Hi Robert, Thank you for the detailed analysis of projections of the pricing and trends. You preface this by stating that DAC is cheaper than I (or we) think. I would add a few riders on how some of DAC’s precepts should demand to be examined:
• While trending in the right direction, DAC looks more expensive than it needs to be.
• It will remain that way while Rube Goldberg forms of redundant engineering and power usage are applied, adding capital cost, and wasting clean power.
o Two points clarify this view, as shown in a company’s engineering concept:
o Their artist’s depiction of their DAC facility had a long row of large wind turbines atop a range of hills, generating wind power,
o In front of this hill were large banks of fans, blowing air through box frames carrying trays of adsorbent material, using power generated up on the hill.
o Some parts of the world, where wind power also thrives, can sustain the higher availability of DAC plants among other operating advantages.
o Or does this type of plant have to be sited where the CO2 is used for Enhanced Fossil Oil Recovery instead of injection to deep-sea sites or ?
• This leads to economic considerations:
o The concept possibly doubles/triples the capital and operating costs of the facility, compared to putting the same boxes on the hill to catch the wind,
o making the intermittency of power and operating uptime more of a liability,
o adding opportunity cost and diminishing the downturn of fossil power use.
• Worst of all, the funds to build and pay for all these project excesses come out of taxpayer funds and the country’s fiscus, along with the share of “business returns” benefiting the shareholders of the DAC company. Is it not Clean Energy’s form of a Ponzi scheme?
• Will the whole train of costs and benefits ever be allowed to drop, as the theoretical graphic’s costs-per-ton drops to 10% of current levels by 2050, or is that too good a “gravy train” for big business to allow it to fade to nothing?
Hi Robert, Thank you for the detailed analysis of projections of the pricing and trends. You preface this by stating that DAC is cheaper than I (or we) think. I would add a few riders on how some of DAC’s precepts should demand to be examined:
• While trending in the right direction, DAC looks more expensive than it needs to be.
• It will remain that way while Rube Goldberg forms of redundant engineering and power usage are applied, adding capital cost, and wasting clean power.
o Two points clarify this view, as shown in a company’s engineering concept:
o Their artist’s depiction of their DAC facility had a long row of large wind turbines atop a range of hills, generating wind power,
o In front of this hill were large banks of fans, blowing air through box frames carrying trays of adsorbent material, using power generated up on the hill.
o Some parts of the world, where wind power also thrives, can sustain the higher availability of DAC plants among other operating advantages.
o Or does this type of plant have to be sited where the CO2 is used for Enhanced Fossil Oil Recovery instead of injection to deep-sea sites or ?
• This leads to economic considerations:
o The concept possibly doubles/triples the capital and operating costs of the facility, compared to putting the same boxes on the hill to catch the wind,
o making the intermittency of power and operating uptime more of a liability,
o adding opportunity cost and diminishing the downturn of fossil power use.
• Worst of all, the funds to build and pay for all these project excesses come out of taxpayer funds and the country’s fiscus, along with the share of “business returns” benefiting the shareholders of the DAC company. Is it not Clean Energy’s form of a Ponzi scheme?
• Will the whole train of costs and benefits ever be allowed to drop, as the theoretical graphic’s costs-per-ton drops to 10% of current levels by 2050, or is that too good a “gravy train” for big business to allow it to fade to nothing?