One whiff of student loan forgiveness being mentioned and they rush to protect their capital. This is financial protection for Dartmouth dressed up as some sort of benefit to students.
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.
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.
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?