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Wednesday, March 16, is the University of Michigan's annual "Giving Blueday". If you have found these newsletters interesting or if you appreciate the work of the Global CO2 Initiative in general, please take moment to support us on Wednesday.
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Partner Profile: Julio Friedmann | |
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“The Second Law of Thermodynamics is a harsh mistress—it says you'll always lose energy converting spent fuel back into fuel. However, when renewables become cheap and abundant, as they are locally today, the opportunity becomes arbitraging energy for money. That's very, very hard, but no longer lunacy."
Dr. Friedmann is one of the most widely known and authoritative experts in the US on carbon removal (CO2 drawdown from the air and oceans), CO2 conversion and use (carbon-to-value), hydrogen, industrial decarbonization, and carbon capture and sequestration (CCS). He recently served as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Office of Fossil Energy at the Department of Energy (DOE) where he was responsible for DOE’s R&D program in advanced fossil energy systems, carbon capture, and storage (CCS), CO2 utilization, and clean coal deployment. He has also served as Senior Research Scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University SIPA, where he led the Carbon Management Research Initiative, as well as at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, ExxonMobil, and the University of Maryland. He received his BS and MS from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, followed by his PhD in Geology at the University of Southern California.
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How did you become interested in this area?
I became interested in carbon management because I could do arithmetic. Even 20 years ago, it was clear that CCS would be important and 10 years ago it was clear that CO2 removal would be important. As the technology improved and costs lowered, it became clear that CO2 recycling was increasingly viable and could eventually become cost effective and (in some cases) deliver abatement at scale.
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You describe yourself as a “carbon wrangler.” What does that mean?
A wrangler's job is to put something that's in the wrong place in the right place. After an epiphany at COP 22 in Marrakech, I realized that's what I did. Nothing wrong with CO2 except there's too much of it in the atmosphere and oceans. The work is to keep it out of the air and oceans and remove as much as quickly as we can—wrangling gigatons.
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When do you think CCS is appropriate & when do you think carbon capture and utilization (CCU) is appropriate?
CCS is simply required to make the climate math pencil out. It will be the lowest cost, speediest way to reduce emissions in many markets and many applications (like steel and cement). CCU, or CO2 recycling, should be used when and where it can be cost effective (like in cement) and scale to large volumes (like in CO production). As the technology improves, more CCU applications will make sense.
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You’ve been in the fossil energy area for a little while now. Has anything surprised you about the progress of carbon capture & utilization or carbon recycling over the course of your career?
The big breakthroughs in CCU did not occur in fossil energy—that came in renewable energy. For MANY years, turning CO2 into fuels or chemicals seemed idiotic. The Second Law of Thermodynamics is a harsh mistress—it says you'll always lose energy converting spent fuel back into fuel. However, when renewables become cheap and abundant, as they are locally today, the opportunity becomes arbitraging energy for money. That's very, very hard, but no longer lunacy.
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Carbon capture is not without controversy. Some academics & scientists oppose it & it’s sometimes referred to as a moral hazard. What are your thoughts about that?
I have very little respect for the moral hazard argument. We've lost two decades to that nonsense on CCS and a full decade on adaptation and we risk losing one decade to CO2 removal and two to solar radiation management, when both approaches will most likely need to be deployed. The argument is backwards. It says that the existence of Diet Coke means no-one will lose weight or exercise. That's nonsense. The reason we must do CCS and CO2 removal is the harsh arithmetic of climate change, which would be easier to manage if we hadn't lost those decades to self-serving moralists.
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What makes you optimistic about the future?
One of the things that makes me optimistic is that many people across the globe and across the political spectrum have done this same arithmetic and are looking for solutions. We've made amazing progress with renewables and EVs, but Net Zero Math means zero for everything, everywhere, in all sectors, for all time. That simply requires more actors doing more things, and I'm optimistic because that sensibility has finally caught up to the technology, which itself has made stunning and profound progress.
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In addition to playing piano & composing songs made from temperature data, what else do you do when you’re not wrangling carbon?
When I'm not wrangling carbon (which takes 60-70 hours of my work week), I play piano, ride my recumbent bicycle, or cook food. I just LOVE beverages of all kinds, and spend a lot of my time finding and consuming excellent coffee and cocktails. Julio playing piano.
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What else do you wish I had asked you & what’s the answer to that question?
I wish you'd asked me about the money. There's suddenly real money available due to policy shifts, public interests, commercial opportunity, and corporate commitments. That money is the opening ante to a long and protracted game of baccarat. That game is one we can win if we pay attention to the math, the rules, and get just a bit of luck.
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Launch Event for the Techno-Economic Assessment & Life-Cycle Assessment Guidelines for CO2 Utilization (Version 2.0)
March 17, 2022
During this event, the CO2nsistent team will present new versions of the guidance documents “Techno-Economic Assessment & Life-Cycle Assessment Guidelines for CO2 Utilization (Version 2.0)” and “Making Sense of Techno-Economic Assessment & Life Cycle Assessment Studies for CO2 Utilization: A guide on how to commission, understand, and derive decisions from TEA and LCA studies (Version 2.0)”. Read more.
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Sign-ups for the next AirMiners Launchpad are now open!
Applications due March 31st, 2022
The AirMiners Launchpad aims to accelerate early stage entrepreneurs towards gigaton scale carbon removal. The program helps founders ramp up their value proposition development, customer discovery efforts, and technoeconomic assessment capabilities, while connecting to the broader carbon removal network. More information.
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