CleanTech Business Concepts: A Rich Mixture of Fraud, Stupidity, and Occasional Genius
I must come across as the Ebeneezer Scrooge when it comes to reviewing cleantech business concepts on behalf of the investor community, insofar as I almost uniformly scoff at them (or worse). But here’s what’s actually going on:
• For every good idea in this space, there are hundreds of bad ones, i.e., concepts that have zero practical potential to improve the quality of our environment.
• The bad ones get the most ink, probably because their promoters know that the only possible path to success lies in spraying them out in front of millions of people, hoping for a fish on the line in the form of a gullible investor.
• Although I try to be the master of my emotions, I’m somehow unable to do that, and all this really irritates the hell out of me.
Here’s something on Facebook: a company that supposedly makes large devices that remove CO2 from the atmosphere so as to create “negative emissions.”
Even if you forget that manufacturing and operating the device is going to create far more emissions than it removes, even the company’s claims are ludicrous. Their plant can be scaled up to produce 150 devices/year, for a total of 7500 tons of CO2/year. Considering there are 3 trillion tons of CO2 in the atmosphere, removing 1% of the CO2/year would require 3 million companies, each with their operating capacity.
Moronic? Fraudulent? Merely irksome? Who knows? And who cares?
I certainly care, and I know you do also (hence your frustrations, yes?).
It’s quite interesting to note – considering your experience in this space, your long-demonstrated integrity, and your scientific and ethical training – that there are some few rare folk who continually state that they regard your conclusions as delusional.
I’ve not encountered a more just, broad minded, rational and fact-driven mind than your own.
Keep on keepin’ on!
Thanks! (I’m not goin’ anywhere….)
🙂
I would be happy to produce a sufficient number of devices so as to absorb 7500 tons/year from the atmosphere.
I would also be happy to do so at 1% of whatever cost this company claims. Please direct any interested investor my way.
(I consider this a very high profit venture. All I would need is a few acres of land, a shovel, and 7500 seeds).
In all seriousness, eventually we will have to work to harvest CO2 from the dilute atmosphere. But first we need to eliminate fossil emissions. When we are at a point of needing CO2 from the dilute atmosphere, it’s likely that we will harvest it from biomass – first by oxy-combusting the biomass for high efficiency power production, then collecting the CO2 from a smokestack.
We’ve looked into MEA CO2 capture, and the economics are pretty rough if you are considering the dilute atmosphere. It can be done, especially in cooler areas with very high winds… but doing so while we’re dumping billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere through smokestacks that have concentrations of literally ~500 times that of the dilute atmosphere? That’s just stupid.
Save your money and plant a tree.
Craig, Cameron and Glenn,
I fear that while absorbed in your mutual admiration society, you all misunderstood the purpose of Climework’s technology.
Climework has not produced a method of removing all the CO2 from the atmosphere (such a feat would result in environmental disaster.)
Climework’s technology produce CO2 directly from the atmosphere for industrial use. Commercial iability relies on producing commercial CO2 more cheaply. The company is hoping to expand the technology to remove greater amounts of atmospheric CO2.
The plant in Switzerland operates on renewable energy and although the contribution to CO2 reduction may be relatively modest, surely it’s better than nothing ?
The logistics are certainly better than Glenn’s suggestion of planting 7500 seeds !
Obviously Glenn knows a lot about sneering but very little about the logistics of arbour-culture ! If Glenn had ever grown a tree, he would realize that unlike the mythical Johnny Appleseed, the percentage of trees from seeds is tiny. perhaps less than 1 per 1000 !
Growing trees requires a lot of energy, manpower, investment in nurseries, fire prevention, plant diversification, water and land management.
Oh, and last but not least, purchasing and maintaining enough suitable land, (approximately 200 acres), to grow 7500 trees.
I agree claims of future improvements by Climeworks seem overly ambitious, especially since the removal of only 900 tonnes of CO2 per year doesn’t even equal the CO2 from 300 motor vehicles.
Climewark’s achievements over the last seven years may not be spectacular, but no one can doubt the sincerity or integrity of the project or the company itself.
This is a serious enterprise. The objectives may seem far fetched, but the technology is still at a very early stage of development.
Nor is the company ‘touting ‘ for investors !
The Scientists running the company may be young, but the company is backed by several large corporations including Audi and VW.
Audi is both a customer and key partner. Audi uses Climeworks products for the production of renewable fuels from atmospheric CO2.
Climework technology may, or may not, become an important contributor to reducing C02, but I think after seven years and two the construction of two successfully operating plants, these people deserve more respect and more diligent analysis than being smugly dismissed as “Moronic Fraudulent irksome? and who cares? ” by armchair critics whose sole knowledge is a single “Facebook’ article, don’t you ?
I should imagine Dr Christoph Gebald and Dr Jan Wurzbacher, would take umbrage at you ill-informed slur that “supposedly makes large devices “. Are you implying these plants are a mirage, or non-existent ?
Perhaps a little less self-congratulation and a little more due diligence would be in order?
Marcopolo,
Perhaps if you even tried to understand literally anything about an issue before just launching into an attack against Craig, Cameron, and myself… you might look a little bit less like a complete fool.
7500 trees could easily be grown and sustained in about 50 acres. 50 acres of rural land comes at about a quarter of a million dollars. The rest really is extremely easy, which is why lumbering companies strip cut and leave behind seedlings and just let the trees fill in.
It takes a lot of care to grow exotic hardwoods or carefully nurtured Christmas trees, but somehow or another trees managed to grow without human labor for most of the history of this planet, and they still can.
If the land is being used as a carbon offset and you just need trees you can scatter something like Southern pinecones on the surface and in a year you’ll have plenty of growing trees.
If you want maximum possible density and maximum possible growth, I doubt that more than a two full time staff would be needed over the course of one year to complete the planting. Call it $370,000 total expense, which is extremely generous.
So this company’s competition can equal its claims at 7500 units removing $7500 tons/year for a one-time expense of $370,000 over 20 years.
How much do you think power and O&M will cost these CO2-sucking units over 20 years? How much would their land cost, since they have to be grid connected and ideally placed near or within cities?
As for industrial CO2. That costs between $20 and $80/ton. It’s a commodity with a known cost, with hundreds of millions of tons sold every year. If it’s going to take more than $80/ton to generate captured CO2, then you have a non-feasible technology. That’s not rocket science, that’s just how the market works.
I’ve DONE my due diligence here. I’ve fully designed a MEA CO2 separator, and reviewed current technology. I’ve also priced CO2 and CO2 pipelines.
Craig has reviewed much of this analysis, and other analysis.
Of the participants in this discussion you stand alone as the fool who has no idea what you are talking about, despite your undeserved aloof tone. This is often the case, but I thought it worth pointing out that in this case you are in a far more ridiculous position than normal, which is saying something.
P.S. To understand the reason that this is a waste of time, one only need understand that CO2 separators, are basically a function of chilling an absorbant solution (usually an amine base – in my case it was N-methyelthylamine) and then heating it. The MEA is cooled, the flue gas is bubbled through the MEA, which allows the CO2 to be absorbed, then the CO2-heavy MEA is pumped into a separate heater, where the captured CO2 is stripped out, less absorption can be withstood in higher temp liquid. (If you’d like to test that, then just heat up a glass of diet coke – or whatever soda you’d prefer). The released CO2 is pumped into a compressor and collected or piped… or perhaps filtered then collected or piped, depending on whether it’s going to an enhanced oil field or a soda bottling company, or whatever else.
Then the CO2-free liquid is cooled again, and pumped back into the collector unit where more flue gas is bubbled through it.
Now, the unit in question is going to be variations on this theme: chiller, collector, heater, compressor.
Which is cheaper? Having a collector at the top of a smokestack at a cement factory or ammonia factory where the CO2 concentration is ~180,000 ppm, or having a collector in a rural field where the CO2 concentration is 400 ppm? In one case, your collector has to be 450 times as large as the other, and all of the pumping, chilling, and heating has to be scaled up as well in order to get the same quantity of CO2.
Proven performance and commercial viability moving forward is not a key determinant for the global energy generation and GHG technologies industry; and why in heavens name would it be?
Any technology that can remove global atmospheric CO2 (at any miniscule scale) is a lay down misere and game changer, and it has my unequivocal nod of approval irrespective of its research and development and capital costs going forward.
Better still though, might be global generation technologies that reduce CO2 emissions at the source; perhaps something along the lines of solar PV tiles/roofs. Now there is a game changing idea that our friends at Tesla for example might be interested in having a closer look at.
Or maybe not.
Lawrence Coomber
Lawrence,
I agree. My real criticism of Craig (and his little band of sycophants) is the casual way they dismissed nearly seven years research and construction of full scale working prototypes by the team lead by Dr Christoph Gebald and Dr Jan Wurzbacher, on no more authority than some article on facebook !
Worse, Craig’s article implied fraudulent and dishonest practice without the slightest attempt to authenticate such a slur.
Hardly worthy behaviour from an advocate who castigates others so vehemently for any breach in accuracy !
Although I would not be an investor in Dr Christoph Gebald and Dr Jan Wurzbacher’s project, I certainly wouldn’t claim these gentlemen and the project “fraudulent” ! Nor would I label these scientists “moronic” ! (certainly not without a lot more investigation).
If I had, I would certainly offer an apology when challenged or justify my slurs with well researched information.
But, then again that’s just my standard.
Lawrence,
More importantly than castigating scientists for less than perfect technology, is the announcement by the PRC government to ban the import of refuse for recycling.
This will have an enormous impact on the global recycling industry which is heavily dependent on Chinese purchasing for economic survival.
The PRC government claims this is an incentive to promote local recycling (and is offering local subsidies), and to a certain degree this is probably true.
However, the planners in Beijing are also aware of the potential effect of driving up the cost of packaging in the West and weaken foreign competitors of PRC manufactures.
Australia export nearly 80 % of recyclable material to the PRC so this will create greater demand for high heat incineration and land fill operators as Australian demand for recycled raw material remains minimal and not economically viable.
The response from the Australian Greens has been as you would expect. Obviously, like Craig and his band of acolytes, their policy contains a lot of leftist rhetoric, but no practical solution.
Packaging is an essential and growing industry, not just for the commercial-consumer impact, but for safety and hygiene.
Attractive packaging is the principle method for producers with higher labour costs to offset the advantages of low cost producers in the third world or high volume producers like the PRC.
The packaging industry is beset with environmental problems. A disruption on this scale to the recycling industry will have serious economic and environmental consequences.
Anyone with access to the very overt investment activities of key PRC speculative investment organizations linked to certain PRC agencies, would have been warned such a move was coming and invested accordingly. The profits on such investments are substantial.
Like most policy outmaneuvers the impact on other nations will be subtle and not easily understood. Beijing counts on Western media and general political discord in the West to render any attempt at organizing a response ineffective.
Our political, media and social institutions are too disorganized and shallow to deal with such subtle maneuvers.
The problem of waste is enormous and growing. Moralistic attempts to reduce waste are ineffective and doomed to be mere symbolic gestures.
Western economies (actually all advanced economies) are based on ever increasing consumerism offering an infinite variety of products.
This has proved to be the most successful economic model for human prosperity since the dawn of civilization. (In fact it could be argued it is ‘civilization’).
In time some waste problems will be relieved using ever smarter technology, generating a minimum of waste.(3 D printing, electronic entertainment, down loaded items etc).
In the meantime government must help by quickly amending regulations and allow recycled products to compete in new markets.