2 points
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enormous amounts on carbon capture projects that have historically produced lackluster results. It throws even more good money after bad on “clean hydrogen”, an absolute sinkhole of R&D
And yet both are desperately needed
- we’re already zooming past our climate goals for carbon emission, and rapidly approaching all the dangers that entails. While not putting fossilized carbon in the atmosphere to begin with is far better, it’s naive to think that will be enough. If there’s a practical way to recover some of that atmospheric carbon, we need to find it and scale up fast
- while we’ve found better technologies than hydrogen for personal transportation and power generation, there are still too many places we still need energy, where wires can’t go, batteries aren’t sufficient. Think of industrial uses like metal refining or concrete manufacturing, flying, shipping, construction, long distance trains, etc, that we don’t yet have a good solution for. Yes, even for storage: current storage technology is fantastic, but it’s not clear that it can scale. We do also need a hydrogen economy
0 points
And yet both are desperately needed
If you want to benefit climate change from the perspective of new technology, cancel the battery technology patents horded by fossil fuel companies.
2 points
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For sure another Big Question TM is whether intellectual property protections have gone beyond any reasonable justification, and obstruct innovation rather than the stated goal of stimulating it. Patents aren’t as bad as Copyright, but yeah.
2 points
