Twelve years ago, on this day, September 30th, 2014,
2014 Boundary Dam CCS goes online (ribbon cutting on 2nd October)
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/oct/01/canada-switches-on-worlds-first-carbon-capture-power-plant
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was 399ppm. As of 2026, when this post was published, it is 430ppm. This matters because the more carbon dioxide in the air, the more heat gets trapped. The more heat, the more extreme weather events. You can make it more complicated than that if you want, but really, it’s not. Fwiw, I have a tattoo of the Keeling Curve on my left forearm.
The broader context was that carbon capture and storage as a mitigation technology, had been first proposed in the mid 1970s by Italian physicist Cesar Marchetti. There had been a small amount of interest in it. It was looked at in 1989-90 and regarded as impractical, far too expensive, And it would have stayed there, I think, had not the Kyoto Protocol meant that sooner or later industrializations were going to have to talk about or reduce their emissions, and CCS might be a relatively pain-free way of doing that. Okay, so there had been endless sequestration forums and plans for this and that and the other, the European efforts had fallen over because the funding wasn’t there, especially after the global financial crisis.
The specific context was but eventually, for various reasons, the Boundary Dam project persisted, and it opened, and fairly instantly ran into problems.
What I think we can learn from this is that CCS has had so many false dawns. But it’s the only technology that oil, coal, and gas have in answer to the climate issue (don’t even start me on Direct Air Capture).
What happened next. Well, some of the attention has moved on to Direct Air Capture. Gaia help us (though why would she?).
On this topic, you might like these other posts on All Our Yesterdays
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You can see the chronological list of All Our Yesterdays “on this day” posts here.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
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Also on this day:
September 30, 1969 -US activist publication mentions climate change
September 30, 1977 – “Carbon Dioxide and climate: carbon budget still unbalanced”
September 30, 1991 – Hawke’s ministers and ESD
September 30, 2009 – Tony Abbott says #climate science is “absolute crap”