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 <i>100 times</i> more efficient carbon offsetting than ClimeWorks, for <i>high-end</i> projects), and do so with additional co-benefits in terms of biodiversity and livelihood of local communities. REDD+ projects such as <a href="https://www.standfortrees.org" rel="nofollow">https://www.standfortrees.org</a> are good examples of that.<p>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!<p>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.<p>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 <i>with numbers</i>.<p>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.
If I've calculated correctly, this service costs $1100 per ton. A flight from New York to London emits about 1 ton of co2.<p>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.
Can we destroy bitcoin first??<p><a href="https://twitter.com/bascule/status/1234493080583143424?s=20" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/bascule/status/1234493080583143424?s=20</a><p>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...
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?
Does this system have the potential for substantial improvements in efficiency if we support it?<p>Are the efficiencies gained in manufacturing scale or can the actual process / hardware be substantially improved?
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.<p>This service is like 26 Euros for 46% of average travel. I know some companies use this company to offset their travel. <a href="https://pachama.com/" rel="nofollow">https://pachama.com/</a>. Anyone have advice on others?
It might be nice to show how many others have subscribed. This is one of those services where people may think,<p>"i'll do this but i don't want to be the only one." Seeing the scale can be motivating.<p>It would also be nice to know how this would work at scale. If 100k people sign up, can they support that?
If I calculate that right, it is about $1100 a ton.<p>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<p><a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0306261916308194" rel="nofollow">https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030626191...</a>
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.<p>A lot of articles about climate change also leave one with an unfortunate sense of helplessness. This is something an average person can do.