Speaker 1: You've probably heard the term carbon capture. It's the idea that,
Speaker 1: through a very complicated, expensive process, carbon dioxide that spit
Speaker 1: out during the production of fossil fuels can be captured
Speaker 1: and stored deep underground, instead of letting it escape into
Speaker 1: the atmosphere where it contributes to global warming. Despite billions
Speaker 1: and billions of dollars spent, it's never quite worked the
Speaker 1: way its boosters have hoped, and yet oil companies and
Speaker 1: governments continue to invest in carbon capture and storage as
Speaker 1: they look for ways to meet ambitious net zero goals.
Speaker 2: We're investing in innovation and hastening the scale up of
Speaker 2: new technologies like carbon capture and advanced nuclear and clean hydrogen.
Speaker 3: It's really important for everyone to recognize that even in
Speaker 3: twenty to fifty, when we are at that zero, it
Speaker 3: is full cost that around a culture of our energy
Speaker 3: needs will still come from oil and gas. That's why
Speaker 3: technologies like carbon capture and storage are important.
Speaker 2: Canadian companies are leaders in developing technologies such as carbon
Speaker 2: capture and storage, next generation biofuels, advanced batteries for electric cars,
Speaker 2: and cleaner oil sands extraction processes. This creates good jobs
Speaker 2: and it also helps the planet.
Speaker 1: But Bloomberg, Stevens Stepchinsky, and David Stringer report that time
Speaker 1: is running out to prove that this technology can live
Speaker 1: up to its promise.
Speaker 4: The International Energy Agency says that to stay on track
Speaker 4: for net zero missions by twenty fifty, there needs to
Speaker 4: be one point two giga tons of CO two captured
Speaker 4: in store per year. To put that into context, there
Speaker 4: are only forty five million tons of CO two captured
Speaker 4: earlier this decade.
Speaker 5: Here's the big worry.
Speaker 6: We're talking about trillions of dollars that will be put
Speaker 6: into technologies that keep fossil fuels going instead of being
Speaker 6: put into technologies to replace fossil fuels.
Speaker 1: I'm Weskasova today on the big take why it's so
Speaker 1: hard to put carbon dioxide back in the ground. Stephen,
Speaker 1: carbon capture is one of these things that we hear
Speaker 1: about all the time, and yet I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people like me don't quite understand what it is.
Speaker 1: Can you just tell us what is carbon capture and storage?
Speaker 4: So carbon capture and storage, funny enough, isn't really exactly
Speaker 4: one thing.
Speaker 5: It's like a system of things.
Speaker 4: That are all working together in this complicated chorus so
Speaker 4: first there's the element of actually capturing it. It uses
Speaker 4: quite a bit of science, and the capturing aspect has
Speaker 4: been around for decades since the nineteen seventies, the oil
Speaker 4: industry has known how to capture it. And then there's
Speaker 4: a transportation aspect of it. How do you transport usually pipes,
Speaker 4: And then you have to store it, and storage is
Speaker 4: the part that can be quite challenging, but also there
Speaker 4: are many different ways to store it. For much of
Speaker 4: the last four or five decades, carbon capture and storage
Speaker 4: was you would pump it back into the ground to
Speaker 4: get more oil out.
Speaker 5: That's enhanced oil recovery.
Speaker 4: But what now we're doing is you have to store
Speaker 4: it in basically poorest parts of the earth. That's liquid
Speaker 4: aquifers or essentially empty oil or gas cavities underneath the earth.
Speaker 4: So all of those things working together is carbon capture
Speaker 4: and storage. It's not just like this thing that you
Speaker 4: can go and buy from a store in place and
Speaker 4: say bump, you're hooked up and you're working. It is
Speaker 4: a bespoke technology for each refinery, power plant, liquefied natural gas,
Speaker 4: export facility, whatever it is. You have to develop Basically
Speaker 4: all these systems and get them to work together. Carbon
Speaker 4: capturing storage is vital for hitting ambitious green goals and
Speaker 4: reducing our pollution.
Speaker 5: It's the dream of.
Speaker 4: Being able to continue using cement factories, refineries, power plants
Speaker 4: while also reducing our carbon footprint. Carbon capture essentially will
Speaker 4: grab or halt the emissions at the source and then
Speaker 4: store it within the earth without letting it go into
Speaker 4: the atmosphere. CO two, when released into the atmosphere exacerbates
Speaker 4: climate change.
Speaker 5: So by capturing that.
Speaker 4: CO two before it goes into the atmosphere, you're essentially
Speaker 4: stopping that pollution from ever happening. When described like that
Speaker 4: makes a ton of sense. The world needs to reduce
Speaker 4: this carbon footprint, and by using technology and by reducing
Speaker 4: pollution at the source, you can do that while continuing
Speaker 4: essentially the life that we enjoy. You can continue using
Speaker 4: that power plant, that refinery.
Speaker 1: David so Stephen describes this very complicated process of trying
Speaker 1: to capture carbon. Why aren't we able to do it?
Speaker 1: It seems like we've been trying to get our arms
Speaker 1: around this problem, but it keeps eluding us.
Speaker 6: Every specific project needs fine tuning. How is it generating
Speaker 6: greenhouse gases? Is that in oil production, is it in
Speaker 6: gas production. Is it because it's a power plant that's
Speaker 6: spewing out emissions. This is just incredibly complex. So you're right,
Speaker 6: we've had fifty years of arguably relative failure governments. Some
Speaker 6: of the biggest companies in the energy sector, they've spent
Speaker 6: about eighty billion dollars over the last fifty years trying
Speaker 6: to perfect these techniques. The end result is that all
Speaker 6: that effort has captured less than one percent of the
Speaker 6: world's pollution. In fact, by some estimates, we've seen about
Speaker 6: forty five million tons of carbon a year captured by
Speaker 6: carbon capture systems. That's about zero point one percent of
Speaker 6: global emissions. So there's been a lot of effort, a
Speaker 6: lot of cap it'll poured in, but so far we've
Speaker 6: just not seen that reward because of the complexity.
Speaker 1: And why is that, Simon, Why is it so hard
Speaker 1: with all that money spent, all those years, big companies,
Speaker 1: smart scientists, why can't they.
Speaker 5: Get this right.
Speaker 4: It's a lot of different reasons, but I think the
Speaker 4: main thing to focus on is that all these facilities,
Speaker 4: each one is so different. Just because you've figured out
Speaker 4: how to solve these problems in Canada in this one project,
Speaker 4: for example Shell's Quest, you can't apply that to Chevron's
Speaker 4: Gorgan in Australia. The lessons learned can't easily be applied
Speaker 4: to other projects because each challenge is something different. The
Speaker 4: issues really is from the very ground up, from how
Speaker 4: carbon capture and storage works. And while there has been
Speaker 4: money pouring into carbon capture and storage, when you talk
Speaker 4: to a specialists at the IA International Energy Agency, they
Speaker 4: still say that we're behind the amount of projects that
Speaker 4: we're building. They think that the world should be building
Speaker 4: even more.
Speaker 1: Why are oil companies and even the US government so
Speaker 1: determined to try to make this technology work when it
Speaker 1: just hasn't born out.
Speaker 4: There are two sides of that coin. The cynical side
Speaker 4: is you look at the people who are investing in it.
Speaker 4: You have these major oil and gas companies that it
Speaker 4: is in their best interest to get this to work
Speaker 4: because then folks can continue using the fossil fuels.
Speaker 5: That they produce.
Speaker 4: The other side is that the reason why governments are
Speaker 4: pouring so much money into a specialists and even environmentalists
Speaker 4: say that this is necessary to some degree, is because
Speaker 4: there are some sectors or industries that even by twenty fifty,
Speaker 4: we will not be able to decarbonize. For example, cement production.
Speaker 4: You can't electrify that. That's a chemical process that is
Speaker 4: going to release pollution that you need to capture, and
Speaker 4: cement is used in everything. The same can be said
Speaker 4: with some petrochemicals, even fertilizer production. All of these things
Speaker 4: together indicate that the world will need see to some degree,
Speaker 4: not today or tomorrow, but by twenty fifty when we're
Speaker 4: really trying to hit ambitious green goals.
Speaker 1: David Stephen mentioned this kind of controversy over whether this
Speaker 1: is a real viable technology or if it's just forestalling
Speaker 1: the inevitable, which is to move past the use of
Speaker 1: fossil fuels. What is the controversy around this, Like where
Speaker 1: do people come down in the various sects.
Speaker 6: I guess right to the heart of debate about carbon capture.
Speaker 6: It really is the technology that many climate advocates just
Speaker 6: love to hate. It's been used for years in a
Speaker 6: process to generate more fossil fuels. Its first purpose was
Speaker 6: for things like enhanced oil recovery, and now we see
Speaker 6: big oil kind of repurpose this and cast it as
Speaker 6: a really vital solution. To help the most catastrophic climate change.
Speaker 6: So it is controversial, it is contentious, but what this
Speaker 6: debate forces us to do is to wrestle with the
Speaker 6: future of fossil fuels. How long are things like cold
Speaker 6: and oil and gas going to have a role when
Speaker 6: the global power mix. And that's a really difficult conversation
Speaker 6: for many people to have, but it is an urgent one.
Speaker 6: The fact is, whether it's the IPCC or the International
Speaker 6: Energy Agency, what we're told is that all solutions are necessary.
Speaker 6: The world's going to have to lean on every single
Speaker 6: mechanism we have to avert the worst kind of planetary warming.
Speaker 5: That isn't a.
Speaker 6: Message that some people want to hear. It isn't a
Speaker 6: popular idea that we're going to be putting in many
Speaker 6: billions of dollars into a technology that essentially sustains fossil fuels.
Speaker 6: And yet what many people argue is that it's vital
Speaker 6: we do have to lean on this along with other technologies.
Speaker 1: When we come back what a huge carbon capture operation
Speaker 1: actually looks like. Steven, So, we've been talking about just
Speaker 1: how complicated it is to try to capture and store carbon,
Speaker 1: and you actually went out to see two of these projects.
Speaker 1: Where are they like?
Speaker 5: I went to one on Barrow Island in Australia.
Speaker 4: It's Chevron's Gorgon Carbon Capture and Storage facility.
Speaker 5: It is the world's biggest just.
Speaker 4: Pure CCS capturing and storing plant in the world by capacity.
Speaker 5: No one lives in Barrow Island.
Speaker 4: It is about forty kilometers off of northwestern Australia and
Speaker 4: it was just red dirt as far as the eye
Speaker 4: can see, very iron rich red dirt. And the only
Speaker 4: thing that you see there is this enormous plant which
Speaker 4: is connected to look fied natural gas export facility. What
Speaker 4: people often don't realize is just how big, how enormous
Speaker 4: these facilities are. It's a dense maze of metal that
Speaker 4: for the case of the one in Australia, on this island,
Speaker 4: it is the size of a city block and it
Speaker 4: is roaring. It is so loud when you are next
Speaker 4: to it you cannot talk to another person. The facility
Speaker 4: isn't working at full capacity. It's supposed to capture and
Speaker 4: store four million tons of CO two a year, but
Speaker 4: it's only capturing about one point six But the loud
Speaker 4: sound is the release of that leftover CO two. You're
Speaker 4: seeing about four stories of all these pipes amazing around you.
Speaker 4: There are all these sorts of different levers and platforms
Speaker 4: and silos and spicketts at the end that it's difficult
Speaker 4: to see where it starts and where it ends, but
Speaker 4: it does just indicate the scale. And what you need
Speaker 4: to appreciate is that when you're building carbon capture and storage,
Speaker 4: and when people talk about it, it's not simply stamping
Speaker 4: something out. You have to build all of these complicated
Speaker 4: pipes and make them weave around this plant in this
Speaker 4: dirt on this island.
Speaker 1: And where's the CO two coming from that they're capturing.
Speaker 4: The CO two that they're capturing is coming from the
Speaker 4: production of natural gas. When Chevron was first developing the
Speaker 4: project a few decades ago, they were looking to tap
Speaker 4: a natural gas field off of northwestern Australia that had
Speaker 4: a lot of CO two concentration. I think a lot
Speaker 4: of people don't realize that natural gas together naturally, just
Speaker 4: has some CO two. When you produce the natural gas,
Speaker 4: you need to remove the CO two as part of
Speaker 4: the process. Usually, when you produce natural gas, you separate
Speaker 4: the CO two and then you just release it into
Speaker 4: the atmosphere which pollutes and can be a nasty problem.
Speaker 4: The government in Australia wanted them to capture about eighty
Speaker 4: percent of that CO two. That was part of their
Speaker 4: plan and their promise, and so they developed a carbon
Speaker 4: capture and storage plant and it is again the biggest
Speaker 4: on Earth that is doing what it's doing now from inception,
Speaker 4: it has been having quite a few problems. The LNG
Speaker 4: facility started in twenty sixteen and it was supposed to
Speaker 4: have the CCS plant with it, but the CCS aspect,
Speaker 4: the capture and storage didn't start until twenty nineteen because
Speaker 4: of technical problems.
Speaker 5: David.
Speaker 1: So this plant, despite all of this effort, in all
Speaker 1: of this machinery, isn't really living up to its capacity.
Speaker 5: That's right.
Speaker 6: For example, in the last fiscal year, the Gorgon project
Speaker 6: managed to store about one point six million tons of
Speaker 6: CO two. That might sound a lot, it isn't. The
Speaker 6: project is designed to sequester a far more than that volume,
Speaker 6: and in fact that total was almost a third less
Speaker 6: than the previous year. While Chevron say that the project
Speaker 6: will get up and running up full capacity in time,
Speaker 6: it just is an illustration of the fact that even
Speaker 6: this kind of flagship project for the industry just isn't
Speaker 6: meeting expectations. Why that's such a big problem is because
Speaker 6: of the scale the industry needs to hit.
Speaker 5: So think about it.
Speaker 6: The International Energy Agency forecast that the world needs another
Speaker 6: three hundred facilities the size of Gorgan and that they
Speaker 6: need to be up and running by twenty thirty if
Speaker 6: we're going to keep on track to hit net zero
Speaker 6: emissions by twenty fifty. The challenge is just colossal. We
Speaker 6: kind of understand some of the technical challenges, but think
Speaker 6: about the investment. According to Bloomberg and EF, four and
Speaker 6: a half trillion dollars is going to be needed to
Speaker 6: be invested in carbon capture and storage over the next
Speaker 6: eight years.
Speaker 1: So they need to build many more of these plants.
Speaker 1: How many carbon capture and storage plants are there right
Speaker 1: now around the world.
Speaker 6: So right now there's about forty large scale facilities that
Speaker 6: actually have carbon capture and storage attached to them. It's
Speaker 6: a small number. That's after nearly fifty years of developing
Speaker 6: this technology, and together they capture about forty five million
Speaker 6: tons of carbon a year. It is a small number
Speaker 6: when you compare it against the many hundreds that are needed.
Speaker 6: But what the industry says is, look, there's forty that
Speaker 6: are at least to some extent working and operating. It's
Speaker 6: now a question of scale. It's a question of w
Speaker 6: not a question of if. What the industry says is
Speaker 6: it's got to succeed, and of course what we've seen
Speaker 6: on the ground is just how challenging that is.
Speaker 4: And when you don't succeed, there are real consequences. The
Speaker 4: International Energy Agency says that to stay on track for
Speaker 4: net zero emissions by twenty fifty, there needs to be
Speaker 4: one point two giga tons of CO two captured in
Speaker 4: store per year. To put that into context, there are
Speaker 4: only forty five million tons of CO two captured earlier
Speaker 4: this decade. The Gorgon Project was the largest polluter in
Speaker 4: Australia during the year through June twenty twenty two, according
Speaker 4: to data from Australia.
Speaker 1: So this thing is supposed to be reducing pollution, it's
Speaker 1: causing more pollution because.
Speaker 5: They're not capturing the CO two.
Speaker 4: All of that pollution is being released into the atmosphere
Speaker 4: and it is essentially a huge problem for Chevron and
Speaker 4: they have to buy carbon credits to offset those emissions.
Speaker 1: And what did Chevron say about that.
Speaker 4: So when you talk to Chevron, they understand that this
Speaker 4: is a problem, that this is a challenge, and they're
Speaker 4: going to be investing more money to make sure that
Speaker 4: Gorgan gets to capacity and it's doing what it's designed
Speaker 4: to do. But when I talk to the engineers there,
Speaker 4: I talk to specialists, they're still proud of what they've accomplished.
Speaker 4: They say, hey, look, we're one of the few people
Speaker 4: in the industry actually capturing and storing. We're storing millions
Speaker 4: of tons of CO two over the last few years. Now,
Speaker 4: of course they're not doing it at the level that
Speaker 4: they said they would, but they said that this is
Speaker 4: not a pure technological challenge.
Speaker 5: We've overcome a lot of the challenges. It's just scaling
Speaker 5: it up.
Speaker 4: And Chevron, for what it's worth, they're putting their money
Speaker 4: where their mouth is because they are investing and pushing
Speaker 4: forward with other CCS projects in the US, they're looking
Speaker 4: at projects in Europe, and they've set up essentially a
Speaker 4: whole new unit to look at developing CCS projects back
Speaker 4: in twenty twenty one. Now, one of the other problems
Speaker 4: for Chevron's Gorgan project is that it's built on Barrow Island,
Speaker 4: which is a nature reserve, which means that they have
Speaker 4: to do a few special things there to make sure
Speaker 4: that they don't affect the local habitat. For example, the
Speaker 4: equipment that flares gas, a normal part of LNG or
Speaker 4: liquefied natural gas production systems, had to be separated further
Speaker 4: inland and surrounded by massive black walls so that turtles
Speaker 4: wouldn't think that it's the moon and use it to
Speaker 4: navigate at night. And the plant's birth, which is like
Speaker 4: a jetty. It's where the ships come and dock and
Speaker 4: offload and unload up. The LNG runs abnormally long at
Speaker 4: Gorgon so that they don't affect the turtles and the
Speaker 4: other wildlife. But because it runs so long, it does
Speaker 4: sometimes attract whales, and sometimes those whales can disrupt loading
Speaker 4: at the facility.
Speaker 1: After the break. If they can make this technology work,
Speaker 1: just how much will it do to combat climate change? David?
Speaker 1: Some of those numbers you were thrown out are pretty
Speaker 1: mind bending. Three hundred new facilities the size of Gorgon
Speaker 1: need to be built. It's going to cost four point
Speaker 1: five trillion dollars. Is this it are realistic?
Speaker 6: It's a big ask, but what already saying from governments
Speaker 6: is there is political will and money is being provisioned
Speaker 6: and put into action to try and make this reality.
Speaker 6: If we just think about President Biden's big centerpiece, the
Speaker 6: Inflation Reduction Act, that contains huge provisions to offer tax credits,
Speaker 6: which is going to dramatically lower the cost of this technology.
Speaker 6: They'll certainly cover the cost of operating carbon capture facilities.
Speaker 5: In the UK, they're.
Speaker 6: Committing twenty billion pounds to subsidize carbon capture projects in
Speaker 6: the next couple of years. And we're also seeing areas
Speaker 6: like the European Union they've got big targets that they're
Speaker 6: aiming to increase more than two thirds the capacity that
Speaker 6: they currently have on the continent to inject carbon. Under
Speaker 6: the grounds political wills there some of the money starting
Speaker 6: to be mobilized, it be realistic. That's going to be
Speaker 6: down to the industry. It's going to be down to
Speaker 6: companies like Chevron and others. And if they can get
Speaker 6: these things working.
Speaker 1: Seven, if the US and say the EU all gets
Speaker 1: together and puts I don't know, a few hundred billion
Speaker 1: dollars into this against four point five trillion it's the
Speaker 1: industry going to come up with the rest.
Speaker 4: The industry needs to come up with the rest, and
Speaker 4: it's not going to be easy.
Speaker 5: It's going to be challenging.
Speaker 4: But when you look at the big folks like Chevron
Speaker 4: and Shell and some of these other companies that are
Speaker 4: really putting money into it, it does look like there
Speaker 4: is at least some backing within the industry. It does
Speaker 4: look like there is more momentum now than before because
Speaker 4: the technology needs their investment. At the same time, they
Speaker 4: need this technology to work because the future of their
Speaker 4: industry and where they're going will depend on it. I
Speaker 4: mean whether or not we'll be using more fossil fuels.
Speaker 4: If they get in on the ground floor, carbon capturing
Speaker 4: and storage could be this huge industry for them, and
Speaker 4: they could be pioneers and this could be a huge
Speaker 4: new way for them to boost their profits and use
Speaker 4: their engineering prowess in the way that they trade carbon
Speaker 4: and send fuel around the world. Instead of oil tankers,
Speaker 4: maybe it will be co two tankers. They can transform
Speaker 4: the way that they operate to get here and help
Speaker 4: lower emissions and hit ambitious green goals.
Speaker 5: Will it be easy? Will everyone be willing? No, it's
Speaker 5: just not profitable.
Speaker 4: And so until there are systems, a price on carbon
Speaker 4: or really strong tax incentives, it is going to be
Speaker 4: challenging for the industry to invest in it. And so
Speaker 4: there are a lot of uncertainties. But at least when
Speaker 4: I talk to the people at Chevron, when I talk
Speaker 4: to people at Shell, there does appear to be a
Speaker 4: shift in their commitment to getting this to work, and
Speaker 4: they're not backing down.
Speaker 6: There are companies in the industry they don't say this
Speaker 6: is a burden that they also see this as a
Speaker 6: huge business opportunity. It is the fact that big heavy
Speaker 6: polluting industries, steelmaking, cement making, of major emitting industries, they're
Speaker 6: going to have to deal with that. As prices on
Speaker 6: carbon become more commonplace, there is a potential industry opening
Speaker 6: up for the management of carbon emissions. We also see
Speaker 6: lots of examples of companies looking at direct air captures,
Speaker 6: a sector where they can make money as well literally
Speaker 6: sucking carbon emissions out of the air. Yes, this is
Speaker 6: quite challenging, but lots of people see this is a
Speaker 6: huge opportunity as well.
Speaker 1: But if ultimately we're looking at net zero and trying
Speaker 1: to move past fossil fuels. Would that four point five
Speaker 1: trillion dollars be better spent pursuing new, cleaner technologies instead
Speaker 1: of trying to ride oil down.
Speaker 4: That's the big question, and I think that's the argument
Speaker 4: that you could go either way. I think there are
Speaker 4: some industries or some sectors like power production.
Speaker 5: If you're gonna connect a CCS.
Speaker 4: Plant to a qualifire power plant, I think environmentalists or
Speaker 4: other folks could say, why don't you just invest that
Speaker 4: in renewables?
Speaker 5: Why do that you have other solutions?
Speaker 4: Why build these giant, massive monstrosities just for the sake
Speaker 4: of continuing using a coal fire power plant? The argument there,
Speaker 4: I think to a lot of folks it's valid. But
Speaker 4: there are other industries, like steel making or like cement making,
Speaker 4: where you can't easily just use the technology that we
Speaker 4: have that exists now. There are other potentially solutions. There
Speaker 4: are foundries that maybe are electric powered, or maybe you
Speaker 4: can use green hydrogen. But those are all not perfect yet.
Speaker 4: They're still being developed and they're still going to need
Speaker 4: massive investment. And so I think, having written a story
Speaker 4: and talk to a lot of experts, there is a
Speaker 4: idea where the IEA and other experts say that we
Speaker 4: need to increase the amount of carbon capturing and stories
Speaker 4: that we have quite significantly thousands of percent from where
Speaker 4: we are today, but perhaps because of the technological challenges
Speaker 4: and the cost that's going to take, maybe we should
Speaker 4: change that calculus. Instead of saying that we're going to
Speaker 4: need that th percent more, we say, let's just focus
Speaker 4: CCS on the industries that truly truly need it and
Speaker 4: try to just focus our investment on that, and that
Speaker 4: could potentially be a more viable solution for CCS, according
Speaker 4: to the people that I had talked to further story.
Speaker 1: After looking into this so deeply, seeing it for yourself,
Speaker 1: reporting on it, where do both of you come down
Speaker 1: on this question? I'm going to put you on the spot.
Speaker 6: I think it's a difficult one to wrestle with, but
Speaker 6: ultimately we do need all these solutions. Yes, we need
Speaker 6: vast amounts more renewables. Yes we need to be more
Speaker 6: energy efficient as well. But the net and net zero,
Speaker 6: you know, it doesn't mean no fossil fuels. It means
Speaker 6: that where we do have to continue to use those
Speaker 6: polluting sources of energy that we're dealing with and accounting
Speaker 6: for those emissions. So is ccs going to need to
Speaker 6: be part of the solution. Yeah, I mean, ultimately it does,
Speaker 6: to what extent, to what scale. I think that's still
Speaker 6: a question that we are wrestling with, but it absolutely
Speaker 6: has a role to play as part of a broad solution.
Speaker 4: When you hear about Chevron or Shell, these big energy companies,
Speaker 4: big companies that produce fossil fuels at pollute, it's easy
Speaker 4: to just say these companies are doing it just because
Speaker 4: they want to make a quick buck or continue using
Speaker 4: their fossil fuels. But there are people in these companies
Speaker 4: that are really committed to helping the environment. There are
Speaker 4: people who really committed to solving these problems, and they
Speaker 4: are working. They are racing against the clock. They understand
Speaker 4: the controversy around ccs. They understand that there's a big
Speaker 4: price tag, and they understand that it doesn't have the
Speaker 4: best reputation, and they're working to change that because they
Speaker 4: realize that right now, at this moment, is essentially the
Speaker 4: do or die time for CCS. If they can't prove
Speaker 4: now and today that it works, other companies, rivals, countries,
Speaker 4: governments aren't going to put the money into it because
Speaker 4: they're going to go to something else because they've already
Speaker 4: spent decades developing it working and while they're proud of
Speaker 4: what they accomplished, they all recognize they need to do more.
Speaker 4: And having seen this big facility, yes, it is monstrous,
Speaker 4: it is huge.
Speaker 5: It's challenging to see that we.
Speaker 4: Could build three hundred of these by twenty thirty. The
Speaker 4: fact that it exists and they did it well, not
Speaker 4: working out capacity, the fact that they did it does
Speaker 4: indicate that it could work. If they could just figure
Speaker 4: out the liquid okifer, figure out the transport, figure out
Speaker 4: a way to reduce the costs, then maybe it can
Speaker 4: be applied on a larger scale.
Speaker 1: Steven David, thanks so much for coming on the show,
Speaker 1: Thanks for having us, Thanks for listening to us here
Speaker 1: at The Big Take. It's a daily podcast from Bloomberg
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