31
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by silence7@slrpnk.net to c/climate@slrpnk.net

Graphyte, a new company incubated by Bill Gates’s investment group Breakthrough Energy Ventures, announced Monday that it has created a method for turning bits of wood chips and rice hulls into low-cost, dehydrated chunks of plant matter. Those blocks of carbon-laden plant matter — which look a bit like shoe-box sized Lego blocks — can then be buried deep underground for hundreds of years.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] silence7@slrpnk.net 16 points 1 year ago

If you've ever been around a logging operation, you'd see how much (half?) of the plant matter extracted doesn't make it into a logging truck, but is instead piled unto 3-story high heaps and then burned. Being able to sequester that material instead would be amazing

[-] JoBo@feddit.uk 6 points 1 year ago

Sure. But turning it into building material would be even more amazing?

[-] silence7@slrpnk.net 5 points 1 year ago

Be nice, but we're talking about remote locations with a high cost of transport. It's unlikely to be cost-effective

[-] JoBo@feddit.uk 4 points 1 year ago

Even when it is bury for no value vs sell to replace carbon-producing materials? I don't buy it. Very few places are so remote that there is zero local-ish demand for building materials and they have to build facilities and support workers in those remote places instead.

[-] Zipitydew@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago

Coal mines in Appalachia fit multiple criteria for this to be effective.

[-] silence7@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 year ago

The older ones, sure. Mountaintop removal ones, probably not so much.

[-] theluckyone@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Burying it deep underground instead is likely to impose a high cost of transport as well.

[-] silence7@slrpnk.net 3 points 1 year ago

They're proposing about 10 feet, which isn't that far.

[-] theluckyone@lemmy.world 3 points 1 year ago

Agreed. However, burying it ten foot underground in a remote location, sealing it to keep moisture out, and then continuing to monitor it for hundreds of years is not trivial.

[-] sonori@beehaw.org 4 points 1 year ago

Typically i believe that it tends to be about twenty to forty percent of the tree by mass, but that’s still nearly doubling the about of carbon we sequester if we can sequester it.

this post was submitted on 13 Nov 2023
31 points (89.7% liked)

Climate - truthful information about climate, related activism and politics.

5194 readers
911 users here now

Discussion of climate, how it is changing, activism around that, the politics, and the energy systems change we need in order to stabilize things.

As a starting point, the burning of fossil fuels, and to a lesser extent deforestation and release of methane are responsible for the warming in recent decades: Graph of temperature as observed with significant warming, and simulated without added greenhouse gases and other anthropogentic changes, which shows no significant warming

How much each change to the atmosphere has warmed the world: IPCC AR6 Figure 2 - Thee bar charts: first chart: how much each gas has warmed the world.  About 1C of total warming.  Second chart:  about 1.5C of total warming from well-mixed greenhouse gases, offset by 0.4C of cooling from aerosols and negligible influence from changes to solar output, volcanoes, and internal variability.  Third chart: about 1.25C of warming from CO2, 0.5C from methane, and a bunch more in small quantities from other gases.  About 0.5C of cooling with large error bars from SO2.

Recommended actions to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the near future:

Anti-science, inactivism, and unsupported conspiracy theories are not ok here.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS