CO2 Capture
CO2 capture and storage (CCS) is the neglected child of the clean energy family. It does not have the ideological appeal of wind and solar power or the promise of limitless energy offered by nuclear power.
As shown on the right, however, achieving the stringent targets recommended by climate scientists will be much more expensive without CCS. And the longer we delay, the more crucial it will become.
My personal view is that the world will continue pursuing ideological instead of pragmatic decarbonization pathways for several more years. This impractical strategy is driven mainly by rich world actors born into societies already fully developed on the back of hundreds of billions of tons of CO2. Meanwhile, the two thirds of the world still living on less than $10/day have much more pressing priorities. These are the people who will shape the energy landscape going forward.
Due to this ongoing lack of pragmatism, CCS will eventually need to ride to the rescue, capitalizing on three key characteristics:
- CCS retrofits can clean up existing plants to prevent losses and disruption from premature infrastructure retirements.
- Bio-CCS and direct air capture can achieve negative emissions to retroactively remove some of our historical CO2.
- CCS applies to all energy sectors: 1) industry (where few other mitigation options exist), 2) clean fuel provision (particularly for transport and heating), and 3) electricity (as reliable backup for intermittent wind and solar power).
CCS is a proven technology with several successfully operating large-scale projects. But it will not take off before there is a market incentive such as a strong CO2 tax or direct subsidies.
As a result, securing the investment required to develop novel CO2 capture processes is challenging. This is a problem because novel processes are needed to reduce the energy penalty of first-generation technologies and provide the flexibility that will be required by future energy systems.
Great improvements are possible in terms of flexibility and competitiveness. That’s why I dedicate plenty of time to developing business cases for these promising solutions.
Energy Systems
The rapid cost reduction in wind and solar power is a positive development for the energy transition, but these weather-dependent generators will make future energy systems much more complex.
Efficiently utilizing energy when the wind blows and the sun shines and efficiently providing energy when they don’t will become increasingly challenging as more capacity is installed. Furthermore, electricity currently provides only 20% of final energy consumption, requiring a lot of new coupling with other sectors that will also need to follow the variable power output of wind and solar.
There are also many social, political, and environmental factors. Public resistance to highly visible wind turbines, solar panels, and transmission line expansions is rising, concerns are growing about environmental impacts related to natural habitats, raw material mining, and waste disposal, and the social impacts of rapidly shutting down existing value chains are coming into focus. On the positive side, the potential of Life Efficiency to simplify the energy transition is gaining recognition.
Understanding this complex and multifaceted system is key to a successful energy transition. As all engineers know, complexity generally leads to unexpected problems, expensive delays, and plenty of frustration. This is why we need to control the complexity of the transition to make sure it happens quickly, smoothly, and fairly.
CCS technologies can make a large contribution to reducing system complexity and easing transition pains, but it’s just one of many options on the table. Figuring out the optimal combination of all the options for each unique country is a massive and very important task.
In essence, future energy technology assessments must quantify the effect of the proposed technology on total system cost, while also keeping non-economic factors in mind. Although simple levelized cost calculations remain the method of choice for technology benchmarking, it’s simply no longer sufficient.
For this reason, energy systems modeling has become an important focus area for me. My main goal with this research is to develop novel process concepts that create maximum value for the energy system of the future, considering all the complex factors mentioned earlier.
Life Efficiency
This one sounds a bit strange at first glance, but it’s really quite simple.
Life efficiency is the amount of happiness and longevity we get from a given amount of material consumption. In other words, it measures how much life we get from all our environmental impact and economic effort.
Sadly, average life efficiency today is embarrassingly low. If the billions of developing world citizens striving towards decent standards of living maintain such a low life efficiency, we’re toast.
On the bright side, being very inefficient means that there is huge room for improvement.
Improving life efficiency is something I’ve been studying for many years now, mostly by reading widely about health, wealth, and happiness and trying out different ideas in my own life. These are the results:
- I have not been sick for a single day in the last 13 years. My body fat is only 13% and my VO2max stands at 59 ml/min/kg.
- According to the well-known 4% rule, I earned my right to retire at the age of 34. I’m currently using this financial freedom to maximize my creative freedom and, with it, my happiness and productivity.
- My CO2 footprint is sustainable at 1.2 ton/year according to this established calculator.
Clearly, all my research into life efficiency has paid off nicely. But these results are of little use to the world because very few people will find my spartan, research-obsessed lifestyle appealing.
Thus, I’m continuously looking for ways to incorporate the methods I have developed into more conventional lifestyles. With the help of some close friends who are trying out some of these ideas in their own lives, I aim to deliver some valuable contributions to this vital field.
Last updated: 15/07/2021