Why is Exxon so interested in Carbon Capture?

[Checkerboard Strangler]

Exxon sees carbon capture market at $4 trillion by 2050

I wonder what kind of products would require that much CO2?

Drop-in replacement e-fuels, which function perfectly in any gasoline engine.

 

[Checkerboard Strangler]

It is not at all, but many AGW proponents do not like the idea.
I suspect that they have been demonizing the oil companies for so long,
they are unable to come to terms that the oil companies could have the solution to a sustainable energy future.

What they have is the muscle to work with economies of scale. The discovery was, if I remember correctly, the province of the DoD, and the military together with university research.

Electrofuel - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[longview]

Please, let's call a spade a spade. You're not advocating for carbon neutral fuels. Instead, in discussions about topics like electrification, you pop in to declare that carbon neutral fuels are better than electrification, that they are faster, that they are the most likely path to emissions reductions, as a way to push back on any alternatives to carbon neutral fuels. Of course you do not back this up with data, you just state that this as your opinion. And when challenged as to why you believe carbon neutrals fuels are preferred to electrification, you come up with this schlock about AGW proponents hating carbon neutral fuels, like you're doing here.

The reality is that people like me have been saying the trend lines for carbon neutral fuels are slowly improving for a lot longer than the mere 8 years you've been at it. And, we've also been saying the trend lines for electrification have also been improving--and at a much greater clip--for as long. And, we've also been saying that the key challenge for carbon neutral fuels is whether, by the time they are viable, anyone will be making combustion power plants. Finally, we're seeing all this play out in reality, where electrification has hit the hockey stick curve now and is taking off, while carbon neutral fuels are maybe a decade and change away but are going to run head first into being a solution in search of a problem unless the efficiency issues are substantially addressed a lot more quickly than your 'trend lines' have suggested to-date.

I am advocating carbon neutral fuels as the only viable path forward to energy sustainability.
We cannot get there with the existing battery technology.
Sure battery electric cars can cover most of the demands of most people, but not all the demands.
It is difficult to get around the low energy density of existing batteries.
In addition there are plenty of things that battery electrics cannot do yet.
People are buying battery electrics as a second car, and getting good use out of them,
electric drive motors are clearly better at driving wheels, but they have real limitations.
Study: Nearly 20% of California electric car buyers go back to gas

Now there’s more troubling data for the industry. A study published in Nature Energy looks into the reason that many California EV buyers have gone back to gasoline-powered transportation. In short, the researchers found that a number of EV owners consider the cars a hassle.

As for how long it will take to convert over, it all depends on the price of oil and where it stabilizes at
once Russia stops trying to build an Empire.
If the price is high enough that a refinery will show greater profits by making their own feedstock,
then that could happen very quickly.
In addition Power to liquid technology solves one of the big problems with wind and solar, it can store the surplus
energy as an in demand product in almost infinite capacity.

 

[longview]

What they have is the muscle to work with economies of scale. The discovery was, if I remember correctly, the province of the DoD, and the military together with university research.

Electrofuel - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

There are several path, I learned of the one in Germany first, not that is was the first only the first article I read.
Germany was looking for some way to not waist all the solar electricity they received in the long Summer days.
That research led Audi to buy an old refinery, and later spin off Sunfire energy.
Meanwhile the Naval Research Labs was looking for a way to make Jet fuel at sea.
I know Shell had a whole building doing this type of research on the Energy Corridor off I-10 in Houston,
The building is closed now, but that may well mean they know what they need to.

 

[Gateman_Wen]

Wait, are you arguing weather some beer makers add CO2 to their product?
I sure some do, but what is the point?

Go back and read the thread.

 

[Deuce]

Except that pointing out a may be is quite different than a real reason.
I have said all along that the price of oil would need to be about $96 a barrel for this to become viable.
Some of that of course depends on the price of electricity.
As for scalability, both hydrogen and CO2 can be sourced elsewhere and piped in,
after that the process of making the olefins that feed the existing cracker units is straight forward.

Only if you can produce and transport a barrel of synthetic oil for less than $96, and that has to include the scaling costs of manufacturing large quantities. Efforts I've seen so far produce very small amounts of oil from atmospheric capture, using large and expensive facilities.

Furthmore, you point at one of the other problems. The cost of electricity. Also, the source of that electricity! You can't get this power from coal, as you've just undermined the entire point, getting electricity from oil to produce synthetic oil is obviously stupid, so where's your power source?

Nuclear and renewables, that's the only way the carbon-neutral goal is actually met. Which I have said all along is what we need to work at. We need massive increases in energy generation from these sources.

 

[longview]

Only if you can produce and transport a barrel of synthetic oil for less than $96, and that has to include the scaling costs of manufacturing large quantities. Efforts I've seen so far produce very small amounts of oil from atmospheric capture, using large and expensive facilities.

Furthmore, you point at one of the other problems. The cost of electricity. Also, the source of that electricity! You can't get this power from coal, as you've just undermined the entire point, getting electricity from oil to produce synthetic oil is obviously stupid, so where's your power source?

Nuclear and renewables, that's the only way the carbon-neutral goal is actually met. Which I have said all along is what we need to work at. We need massive increases in energy generation from these sources.

Agreed, but you missed something, no one is making synthetic oil to refine, they are making olefins to directly feed the second part of the cracking process.
The $96 a barrel price is what it would cost to make 35 gallons of fuel.