Can't they introduce something that can convert the CO2 to something safer, like microbes that can convert them to O2?
If we're storing a problem long term, maybe we can have something that slowly make the problem go away and forget that it was initially a problem.
this post was submitted on 27 Nov 2025
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*stupid plan
FTFY
What if just put all the co2 into a co2 balloon. I have a balloon. We can use my balloon.
The energy requirements for storing one ton of co2 are many many times higher than the energy gained from generating one ton of co2 (by oil, gas, coal or biofuel).
So each MWh spent "storing co2" would be ten times more efficient if used to offset oil extraction to get one MWh less out in the first place.
This is wasteful greenwashing. If it wasn't, we'd have broken physics on the level of making perpetual motion machines.
That's true but even if we switch entirely over green energy overnight, we'll still have Steel, still have Bauxite refining for Aluminum, etc, still have to melt and reform glass and aluminum recycled containers, etc, etc.
There are many processes that we really can't just get rid of, so they will need carbon capture to ensure they're not hurting the environment.
My brother in Christ, you need massive amounts of electricity to extract aluminum from bauxite. Steel can use electric arc furnaces, as can glass.
Carbon capture and storage is used to re-pressurize under performing oil wells.
Sure, but that's only relevant once we have 100% clean energy
Developing the technology now is still useful. Waiting until we're carbon neutral before even thinking about capture would also be mistake.
Lol I love that you think we'll actually get beyond carbon neutral at some point. You're far more optimistic than me.
Wasn't there a story about CO2 under a lake in Africa being released naturally and killing a lot of people in the first several minutes because they couldn't breathe?
Yes, there's been several events in valleys or depressions that people have been killed.
I thought I'd read that somewhere. Thanks!
Don't we have similar objects on the ground? Wouldn't it be more convenient and cheap to not hassle with the ocean?
The north sea oil fields are huge, and mostly empty now. They also have the infrastructure already built for gas extraction/injection.
Makes sense as a location for a trial in that area.
wow so they're 'storing' it in the 'empty' oil fields? Sounds a lot like Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) to me.
Used to extract fossil fuels, the field is now getting a second lease on life as a means of permanently storing planet-warming carbon dioxide beneath the seabed.
Yeah, I'm sure it'll work this time. It definitely won't hold just long enough for attention to go elsewhere...
Oil companies are really great at keeping things in oil wells, especially at sea. Just a fantastic track record
If it held natural gas, it should hold carbon dioxide. Especially as CO2 should react with a lot of the porus rocks and be absorbed.
That's why it's worth doing this kind of stuff though. Find out if it works now, so we know if it works when shit really goes down.
You don't understand... We already know it doesn't work. They've been doing this for decades, they've recently started green washing this fracking technique
And in case you didn't know, there's dozens of oil wells leaking right now. Some is oil in the ocean, some natural gas, some of it is burning underground... And there's just no known way to stop it. You can't just seal them back up when you're done, the structure of the rock is damaged
And all of the aside, this doesn't math even if it worked. It takes too much energy to pull CO2 out of the air, and to even make a dent we'd have to put up CO2 condensers on a percentage of earths surface... It's a dead end tech.
A distraction from the truth... We just have to reduce emissions. It's that simple, we have to do it before the systems that keep Earth stable flip and accelerate warming
And all of the aside, this doesn't math even if it worked. It takes too much energy to pull CO2 out of the air
They aren't taking it out of the air. They are taking it out of smoke stacks. It's far easier to pull it out of highly concentrated sources like smoke stacks than to try to pull it directly out of the atmosphere.
we'd have to put up CO2 condensers on a percentage of earths surface...
You're describing biofuels. Vegetation "condenses" the CO2 out of the atmosphere, incorporating it into carbohydrates.
Burning biofuels, we produce H2O and CO2 in the smoke stacks. Every pound of CO2 pulled from the smoke stack is a pound removed from the atmosphere.
Any introduction of fossil fuels into the process defeats the purpose, but the underlying technology is theoretically feasible with biofuel carbon sources.
The biofuel thing is just further nonsense.
If you're pulling CO2 out of the air, why in the world would you turn around and burn it???
That makes zero sense. For one, biofuels require processing, which means they might even be carbon positive before you burn it, and again, the scale needed to produce it in meaningful quantities is totally impractical.
And again, you can't just pump CO2 in the well and put an acme sized plug on it. The structure of the rock is destroyed by the process, it'll just leak out. We'd need an entirely new method to store it, which was never the plan here
This whole scheme is a fever dream designed to continue burning fossil fuels while siphoning away money from actual green movements
If you’re pulling CO2 out of the air, why in the world would you turn around and burn it???
Because the CO2 we pull out of the air is not in a form that we can feasibly sequester. It's padded with excessive hydrogen and oxygen into carbohydrate chains. When we burn that vegetation, we convert it to primarily to H2O, along with some CO2. Targeting the CO2 alone, we can sequester a lot more for the same energy and same volume.
The structure of the rock is destroyed by the process, it’ll just leak out.
That rock sequestered hydrocarbons from the biosphere for millions of years. It's not destroyed by the process. We use comparable methods for the strategic petroleum reserve and the national helium reserve.
This whole scheme is a fever dream designed to continue burning fossil fuels
That may be true. And yet, when used with non-fossil fuel sources, it does, indeed, serve to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, rather than simply reducing the emission of CO2.
Ok... Come on now, I know you've been propagandized, and propaganda works, but let's think this through
If you capture CO2 out of smokestacks, what have you done? You've slightly reduced emissions by going after the lowest hanging fruit possible
Are we going to do that to every power plant? Is every containment effort going to work? Does that actually fix the problem?
Ok… Come on now, I know you’ve been propagandized, and propaganda works, but let’s think this through
Please read what I wrote, not what you think I said.
If you capture CO2 out of smokestacks, what have you done?
It depends on where that carbon came from. If it came from petroleum or coal feedstocks, you've slightly reduced emissions. But, the carbon from biofuels originated from the atmosphere. Vegetation captured that CO2 directly from the atmosphere, and incorporated it into the biomass. Burning it converted the biomass into concentrated CO2 and H2O; we're capturing the concentrated CO2 out of that stream.
Again: this does not replace the need to suspend fossil fuels. But the specific process I described does, indeed, extract CO2 from the biosphere.
If we plow the vegetation under, we are burying the hydrogen and excess oxygen as well as the carbon. Burning it, we release the hydrogen (as water), but still bury the carbon.
If you take them by their word, it sounds perfect.
I'm worried about Ineos' ulterior motives. It would not take a lot of change or investment to start up EOR there if any drilling equipment is still in place.
Because it is:
There are four main EOR techniques: carbon dioxide (CO2) injection, gas injection, thermal EOR, and chemical EOR. More advanced, speculative EOR techniques are sometimes called quaternary recovery.[4][5][6][7] Carbon dioxide injection, known as CO2-EOR, is the most common method. In this method, CO2 is injected into a depleted oil field and is mostly left underground.
CO2-EOR is usually performed using CO2 from naturally occurring underground deposits. It is also sometimes performed using CO2 captured from the flue gas of industrial facilities. When EOR is done using CO2 captured from flue gas, the process can prevent some emissions from escaping. However, there is controversy over whether the overall process is beneficial for the climate. EOR operations are energy-intensive, which leads to more emissions, and further emissions are produced when the recovered oil is burned.
From Wikipedia.
To remain in a liquid state CO2 needs to be kept under several hundred PSI of pressure and kept fairly cool. Even at only 40F CO2 boils at about 550 PSIG. In above ground tanks you need to worry about elevated ambient temperatures and if that CO2 tank gets to be over about 88F then that CO2 just straight up can't be liquified. Above 88F you suddenly have a tank of supercritical CO2 which gets a bit more interesting to store for various reasons.
The deep ocean it actually a fairly ideal place to store liquid CO2 because it is cold and already under an immense amount of pressure.
they are planting trees on the ocean?
Wait till this guy learns about algae