[ghostbust555]

How are you saying this is carbon negative? Don't get me wrong the process is impressive and very cool, but the marketing around it just feels scammy.

-5kg of carbon per m2? How? The lignin based binder absorbs more carbon from the air after it is placed into the road? I may be misreading but it seems like these numbers are based on the amount of carbon in the lignin itself (i.e. since it isn't burned which would be positive, you can count it as negative as it is not burned)

If I am wrong on this, please correct me. But it sure sounds like a lot of conveniently vague statements to make for nice sounding numbers. This would be a shame as even without misleading claims of CO2 reduction, the benefit of removing oil from the process and replacing it with a renewable source is clear and should stand for itself.

If the binder does indeed absorb C02 over time what is the rate? What effect does it have on the binders stability? Or if its used in its manufacturing how are you sourcing the CO2? What is the breakdown timeframe for the binder releasing any sequestered carbon back into the atmosphere?

[snewman]

OP says the lignin is "a waste product from the paper industry" and "majority of lignin is burnt". So it sounds like: currently, grow tree (pulling carbon from the atmosphere), process for paper industry, burn the resulting lignin, carbon returns to atmosphere. With this process: grow tree, process for paper industry, embed lignin in road material. If the lignin remains in the road more-or-less permanently (I asked about this in a separate comment), that sounds like legit removal; the carbon started out in the air and ends up in the road.

[haakonzen]

Yes exactly, that's how we think about it. We are using nature's own capture machine, trees... thanks for this clear explanation :)

[tomsyouruncle]

Maybe the concern others are expressing here can be thought of as the risk of double counting of carbon.

If I run an industrial plant that's currently fuelled by burning waste lignin from the paper industry, and I decide to stop that and install some solar panels instead, it seems reasonable for me to claim that change is carbon negative (i.e. I've reduced carbon emissions).

Now if CarbonCrusher comes along and buys the lignin I no longer need, uses it to build a road, and claims the same carbon saving as I did, we end up double counting.

Which of us is wrong?

[hansarne]

This is a very fair question. We need to be mindful going forward in how we communicate. We can say that our Scope 3 emissions are negative, but scope 1 we are slightly positive (but still much lower than competition) Just to clarify; we go from 7-10kg CO2 positive for traditional methods, to 5 kg negative in two steps; Step one is we reduce emissions from transport, extraction etc because we have a better Crusher which recycles the road better, which takes us to just above 1kg pr m2 - massive savings already from the traditional method, and this could be counted mostly in Scope 1 or 2, some of it in 3 (reduced extraction). The remaining ca -6 kg is the effect of lignin - here debated in the thread and that we are saying is carbon negative. This is a scope 3 effect.

Thanks for pointing out! We are still a young company and need to work on our Scope 1-3 accounting :)

[tomsyouruncle]

Thanks a lot for adding these details about scoping[0]. I’ve definitely learned something there.

So my scope 1 emissions can be your scope 3 emissions if I emit carbon to make something that I sell to you… but the “real” emissions are always _somebody’s_ scope 1. Interesting stuff!

[0]: https://www.carbontrust.com/resources/briefing-what-are-scop...

[anamax]

You're switching contexts.

When you switched from burning lignin to solar, you reduced your carbon usage.

However, what happened to the lignin that you stopped using?

If it was burned somewhere else, the total carbon usage remained the same even though you changed your usage.

If it was stockpiled and is now decomposing over three years, the carbon usage was time-shifted and will be back where it was in three years. (However, total carbon usage will be reduced the first and second year.)

This is supposedly a usage of lignin that results in no release, so it actually is carbon-negative (assuming that the processing doesn't use more carbon), regardless of what other folks think that they did. That said, it's probably actually just time-shifted, albeit on a long time-scale.

Note that both coal and diamonds are actually time-shifted carbon usage, on the scale of millions of years.

[tomsyouruncle]

> When you switched from burning lignin to solar, you reduced your carbon usage. However, what happened to the lignin that you stopped using?

In my scenario, CarbonCruncher bought the lignin I stopped using and made a road out of it. Crucially, in doing so they claim to have a negative carbon impact because they'd trapped that carbon in the ground. But I already claimed that impact when I stopped buying and burning it myself and switched to a zero-emission energy source.

So my (genuine) question remains: we can't _both_ claim the benefit, so who's right?

[anamax]

What's the relevance of "claim"?

Thousands of people get "best grandma" coffee mugs each year. Logically, only one of them actually is, but who cares and why?

[ghostbust555]

This is exactly my point (the after 3 years if it decomposed you are just time shifting) which is why I asked how long the roads take to decompose and what they translate into. Sooner or later that lignon in the road will become C02. But is that in 10 years? 100? If its time shifting it only by 15 years or so then its NOT reducing the total carbon to the atmosphere, just temporarily storing it. No different than putting the lignin in a warehouse for 15 years before burning it. So to call that carbon negative is just... bad math at best.

[ghostbust555]

My problem is that a) the lignin will decay into C02 (what is the time frame on this? if its hundreds of years then maybe there is some merit here) but b) this implies that if a paper mill wanted to claim to be "carbon negative" they could simply build a warehouse and store lignin for a while before burning it. Furthermore, it implies that if I wanted to claim to be 1 million kgs carbon negative I can simply make a threat of starting a forest fire. If I then DON'T burn the forest I now can say I personally removed 1 million kgs of C02 from the atmosphere.

[haakonzen]

Yes - time and degradation is key. All evidence we have as of today suggests close to none degradation of the lignin, and if/when eventually some degradation happens (yet to happen on the roads we have from 14y back), sequestration downwards in the soil, from the deep stabilized road layer we have bound with lignin. This is a very important area for us to pioneer research on going forward to get completely right, thanks for all the comments here, it will help us sharpen our efforts.

[kroil]

Adding this one, we are spending a lot of time getting all the calculations on sequestrations right, here is some deeper information on this. https://carbonplan.org/research/ton-year-explainer

[haakonzen]

Great thread, thanks all for the passion for this important topic. Just to clarify; we go from 7-10kg CO2 positive for traditional methods, to 5 kg negative pr m2 in two steps; Step one is we reduce emissions from value chain; incl. transport, & extraction when our Crusher recycles the road, which takes us to just above 1kg pr m2 (massive savings already from the traditional method). The remaining ca -6 kg is the effect of lignin - turning the calculation towards negative - and here debated in the thread with different opinions.

[civilized]

Why is lignin burnt today?

[el_oni]

Its a complex highly aromatic (in the chemistry sense) large molecule that there is active research in trying to convert to useful chemical products.

However it's quite difficult to break its bonds in ways that yield useful compounds. And until there is a viable way of upcycling it, burning it for energy is what they do

[lvs]

Except the current use of the byproduct is not just flaring it off pointlessly as waste. The byproduct is being burned as a fuel, which in that usage is already (nearly) neutral. If an alternative fuel has to be used instead, that fuel is more than likely going to be natural gas or coal.

[testrun]

This is how we lose the war against global warming. The process here is simple: 1. Tree captures carbon 2. Carbon gets buried in a road.

Simple.

For warming we can use electricity generated by wind, solar, tides etc.

Do not move the goalposts.

[ghostbust555]

3. Carbon in lignon road is released as it decays over time.

[dymk]

Do you have a source that the binder is currently being used as a fuel source? I'm missing where that's implied by the OP.

[hansarne]

It's correct that lignin is used as a fuel, here's one source of it. ~98 is burnt. "currently most of the lignin produced from paper industry is burned as low-value fuel to generate electricity and heat (Luo and Abu-Omar, 2017) and only less than 2% is used for producing specialty chemicals ..." https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09266...

[civilized]

I wonder what makes it a low value fuel. If it has a lot of carbon per energy released, it may be better to bury it than burn it.

[shafyy]

I agree. Stop using empty marketing words like "carbon negative". Your product seems good enough that you don't need to resort to this.

I'm sure there's a definition out there of carbon negative that means what you say it means, but if we're being honest carbon negative means that doing more of something reduces the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. You can't claim that not burning lignin is carbon negative since this product already exists as a byproduct in the paper industry (as you said). By repairing roads you're still emitting more carbon than removing from the atmosphere.

[libertine]

I don't agree with you.

If the product of the whole operation ends up with less carbon in the atmosphere, then it is in fact removing carbon. Plus they aren't using binders that contribute to more carbon to the atmosphere.

Now, we can be extremely strict in this definition and unless a company actually produces 0 carbon and is still extracting it from the atmosphere would be the ones who could claim they are "carbon negative", but then I guess not even CO2 extractors could claim that because they still need to be built and consume power.

I don't think that will get us anywhere. By that logic not even trees are "carbon negative".

In the end it's a matter of perspective, because what we're actually doing most of the time is offsetting/moving carbon around, and there's nothing wrong with that.

If it's captured from the air by a chemical process, or stored underground, or if it simply is stored in a byproduct that's reused and never reaches the atmosphere, it's all the same.

[bob29]

There is essentially no way this operation ends up with less carbon in the atmosphere.

It is very hard to do anything with biomass at industrial scale without emitting more carbon than the biomass itself contains.

Even look at biomass to energy, by the time harvest, transport, and process a tree for use to "offset" fossil fuel combustion, it's hard to say thats carbon negative.

Now you harvest the biomass, put it through some chemical engineering process to make a binder product, put this binder product in the hopper of some massive diesel powered behemoth machine that chews up, binds, and compacts and remakes roads. This obviously consumes a LOT of energy.

Is it a cool company? Yes, making effective nontoxic product out of another industries byproduct, to be used in something thats been foundational to human society for 1000s of years, roads, is maybe the neatest new company I've heard about in a long time.

Does it emit less carbon than some other ways of repaving roads? probably.

Is it carbon negative by ANY definition? OBVIOUSLY not (or I will eat my hat and throw an egg on my face.)

I'm honestly confused why there's ANY claim of being carbon negative, let alone it being front and center, when the underlying product can totally stand on its own??

[throwawaylinux]

> -5kg of carbon per m2? How? The lignin based binder absorbs more carbon from the air after it is placed into the road? I may be misreading but it seems like these numbers are based on the amount of carbon in the lignin itself (i.e. since it isn't burned which would be positive, you can count it as negative as it is not burned)

Replace the lignin with some fantastical material that contains no carbon and requires no carbon to produce, and after it is laid on the road it quickly absorbs CO2 from the atmosphere equivalent to the amount of carbon that lignin contains.

Would you say that is carbon negative?

[hinkley]

Nope.

Nor is buying a bunch of stuff at the store that you don’t need just because it’s 35% off retail price “saving money”.

Cash flow positive is not losing money slower, it’s making more than you spend. Carbon negative absorbs more carbon than you spend. Including in chopping up an old road and recycling it, which is going to take a lot of power.

If I had a box that you plugged in that was actually carbon negative and I forgot I left it running while I was on vacation, I would not feel guilty. If doing nothing results in less carbon emissions than doing something, it’s not negative.

[throwawaylinux]

You don't think something that reduces net carbon in the atmosphere is carbon negative, then you're just making up your own definitions of things. Why waste everyone else's time? Seems like a hell of way to go about life.

[hinkley]

No, you’re making up things. You think you’re asking if we think a net negative is a net negative, but that’s not what you asked. Not even close.

Making something takes energy, as you will recall if you weren’t asleep that entire semester in physics class. If the bit at the end cancels out some of the problems created earlier, you still have some of the problems created earlier.

[throwawaylinux]

No that's just your reading comprehension problem.

[hinkley]

You're having a petri dish problem. Taken out of an environment, a lot of experiments and math look very good. It's interesting, might even be new knowledge, but it's not applicable.

That giant machine in their PR materials didn't just appear out of nowhere. It doesn't run on rainbows. It has a considerable embodied carbon footprint. It has an operational footprint, and a transportation footprint. It assuredly produces lots of pm2.5 and not just from the tailpipe.

Undoubtedly less that the process it replaces, but negative is an extraordinary claim, and I don't see any extraordinary evidence here.

[hinkley]

> -5kg of carbon per m2

That machine that chews up the road and lays it back down, how many kg of carbon per m2 does it burn?

I think too you have to compare the lifetime pollution of a bitumen patch versus the point source pollution of grinding a road up in the open air and putting it back down. There's going to be a ratio of resurface vs patch that has a lower cost than using either strategy exclusively. Especially if you use their chemistry for patches, instead of resurfacing.

[lvs]

This was my first reaction as well. I think the subtext is that the byproduct is currently being burned as a fuel source, which is common for things like sawdust in mills. So there's one aspect of this calculation that could be waaay off. If the mills that would have burned this byproduct in a boiler are selling it instead, they'll need another energy source for their boilers! If that energy source is a fossil fuel instead of a wood byproduct, then this "upcycling" has inadvertently become carbon positive (or perhaps neutral at best). And it will be a lot easier to retrofit an industrial boiler for natural gas than to convert it to electric. Even if it were electric, most of the world does not remotely have as clean a grid as Norway's. So it would be some decades before any carbon advantage emerges.

[hansarne]

Thanks for the comment. See calculation breakdown added in a few threads above. Some of our thoughts about the carbon negative part:

Paper mills captures CO2 from trees (that are sustainably harvested, more trees planted than harvested p.a.) of which parts of it is released after some of the lignin is burned (inefficiently) for fuel. If they stop burning lignin for fuel, they need other energy sources, and then the question is how the paper mill chooses to do this: - The mills can choose to burn fossil fuels, get a renewable source, or buy electricity from the grid. We will only source lignin from players serious about sustainability and green alternatives (industrial broilers could also use green hydrogen), alongside prioritising maximised energy efficient operations - Even if they get electricity from the grid, the world is moving forward and we’re luckily reaching a point where additional capacity in the grid is coming from renewables, while fossil is decreasing - boosting new renewable buildout more

What’s very important in what you point out is that when we expand our lignin supplier base, we need to be careful in selecting our suppliers, understanding their alternatives and understanding our Scope 3 emission effects to ensure it aligns with our mission of saving the planet :) And that's what we will do - ensure that this ends up on the right side.

[hinkley]

Taken to the other extreme, as the value of sawdust goes up the incentive to reduce sawdust goes down, decreasing the number of board feet per tree, increasing trees cut for lumber.

If you find a better use for sawdust, great. But if you could invent a new saw blade with a smaller kerf, you’d be helping more.

[AtlasBarfed]

"Even if it were electric, most of the world does not remotely have as clean a grid as Norway's. So it would be some decades before any carbon advantage emerges."

So.... you give up? This is stupid all-or-nothing absolutist thinking. I'm not saying OP YC is the greatest thing since sliced bread, but long-term sequestration of tree carbon is a carbon sink.

Solar/Wind is at LCOE parity with natural gas turbine. It will pass it soon, with basic subsidies (as if fossil fuels aren't subsidized) then storage won't be a disadvantage either. If not, emerging economies of scale and tech progress in wind/solar will leave natural gas in the dust.

So even if the grid is dirty now, there is a clear path forward, and the grid will adapt to the changing pattern, and we already have the delivery method solved (the grid). And there are opportunities to possibly scrub carbon from central generation. Not as much as the sociopathic petroleum companies would like you to think so they can go business as usual, but better than an ICE car.

[haakonzen]

We don't think we are the greatest thing since sliced bread either! But thanks for the encouragement and good points, we try and hope we can point the carbon needle a meaningful push the right way with the means at our disposal - and this we will keep on doing, now fed with more inputs & insight