Assertion Supported
Dell: No steel company is commercializing large-scale blast furnace carbon capture
“There's very little going on in the world of carbon capture in the steel industry right now. There are a there are no large-scale efforts to commercialize this technology. Like, there isn't a single steel company anywhere in the world that's like, we're gonna …”
Insight
Dell: Urea Production Should Not Count as Meaningful CO2 Utilization
“A lot of people point to this as, like, the most important CO₂ utilization that is already commercialized in our economy, but that's actually a really problematic way of thinking about it, because the way you make urea, you start with a pure concentrated point…”
Assertion Contradicted
Dell: Steelmaking emits more greenhouse gases than anything except electricity
“Making steel emits more greenhouse gases than anything else except making electricity.”
Assertion Supported
Dell: Almost Every Steel Mill Produces More CO2 Than Steel
“So if you look at, like, the total process Of the iron making and the steel making together for a vet, just like a very typical conventional blast furnace facility, you're usually going to end up with more than two tons of CO two per ton of steel, which is kin…”
Assertion Contradicted
Dell: Electrifying a single standard steel mill requires four gigawatts of power
“If you were to fully electrify this process, that might be something like four gigawatts of electricity. Average load. Not peak load. Average load. So we're talking about, like, four nuclear power stations to run one normie steel mill.”
Prediction Didn’t hold up
Dell: Boston Metal's commercial iron cell should deploy in one to two years
“We're still waiting for the commercial deployment of the sort of the actual iron-making cell, which should come in the next, I think, year or two, but honestly, you would know better than me.”
Opinion
Dell: Mass timber substitution is viable only in North America and Northern Europe
“Really, like, North America and maybe some small parts of Northern Europe are the only places in the world that, like, have the trees. And Everywhere else, if you did that, you would be driving deforestation that would make the whole thing counterproductive.”
Assertion Supported
Dell: Every metal requires more energy to manufacture than steel
“Every metal besides steel requires more energy to make it than steel does”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Dell: Plastics Lifecycle Emissions Could Quadruple to 6.8 Gigatons by 2050
“Current trajectory estimates are that, that, that 1.7 billion tons of CO two that we're emitting today, that might quadruple by 20 50 if something doesn't change.”
Insight
Dell: Membrane Separations Could Cut Chemical Process Energy Demand by 90%
“If we could use membranes or non-thermal processes to separate out different chemicals we could potentially cut the total energy demand of those separation processes by 80 to 90%.”
Assertion Partly supported
Replacing Chemical Feedstocks Requires Half of the Global Sustainable Biomass Supply
“Currently the chemical industry uses something like 30 exajoules of energy, of fossil energy, for feedstocks, just for feedstocks. And the International Energy Agency estimates that the total amount of biomass available for use for energy everywhere on Earth i…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Dell: A Decarbonized Chemical Industry Will Have to Charge Higher Prices
“I think that the future chemical industry is just going to have to sell its products at higher prices than they are currently.”
Insight
Dell: Plastic Prevents Organic Waste Decomposition in Landfills, Causing Methane Emissions
“What we actually do is we mix the plastic in with organic waste and put that in the landfill, and because there's all this plastic mixed in with the organic waste doesn't have any access to oxygen, and so it decomposes anaerobically and emits all of its carbon…”
Assertion Supported
Dell: Steel is the most recycled material in the world
“Steel is actually the most recycled material of all, full stop.”
Assertion Supported
Dell: Rich countries recycle about 85% of end-of-life steel
“In places where we have good statistics, which tend to be higher income countries, we usually find something like 85% of end-of-life steel Is collected and recycled. That's probably pretty close to a practical limit. We might be able to push that up to 90%, bu…”
Insight
Dell: Steel demand saturates once countries reach high-income status
“Demand for steel tends to saturate. So, you know, of all the things that I listed, like, ah, you know, buildings, infrastructure, vehicles, ah, equipment, those are things that, like, when a country moves from being low income to being middle income, They're b…”
Assertion Partly supported
Dell: Existing DRI furnaces can handle up to 70% hydrogen without changes
“The companies that make these furnaces, they all say that, like, basically you can get up to 70% hydrogen with no changes. You can just keep operating your furnace as normal with up to 70% hydrogen”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Dell: The steel industry universally believes hydrogen DRI is technically viable
“I have talked to at least dozens of people in the steel industry over the years, and I've literally never heard anybody be like, I don't think hydrogen DRI is going to work. Everybody believes it will work.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Dell: Six large-scale hydrogen DRI steel projects are under development globally
“Now maybe we can claim that there are six, kind of, Serious, large-scale hydrogen DRI projects that are underdeveloped development, underdevelopment development around the world. There's two in Sweden, two in Germany, and two in the U.S.”
Assertion Supported
Dell: Buildings use 50% to 100% more structural material than codes require
“When people do studies on these type of thing, they typically find that buildings use between 50 and a hundred percent more structural material than is required to comply with building codes, and they do that because the structural material, mainly steel and c…”
Assertion Supported
Dell: Fertilizer and Plastics Cause 80% of Chemical Sector Emissions
“Depending on exactly how you count it, fertilizer and plastic usually comes out to be like between 75 and 80% of all the GHGs from the whole sector.”
Assertion Partly supported
Dell: Global Ammonia Production Generates 1.5% of Total Greenhouse Gas Emissions
“Ammonia is the chemical, the single chemical product that we make in the largest quantity. We make almost two hundred million tons a year of ammonia globally, and it's responsible for like one and a half percent of all greenhouse gas emissions, just ammonia.”
Assertion Supported
Dell: US Upstream Methane Leakage Doubles Climate Impact of Fossil Inputs
“In the U.S., that's like two and a half percent average leakage rates. That can, over a 20 or 30 year lifetime, that can double the climate impact of your fossil fuel inputs, which is, so if we don't talk about the upstream leakage and we don't account for tha…”
Insight
Dell: 60% of Chemical Fossil Inputs Become Products, Not Atmospheric Emissions
“We're only burning about 40% of it for energy. The other 60% of it, we're actually converting into the products themselves. So plastics are carbon-based chemicals. Where do we get all those carbon atoms? We get them from the fossil fuel inputs. And so this is …”
