals exist in ores as oxides.
To get pure metal you have to reduce them, and that oxygen had to go
somewhere, bound to something. There is no net zero process that will magic
away those pesky atoms.

~~~
thereisnospork
Eh, its perfectly doable to make those atoms wind up as O2, it is just
expensive. All we need to do to solve climate change, today, is accept a
drastically lower standard of living. Hence why it isn't happening, (and won't
happen until people start dying).

~~~
bryanlarsen
> accept a drastically lower standard of living

With sequestration costs at $100 - $300 per tonne for worst-case industries,
climate change will cost trillions world-wide. That's a lot of money, but
hardly a "drastically lower standard of living". Compare with Iraq war, or
Apollo + Vietnam. Much less sacrifice than WW2.

~~~
thereisnospork
Even at those optimistic costs that is $2-6,000 dollars per person (20
tonnes/American-year), 8 to 24k per family of four. I'd call that a
drastically lower quality of living for an average American, to say nothing
about a working person in the 3rd world who probably doesn't make 2,000USD in
a year.

I'm not suggesting sequestering is going to be the end of society or the
economy, just that people won't start sequestering until something is
_imminently_ threatening them.

------
SECProto
> Making steel and other materials—such as cement, plastic, glass, aluminum,
> and paper—is the third biggest contributor of greenhouse gases, behind
> agriculture and making electricity

While I agree in broad terms that eliminating greenhouse gases in the
materials sector is important medium-term, I agree with other posters here
that we need to focus hard on implementing solutions we DO have now -
specifically, in the electricity and transportation sectors.

> these materials are everywhere in our lives, and we don’t yet have any
> proven breakthroughs that will give us affordable zero-carbon versions of
> them

This is at least partially misleading - for aluminum. There are a number of
hydroelectric-powered aluminum smelters in Quebec and British Columbia, that
produce very-low-carbon aluminum. And there are technologies approaching
market for zero-carbon aluminum[1].

[1] [https://www.elysis.com/en](https://www.elysis.com/en)

~~~
garmaine
It’s not the source of power. It’s the chemical process itself. You get oxygen
out of a metal oxide by binding it with carbon and releasing the CO2. Canadian
smelting is just as dirty in this respect.

The only other alternative is electrolyzing water to get hydrogen, which binds
with the metal oxide’s oxygen to make water again.

But not only is this really inefficient by comparison, but now you’re adding
O2 to the atmosphere at industrial scale.

~~~
_Microft
Is using hydrogen for that an actual process or just an idea?

There's the problem that hydrogen can make metals brittle, see
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_embrittlement](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_embrittlement)

~~~
philipkglass
It's an actual process. The ability of hydrogen to reduce hot iron oxides to
metallic iron has been known at least since the early 19th century. But it has
not been done on an industrial scale before because using fossil fuels is
cheaper, and reducing GHG emissions has not been a significant priority until
recently.

EDIT: Joseph Priestley actually discovered that iron oxide ("calx of iron")
could be reduced to the metallic state by hot hydrogen ("inflammable air") in
the late 18th century.

[https://archive.org/details/b22281824/page/n57](https://archive.org/details/b22281824/page/n57)

~~~
_Microft
Thanks!

------
f_allwein
German steel makers aiming to go carbon neutral by 2050. Hydrogen is an
important element in this:
[https://www.handelsblatt.com/today/companies/green-energy-
th...](https://www.handelsblatt.com/today/companies/green-energy-thyssenkrupp-
steels-itself-for-a-carbon-free-future/23894808.html)

~~~
ThomPete
Aiming to is a meaningless word. It requires fundamental discoveries we by
definition can't know when or if we are going to find.

Edit: Downvoted for what exactly?

~~~
cheez
We can't even estimate next week's sprint properly.

------
woranl
If we have cheap reliable renewable electricity, then we can generate hydrogen
from electrolysis, and use the hydrogen as fuel for steel production. Hydrogen
burns even hotter than methane and it's clean. So, the key is we need
renewable electricity.

~~~
zizee
I'm not super knowledgeable about this, but my understanding is that there are
significant losses during electrolysis and probably when burning hydrogen. I
expect just using an electric furnace would be more efficient.

------
jakozaur
Steel can be produced using hydrogen. This plays extremely well with
renewables and storing energy. Produce hydrogen from electricity when energy
is cheap (sun + wind), don’t do that when its expensive.

------
pharke
I think his first point about carbon capture probably deserves more attention.
It's likely the most sellable strategy and it also doesn't depend on the
location where it is carried out. It has the benefits of possibly producing
some goods that can be used and there is prior history of this working. If we
look at the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum we see a similar increase in
global temperatures due to carbon dioxide release, albeit over a much longer
timeline. But we also see a drastic reduction of those carbon dioxide levels.
One theory as to how the global CO2 levels were reduced is algal
biosequestration. Can we duplicate this at an industrial scale? We're already
promoting the growth of algae unintentionally with fertilizer runoff, could we
do this intentionally in a location that would minimize harm in order to
offset carbon emissions?

~~~
twic
There has been quite a bit of work on ocean fertilization, to increase
phytoplankton photosynthesis, but no killer app yet:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_fertilization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_fertilization)

------
ThomPete
I am glad to see Bill Gates being more vocal about this. There has been an
unrealistic optimism when it comes to how easy it is to find alternatives to
what we are currently using.

What people forget is that things like plastic ever-present not because of
some evil conspiracy by oil companies to push an inferior material on the
market but because it's superior to all other materials we know of.

The problem isn't product innovation but fundamental science and we have had
no new discoveries since oil to fundamentally change how we approach progress.

Having listened to a lot of pitches by claimed alternative to plastic it's
been very obvious to me that we simply need improvements in fundamental
science not just in technology. I.e we lack fundamentally new discoveries to
truly change our ways.

Nanotech might help us some of the way but we are nowhere near the utopia a
lot of people seem to be thinking.

~~~
jacobush
Superior except that it would _not_ be superior in all these cases if the
unaccounted for externalities were considered.

~~~
ThomPete
The externalities include positive ones so yes it would be superior by far.

There literally is no realistic alternative to plastic right now.

~~~
jacobush
Excuse me what are those? I can list just a few negatives just off the top off
my head, hormonal dysfunction in humans and animals, microplastics in the sea,
no way to know if plastic contains carcinogens, are safe for food or not,
contain heavy metals, litter, and new problems we don't even know about yet,
because there is a never ending stream of new products and materials getting
shoved out in our lives.

And what a defeatist attitude - what about enumerating the plastics we,
standardising and regulating additives etc? Today it's total chaos with a
_very_ thin veneer of recycling.

~~~
ThomPete
How do you think we do most modern operations and healthcare, how do you think
we manage to have cars be extremely lightweight and i could go on.

~~~
jacobush
Fine, but are these _unaccounted_ positive externalities? Don't you choose
plastic exactly because you want its nice properties? But looking back the
next day I think I may have over-reacted a bit to your comment. Of course
plastic is in many ways very nice. Let's keep a fair subset. But we could
benefit from paring down the variations, and the volume, a lot, IMHO.

~~~
ThomPete
It's not just nice it's crucial for our survival. Keep in mind plastic can be
as soft as velvet and as durable and hard as diamonds. No other material does
that and that allow us to make things that would be impossible otherwise. We
simply have no alternatives to them yet.

The unaccounted externalities are that fossil fuel and thus ex. plastic makes
modern life possible with everything from increased age, to the ability to
cure the sick, to lowered childbirth, to increased living standards, food
production, cleaner environments and so on.

Of course there are negative externalities too and we need to deal with them
but all in all plastics and thus fossil fuels improve our lives tremendously
IMO.

Ironically the problem the modern society is facing is how to deal with
abundance rather than scarcity.

~~~
jacobush
Now I really feel like a strawman argument is going on.

Do you believe I advocate remove _all plastic_?

Do you advocate keeping _all plastic_? _None_ of the plastic can be replaced
with other materials or designed away altogether?!

I hope you are not, because that is ludicrous.

~~~
ThomPete
I don't believe anything about you. I am simply telling you what I consider to
be the reality.

Some parts of the plastic industry can and will be replaced but far less both
short term and long term than people want to think, unless; some new
fundamental scientific discoveries are done.

------
RickJWagner
Bill Gates has become-- against all odds-- one of my most respected sources of
information when he blogs. I don't always agree with him, but I like his
thought processes and writing style.

~~~
Ididntdothis
Agreed. I often disagree with him but at least he makes an effort to present
ideas based on facts and well thought out ideas. This makes finding solutions
much easier.

I am always horrified by the debate about US healthcare we’re almost nobody
makes an effort to think it through and also listen to other opinions and
experiences.

------
chrdlu
I think a lot of this comes down to resources and innovation.

As more money is invested and spent on research and development of new ideas,
I think some things will eventually start to work providing a solution to
these issues.

For more money to flow into the ecosystem, we need people to see value from
being carbon neutral personally.

If you'd like to become carbon neutral, I'd suggest you check out
[https://projectwren.com/](https://projectwren.com/)

------
pbreit
Unpopular opinion: adaptation is best (only?) solution.

~~~
truculent
Unpopular opinion: adaptation at +4C is genocide

~~~
AnimalMuppet
That seems likely. But (yet another unpopular opinion): "Zero emissions now"
is also genocide, or at least large-scale death.

~~~
VBprogrammer
I don't know why this is being downvoted. If we went zero carbon tomorrow we'd
have no replacement for the Haber process which produces the massive amounts
of fertilizer needed to feed the human population.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
Or for most of the tractors and combines that work the farm fields, or the
trucks, trains, and ships that transport the food. Or for the power plants
that run the air conditioning that keeps some people from literally dying in
the summer, or for the natural gas that keeps some people from dying in the
winter.

------
legulere
> bridges are so sturdy and last so long

What a joke, when you see how all the bridges built in the 60s and 70s are
crumbling apart.

~~~
pharke
That's actually solvable by using another product of high-heat processes,
basaltic rebar. The main problem with concrete infrastructure is that water
eventually infiltrates down to the rebar and wire mesh used to add tensile
strength causing it to rust and expand which breaks apart the concrete. If you
use something with equivalent tensile strength that doesn't rust then you get
construction that lasts many, many decades longer.

------
MayeulC
> Some industrial processes can’t easily be electrified because they require
> too much heat [...] We also might be able to get the heat using hydrogen
> fuels, which can be made using clean electricity

I don't quite get it, as this ends up electrifying the production process.
Unless he talks about directly heating with electricity (induction?). I was
under the impression that there was no real limit to electric heating
(induction, microwave, etc.). Of course, a complex hydrogen production plant
shipping hydrogen to the factories could end up being much cheaper than
installing microwave heaters, I guess.

> Carbon capture

At the very least, I'd like to see those processed if they can't be eliminated
or sequestrated. Run the exhaust trough some algae containers, and transform
the resulting biomass into biofuels. At least, that would lessen the carbon
impact due to burning those fuels.

Taking the idea to its limits to judge the impact: If every factory was to do
this, if we take current emissions as (24% agriculture, 25% electricity, 21%
manufacturing, 14% transportation) [1] we would in theory be able to fully
supply transportation with biofuels, cutting it entirely. Do the same with
electricity, and you can remove as much emissions as the entire
"manufacturing" budget, so 21%. Not that bad. In parallel, you can continue
cleaning up electricity generation, and replacing carbon-intensive
manufacturing processes with electricity-based ones.

Actually, there is no reason why this couldn't be almost a closed-loop system:
Hydrocarbons burned in Manufacturing -> CO2 -> Capture + Algae + processing ->
Biofuels (Hydrocarbons)

The energy input ends up being solar energy (or equivalent) necessary for
photosynthesis. Algae could also be replaced by chemical processes that take
electricity as an input.

This could be expensive to install, but the fuel could be an extra source of
revenue as well (or savings, if closed-loop). That's also why we need the
right incentives (carbon tax?) There are multiple research projects being
conducted in this area [2]

[1]: [https://www.gatesnotes.com/Energy/We-should-discuss-soil-
as-...](https://www.gatesnotes.com/Energy/We-should-discuss-soil-as-much-as-
coal)

[2]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algae_fuel#Carbon_dioxide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algae_fuel#Carbon_dioxide)

------
gremlinsinc
Couldn't we just put a dome around manufacturing plants that is air tight and
collects the carbon? For breathable air we can use hospital grade air systems.

------
barbs
> "Whenever I hear an idea for what we can do to keep global warming in
> check—whether it’s over a conference table or a cheeseburger"

You're discussing global warming prevention and eating meat??

~~~
viklove
You're discussing global warming prevention and using a computer??

