Analyze

Slides 37-55 outline FPG's current carbon capture system in Kaoshiung and its future plans for CCS systems in Mailiao, including an experimental system of biodegradable carbon capture. These initiatives, largely through Formosa Smart Energy Corp. also attempt to use AI models to regulate carbon capture for optimal production. 

See slides 40-42 for new initiatives on carbon capture. They list plans to build deep water carbon capture pits, being sited in Yunlin as of 9.2022.

The carbon capture system they have in place at Nanya seems to have reduced the amount of naptha necessary to manufacture butyl ether, a chemical used in solvents and pesticides, through reinjection of that carbon dioxide into source feedstocks (Enhanced Oil Recovery).

“國際碳捕捉技術發展

依據全球碳捕捉與封存研究所(Global CCS Institute, CCSI)最新發布之「2022年全球碳捕捉與

封存發展現況報告(The Global Status Of CCS 2022)」，⾄2022年全球共有30個⼤型CCS綜合

專案已經營運，其中有22個採⾏強制採油技術(Enhanced oil recovery, EOR)，利⽤⼆氧化碳灌

注⾄快枯竭的油氣⽥，獲取更多殘存油氣，以增加效益，其餘8個專案封存於陸地或海洋深層

鹽⽔層，顯示現階段應⽤仍以EOR技術為主，除可減少碳排外，更可增加獲利。

自動翻譯

 Capture Technology Development

According to the "2022 Global Carbon Capture and Storage Storage Development Status Report“ (The Global Status Of CCS 2022), by 2022 there will be 30 large CCS comprehensive

The projects are already in operation, and 22 of them adopt enhanced oil recovery (EOR), using carbon dioxide irrigation. Inject into the depleted oil and gas to obtain more residual oil and gas to increase efficiency, and the remaining 8 projects are sealed in land or deep ocean

The salt water layer shows that the current application is still dominated by EOR technology, which can not only reduce carbon emissions, but also increase profits.” (Slide 38)

Heavy reliance on technosolutions to reach emission reduction and climate goals. Shift from oil as fuel to oil as material. Cooperation between industry, academic, and technical research organizations to research new carbon capture systems. Longevity of the petrochemical industry within climate politics is a high priority for FPG, but also the efficiency of petrochemical inputs. Climate change action is being pursued, but more so in capture of carbon emitted and repurposed within chemical reactions, as opposed to omitted through reductions in production

The history of racialized exclusion to both social power and land tenure and homeownership has shaped how bodies are differentially impacted by land use in NOLA. This entire history could (and probably already is) a topic for a dissertation, but one case I found particularly interesting involved the Army Corps of Engineers' 2007 creation of an online database in which residents can find the "flood potential" faced by their homes (http://nolarisk.usace.army.mil/ --unfortunately no longer up).  While this database was hailed as a landmark achievement in providing NOLA residents with their "right to know" about the risks in their neighborhoods, only a few remarked on what the data actually showed: that in the two years following the flood predominantly white neighborhoods had experienced 4-6 feet of flood reduction, black neighborhoods had experienced little to no flood reduction whatsoever. 

This reminds me of a more general entanglement of racialized disparities, historical disinvestment and inequitable distribution of risk in America, which as Anna Clark so summarily puts it (in respect lead": "lead is one toxic legacy in America's cities. Another is segregation, redlining, and rebranding: this is the art and craft of exclusion. We built it into the bones of our cities as surely as we laid lead pipes."  

One interesting example of land use education that I found is the Whitney Plantation Museum in Wallace, LA--about an hour north of New Orleans proper and right on the banks of the Mississippi River. The museum is, according to its website, "the only plantation museum in Louisiana with an exclusive focus on the lives of enslaved people." The 2,000 acre property was once a sugarcane plantation that operated from 1752 until well into the 19th century, with over 350 enslaved persons working on it during this period. 

The museum was founded in 2014 by John Cummings, who has spent more than $8 million of his own fortune on this long-term project, and worked on it for nearly 15 years.[ The director of research is Ibrahima Seck, a Senegalese scholar who has done much work on the history of slavery. These two seem to be the primary organizers of education in the musuem which focuses on how land in the Lower Mississippi was organized towards the cultivation of Sugar. 

Right off the bat, it is interesting that this museum is completely financed by a private citizen. I've looked up other plantation museums in the region and for the most part they see to all be privately run. Also, contrast the focus on slavery at Whitney to the Oak Alley plantation museum's celebration of a family legacy of sugar planters: "Hold fast to that which is good...."

The question of data relates to Denise Brock’s key role in the passage of the Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program Act (EEOICPA). Brock independently collected thousands of documents related to the health of  workers in nuclear facilities like Weldon Spring in her efforts to show that they had been exposed to pathological levels of radiation. In many cases, their employers were fully aware of the dangers these workers faced, but kept this information to themselves or hidden away in the private documents that Denise uncovered decades later. Prior to Denise's work this information was not publically available, and if workers who had become ill wanted to receive compensation for worksite expose, they would have to undergo exposure reconstruction assessments, which--due to the lack of accurate and available data--were imperfect evaluations of the actual levels of radiation workers had been exposed to. Due to Denise's advocacy, which led to the passage of the EEOICPA, workers at nuclear facilities are exempted from the exposure reconstruction assessments and are eligible for compensation payments up to a maximum amount of $250,000, plus medical expenses for accepted conditions.

Denise's experience raises a few questions and reflections on data in the Anthropocene:

•  Issues like worksite and environmental exposure are often plagued by invisibilities and what STS scholars have referred to as "agnotologies"--where can activists/scholars/any interested party gain access to relevant data in relation to these issues (in a similar fashion to Denise's work)?
• For historians in particular: do the thousands of documents Denise complied consitute an archive? How can these and similar archival practices be Anthropocenic strategies? 

Project managers at the Army Corps of Engineers are not concerned with the Anthropocene. Their job at SLAPS and other FUSRAP sites revolves around a different contestable term: remediation. What exactly does Anthropocenic remediation look like in St. Louis? As the ACoE project managers informed us, remediation consists of removing contimated soil and shipping it to approved waste management sites in Michigan, Kentucky and Ohio. It would be interesting to further investigate how ACoE practices of remediation have historically been shaped.