Friday, January 20, 2017

XGame Innovation in Carbon Capture

Look at the great innovations up in Canada in the CCS xGames.

Checkout the blog at SustainZine related to this very cool competition: http://sustainzine.blogspot.com/2017/01/co2-xgame-winners-in-canada-losers-in.html

Here's some info on this big competition in Canada: CBC News discusses competition sponsored by Canada's Oil Sands Innovation Alliance and U.S. company NRG.

Normally you think of Carbon Capture & Sequester as a dead cost. Take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere (maybe at a smoke stack where it is highly concentrated, and pump it down into caverns, maybe where the coal or oil came from. But CO2 is a valuable and sell-able byproduct. Think about the fizz in your pop.

Maybe innovation like this Carbon XGame contestants have demonstrated, might allow us to burn all the oil and coal in the world without impunity. Maybe if we all hold our breath (one way to reduce CO2), the impact of our non-sustainable ways will not come back to bite us in the proverbial butt.

SustainZine said: "That means the the job of the CCS might turn out to be far, far bigger in the future, as we try to burn up the last century or so of fossil fuels over the next hundred years.

We here at SustainZine consider "conservative" this way: The bestest, cheapest, cleanest gallon of gas is the one never extracted, never processed and never burned. The bestest, cheapest, cleanest tonne of coal is the one never extracted, never processed, and never burned (scrubbing or no scrubbing)."  

In the meanwhile, innovation is the engine that will keep providing options, long after the most obvious alternatives have been exhausted.