An article explaining white carbon neutralization

If water is the source of life, then carbon is the basis of life. We are carbon-based life, and various carbon-containing organic molecules serve as the basis to form our bodies. Gaseous carbon dioxide is a big quilt that allows our mother earth to have a suitable temperature. However, the quilt is too thick now.

Who's to blame for carbon?

The earth receives energy from solar radiation every day. When the earth's surface is heated, it will also radiate energy outwards (any object radiates energy outwards). The energy radiated by the earth is long wave, which is easily absorbed by carbon dioxide in the air (carbon monoxide, methane and other carbon-bearing gases can also be used). The amount of carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere is just moderate, so our air is warm and relatively constant. , not too high, not too low, this temperature is just comfortable for humans. The effect of carbon dioxide on warming the earth is the greenhouse effect, and carbon dioxide gases are greenhouse gases.

Some people may ask why we are so lucky. The distance between the earth and the sun is moderate, the earth's magnetic field shields cosmic rays, the earth's rotation axis is at an angle to produce four seasons, and the proportions of various gases in the earth's air It just so happens that if anything is missing, we humans will be annihilated. In fact, this is also survivor bias. If these conditions are not met, we will not have the opportunity to ask these questions. We are all survivors in the universe.

If you rent a house to a person who doesn’t care about cleanliness, and the hygiene in the house is relatively poor, and when you return to the house, you find that there is a cockroach swarm in the house, there may be a cockroach saying why We are so lucky. There is food, water, and the right temperature here. In fact, these conditions happened to trigger the formation of a cockroach colony here. This group of cockroaches are just passing by in this house. Although Homo sapiens exists, It has been tens of thousands of years, which is like a swarm of cockroaches in a room compared to the tens of billions of years of the universe.

After the Industrial Revolution, humans began to burn large amounts of coal, oil and natural gas. These combustions emitted a large amount of carbon dioxide. In recent decades, scientists have worried whether so much carbon dioxide will cause the earth’s temperature to rise. High, and then they studied it and found that it was really rising, and it was rising very quickly, and the consequences would be catastrophic, so the climate problem emerged. Later, leaders of the countries we are familiar with came together to meet and specify agreements to reduce carbon emissions, from the Kyoto Protocol to the Paris Agreement.

There are still some people who oppose reducing carbon emissions. There are three types of doubters. The first is that there is no global warming at all. The second is that the earth is warming and cooling. According to its own laws, human activities have almost no impact, and we are just mediocre people. The third type is the conspiracy theory, which believes that this is a conspiracy of developed countries as a means to limit the development of underdeveloped countries. After all, there is no way to avoid emitting carbon. In steelmaking, how can we catch up with the United States if we don't make enough steel?

These doubters are still in the minority. The first and second types have been basically slapped in the face by recent scientific research and facts. As for the third type, China is no longer an underdeveloped country, so what? , for the sake of a community with a shared future for mankind, we are serious about carbon reduction.

Here we need to clarify a concept. The smog and PM2.5 that we usually hate have nothing to do with greenhouse gases. European and American countries have blue skies and white clouds every day, but they emit no less greenhouse gases than China. The United States Per capita carbon emissions are four times that of China. Carbon dioxide is colorless, odorless and non-toxic, and has nothing to do with the air pollution that everyone usually perceives. Natural gas combustion only emits carbon dioxide, but it is considered a clean energy source.

How to Neutralize

This year’s Two Sessions report proposed that my country will reach its carbon peak by 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality by 2060. The carbon peak means that after 2030, our country’s carbon emissions will not increase. Carbon neutrality means that by 2060, the carbon emitted and the carbon absorbed by our country will be balanced, and the net carbon emissions will be 0.

In fact, two countries have already achieved carbon neutrality. One of these two countries is Bhutan and the other is Suriname. One of these two countries is at the southern foot of the Himalayas and the other is on the edge of the Amazon rainforest in South America. On the other hand, they have one thing in common, that is, they have few people and no industry, and they are all forests. Their country’s forests absorb the carbon dioxide emitted by their country.

Absorbing carbon is the solidification of carbon in gaseous carbon dioxide. The solidification here is not freezing (if black technology is available in the future, it can be frozen at low cost), but turning into a solid compound of carbon, which is the simplest The best carbon sequestration technology is to plant trees. At least one-third of a tree is carbon. According to mass conservation, planting a tree can solidify a lot of carbon. The biggest problem with planting trees to sequester carbon is that it is too slow and takes up space. It is like if there is pollution from decoration in your home, you can plant green plants to absorb it, but if you just rely on it to absorb the pollution, your whole room will be filled with it. There may not even be enough green plants. Carbon can also be fixed using chemical methods. According to the second law of thermodynamics, these methods must consume a lot of energy (trees also use solar energy to fix carbon through photosynthesis), and the process of generating energy will also produce carbon emissions. , wouldn’t this be like making a flashlight that can be charged by solar energy under sunlight? It is impossible to sequester carbon and achieve carbon neutrality by relying solely on these technical means.

We need to increase revenue but also reduce expenditure. If we want to achieve carbon neutrality, the most important thing is not to emit carbon dioxide, or to emit as little as possible, but we cannot be like Bhutan and There is no industry like Suriname. If all countries were like these two countries, then we humans would be sucked by the northwest wind. The largest carbon emission is the use of fossil energy. The so-called fossil energy is coal, oil and natural gas that are slowly evolved from the corpses of ancient animals and plants. At present, most of the energy sources are still fossil energy. People are gradually Replace fossil fuels with energy without carbon emissions.

Where are the opportunities

Energy-saving technology. Industries such as steel, cement, chemicals, etc. are large energy consumers and are basic industries. They will not disappear as long as there are humans. These industries consume huge amounts of energy. If energy consumption is reduced, it will be equivalent to reducing carbon emissions. Equipment supply for these industries If companies can provide energy-saving technologies, such as heat recycling and reuse, they will be very competitive.

New energy. Mainly solar and wind energy. Nowadays, wind power and solar power generation technologies are relatively mature, and the problem of high cost of wind power and solar power generation that has been mentioned before is gradually being solved. At present, the cost per kilowatt hour of wind power and solar power is close to that of thermal power, but the biggest problem is It is said that both of these power generation are unstable. Wind power stops when there is no wind, and solar power cannot generate power at night or on rainy days, so energy storage technology is needed. Nuclear energy and hydropower have relatively large potential impacts on the environment, and many countries have restricted their development.

Energy storage. Energy storage technology has also been around for a long time. A typical method is a pumped hydropower station. This kind of power station has two large pools with different heights. If the water from the lower pool is pumped into the higher pool, the electric energy can be transferred Store the potential energy of water, and then in turn, use the water from the high pool to drive the generator to generate electricity. This may seem a bit primitive, but it is indeed a method of storing electrical energy used in many places. This method has two big consequences. The disadvantages are that the first is that the response is relatively slow and not flexible enough. The second is that the terrain and land requirements are high. It is not that easy to find two large pools with different heights. For unstable energy sources such as wind energy and solar energy, the best way to store energy is to use power batteries. To put it bluntly, it is to put a lot of large power banks in the power grid. If there is more power, it will be charged. If there is not enough power, it will be discharged. Now that the cost of power batteries is gradually decreasing, there will be a large number of power plants equipped with solar or wind energy and energy storage in the future.

Electric cars. Many European countries have set a timetable for stopping the sale of fuel vehicles, basically around 2030.

The electrification and intelligence of cars is inevitable. The current problem is that the booming development of smart electric cars has created a huge bubble. As mentioned in the previous article, if electric smart cars cannot break through the boundaries of cars, even if Toyota and Volkswagen are They have all gone bankrupt, and they are still just cars. Their market value still has a huge bubble, which will burst sooner or later. At least so far, we can't see Tesla or NIO's cars breaking through the boundaries of cars. If they can't break through, they will at best be like Canon replacing Kodak, rather than Apple replacing Nokia.

Low-carbon animal husbandry. What many people are unaware of is that animal husbandry is also an industry with high carbon emissions, especially raising cattle. Cows eat grass every day. These fibers are not easy to digest, so the cows have several stomachs to digest these in turn. Grass and cows are called ruminants. Their stomachs are like a big methane pit, so they fart or burp all day long. There is a lot of methane in the farts, and methane is a gas that has a greenhouse effect 30 times stronger than carbon dioxide. , the carbon emissions of pig raising are also relatively large. Carbon neutrality in this field is not easy to achieve. After all, people cannot help but eat meat. Some research in this area is to use biological science methods to make these livestock grow more meat and less fart.

To sum up, in the future, mankind will build an all-electric society, and the source of electricity is non-fossil energy, and it is non-fossil energy that everyone can afford.

Where are the risks?

Carbon neutrality is a typical important but not urgent issue. It is said that carbon will peak in 2030 and carbon neutrality will be carbon neutral in 2060. What will happen if it is delayed by 10 years? , and he won’t die immediately.

As a digression, look at this four-quadrant time management table. In fact, an important indicator to measure whether a person, a company or even a country has a great future is how he handles important and non-urgent issues. The most difficult It deals with important but not urgent issues. For important and urgent issues, a person may not live to be 20 years old, and there are very few such people; for urgent and unimportant issues, a person who is not able to deal with them may lose a courier (typical emergency but not important scenario: receiving a courier call during a meeting ); For issues that are not important or urgent, it doesn’t matter how you deal with them. The biggest difference between people actually depends on how they deal with important and not urgent issues. For example, studying hard and getting into a good university is a typical important and not urgent issue. Returning to the topic of carbon neutrality, if you act too hastily, you may over-invest and end up with nothing. If you suffer from procrastination and do not take all measures in place, you may not be able to achieve the goal for a long time, and you may really be in danger of extinction. disaster. National policymakers must control this rhythm well.

Another problem is that carbon emissions to the atmosphere are a typical tragedy of the commons in economics. The tragedy of the commons is that if a piece of grassland has no owner and some herders are allowed to come over to graze, everyone will want to If you use more grazing, the final result will be complete degradation of the turf. For public land, in order to prevent it from degradation, there must be a system to manage it. The same is true for our atmosphere. It is a commons for every country. We all happily formulated the Paris Agreement, which is equivalent to stipulating that each family can only raise a few cows. However, international treaties are not binding. Soon after King Understanding came to power, he withdrew from the Paris Agreement and was free to graze. Fortunately, King Sleeping immediately joined the agreement after he came to power. If King Understanding continues to be like this, other countries will follow or not.

For personal investment, carbon reduction has been a hot topic since 20 years ago, and related concepts have been speculated for a long time. Take solar power generation as an example, it is now in the fourth wave. , the first wave was Wuxi Suntech, which went bankrupt, the second wave was Jiangxi Saiwei, which went bankrupt, and Yingli, which sponsored the World Cup, went bankrupt, the third wave was Hanergy Group, which went bankrupt, and now is the fourth wave. LONGi, a company from Xi'an (the boss of this company, Li Xing, is headquartered in Xi'an, and its name is LONGi, which makes people think a lot), has produced several richest men (first losers) in this industry.

It can be said that climate change is the first unique problem that mankind has encountered. The previous big problems of mankind were that one group of people united to fight another group of people, and one group always won. People, this time it’s either everyone wins or everyone loses. This major problem is superimposed on the energy revolution, which is also a major opportunity for mankind.

The issue of carbon neutrality has been hyped for many years. It used to be called energy conservation and emission reduction, but now it has a different name and is called carbon neutrality. The essence has not changed. Although this issue has been hyped for many years, it seems to be serious this time.