“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.
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.
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.
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.