5 ms·

> Can't make fertilizer or plastic out of solar energy. No, but if you're willing to spend a lot of energy you can pull CO2 out of the air and use it as a feed

> Can't make fertilizer or plastic out of solar energy. No, but if you're willing to spend a lot of energy you can pull CO2 out of the air and use it as a feedstock to make various fuels or plastics. Right now I think you'd have to burn 10 gallons of oil to make a single gallon so that's not efficient at all. But if you literally had more solar than you knew what to do with (like Germany does on occasion) you could use that energy to make liquid fuels or plastics. It's at least a decade and probably several decades off. But this is an economic problem, not a technical one.

labster 10y ago
In California and other deserts, excess solar can be directed to desalination plants. Our water and energy shortages are essentially the same issue; solving one goes a long way to solving the other.
- toomuchtodo 10y ago
  All resource problems are energy problems. With enough clean energy, you can make fuel, water, fertilizer, anything. We're going to need a lot of surplus energy to sequester all of the CO2 we've pumped into the atmosphere over the last 100+ years.
  - Neeek 10y ago
    The weird part about sequestering is that if it's really going to work, people will need incentive to simply put all that energy in to the ground with no immediate benefit for them. You either need heavy government regulation or for everyone involved to be thinking about the larger picture. I wonder if anti aging technology would push people to start seeing climate problems in its larger context.
    - toomuchtodo 10y ago
      Carbon tax funds sequestering operations. Something like this: https://www.terrapass.com/climate-change/carbon-offsets-explained https://www.terrapass.com/climate-change/carbon-offsets-expl...
    - philipkglass 10y ago
      Carbon sequestration doesn't necessarily mean driving combustion in reverse to get oxygen and hydrocarbons again. Accelerated silicate weathering could remove a lot more atmospheric CO2 per unit of energy invested and it generates carbonate minerals rather than fuel that people would be tempted to burn again. Like this, "Enhanced weathering strategies for stabilizing climate and averting ocean acidification": http://www.southampton.ac.uk/assets/imported/transforms/content-block/UsefulDownloads_Download/2639B3403ED947729B86FA1B2275AFD9/article%20Taylor%20et%20al%20(2015).pdf http://www.southampton.ac.uk/assets/imported/transforms/cont...
      - Neeek 10y ago
        That's pretty cool! Non fuel forms of sequestered carbon hadn't occurred to me, though you would still need to fund the process. Using a carbon tax to fund it as a government function seem likes the obvious solution if it were to be implemented at scale.
  - AnthonyMouse 10y ago
    > We're going to need a lot of surplus energy to sequester all of the CO2 we've pumped into the atmosphere over the last 100+ years. There is no point at which sequestering CO2 by use of electricity is going to make sense. Until the day that we burn zero CO2 whatsoever, you're better off using the electricity as electricity and thereby burning less carbon than burning it and then trying to get it back. And even at that point, we already have a thing that converts sunlight and CO2 into solid form. Plants. In theory what you could probably do is cultivate algae in the ocean and then scoop it up in a net, bury it in the ground and repeat. But the scale needed to make a dent is harrowing.
    - toomuchtodo 10y ago
      > There is no point at which sequestering CO2 by use of electricity is going to make sense. > Until the day that we burn zero CO2 whatsoever That day will come. And we'll then be at the point where its time to use cheap renewables to pull CO2 back out of the air and store it in a stable state where it can't be burned again.
      - codecamper 10y ago
        oh yeah. probably.... not problem with computer types is we think that high tech will rule and fix all. and that mind boggling high tech is around the corner always. Then we are surprised when a Neanderthal wins the Presidency who says he WILL burn more coal. doesn't even matter if it's not economic. Maybe instead we should become more aggressive. Turn off Trump's twitter. Turn off gmail & facebook in red states.
      - infinite8s 10y ago
        My bet is some sort of synthetic bio-augmented photosynthesis process (if you think about it - that's exactly what plants do - sequester carbon dioxide in carbohydrates). If we are super lucky that process will also generate edible byproducts.
    - ageofwant 10y ago
      > There is no point at which sequestering CO2 by use of electricity is going to make sense. Of course there will be. Even burning a small fraction of the Thorium lying in spill heaps today will achieve that. In February 2019, when Tsinghua Uni demos the worlds first commercially viable fusion reactor, everything will change. We will: - convert cubic kilometres of seawater into potable water per day and irrigate the Sahara and the Outback. - convert atmospheric C02 to carbohydrate fuels (while there are still need for them) - extract cubic killometers of C out of the atmosphere and oceans for construction material. - Drop the excess blocks of diamond into the mariana trench, those that we don't use for road base. - etc People really do not appreciate what superabundance of energy would mean for man and our current planet. It will literally be the demarcation point between the age of want, and the ages of plenty.
th-ai 10y ago
https://www.newlight.com/company https://www.newlight.com/company claims to produce plastic from CO2 for less cost than from oil https://youtu.be/GlPyDLGKYSQ?t=1m15s https://youtu.be/GlPyDLGKYSQ?t=1m15s
- throwaway5752 10y ago
  "After 10 years of research and development, Newlight has commercialized a carbon capture technology that combines air with methane-based greenhouse gas emissions to produce a plastic material" Rather than using natural gas as a plastics feedstock, they are using methane from organic sources (livestock bioproducts, landfills, other agricultural waste). They are using "greenhouse gases" but not CO2.

labster 10y ago

In California and other deserts, excess solar can be directed to desalination plants. Our water and energy shortages are essentially the same issue; solving one goes a long way to solving the other.

toomuchtodo 10y ago
All resource problems are energy problems. With enough clean energy, you can make fuel, water, fertilizer, anything. We're going to need a lot of surplus energy to sequester all of the CO2 we've pumped into the atmosphere over the last 100+ years.
- Neeek 10y ago
  The weird part about sequestering is that if it's really going to work, people will need incentive to simply put all that energy in to the ground with no immediate benefit for them. You either need heavy government regulation or for everyone involved to be thinking about the larger picture. I wonder if anti aging technology would push people to start seeing climate problems in its larger context.
  - toomuchtodo 10y ago
    Carbon tax funds sequestering operations. Something like this: https://www.terrapass.com/climate-change/carbon-offsets-explained https://www.terrapass.com/climate-change/carbon-offsets-expl...
  - philipkglass 10y ago
    Carbon sequestration doesn't necessarily mean driving combustion in reverse to get oxygen and hydrocarbons again. Accelerated silicate weathering could remove a lot more atmospheric CO2 per unit of energy invested and it generates carbonate minerals rather than fuel that people would be tempted to burn again. Like this, "Enhanced weathering strategies for stabilizing climate and averting ocean acidification": http://www.southampton.ac.uk/assets/imported/transforms/content-block/UsefulDownloads_Download/2639B3403ED947729B86FA1B2275AFD9/article%20Taylor%20et%20al%20(2015).pdf http://www.southampton.ac.uk/assets/imported/transforms/cont...
    - Neeek 10y ago
      That's pretty cool! Non fuel forms of sequestered carbon hadn't occurred to me, though you would still need to fund the process. Using a carbon tax to fund it as a government function seem likes the obvious solution if it were to be implemented at scale.
- AnthonyMouse 10y ago
  > We're going to need a lot of surplus energy to sequester all of the CO2 we've pumped into the atmosphere over the last 100+ years. There is no point at which sequestering CO2 by use of electricity is going to make sense. Until the day that we burn zero CO2 whatsoever, you're better off using the electricity as electricity and thereby burning less carbon than burning it and then trying to get it back. And even at that point, we already have a thing that converts sunlight and CO2 into solid form. Plants. In theory what you could probably do is cultivate algae in the ocean and then scoop it up in a net, bury it in the ground and repeat. But the scale needed to make a dent is harrowing.
  - toomuchtodo 10y ago
    > There is no point at which sequestering CO2 by use of electricity is going to make sense. > Until the day that we burn zero CO2 whatsoever That day will come. And we'll then be at the point where its time to use cheap renewables to pull CO2 back out of the air and store it in a stable state where it can't be burned again.
    - codecamper 10y ago
      oh yeah. probably.... not problem with computer types is we think that high tech will rule and fix all. and that mind boggling high tech is around the corner always. Then we are surprised when a Neanderthal wins the Presidency who says he WILL burn more coal. doesn't even matter if it's not economic. Maybe instead we should become more aggressive. Turn off Trump's twitter. Turn off gmail & facebook in red states.
    - infinite8s 10y ago
      My bet is some sort of synthetic bio-augmented photosynthesis process (if you think about it - that's exactly what plants do - sequester carbon dioxide in carbohydrates). If we are super lucky that process will also generate edible byproducts.
  - ageofwant 10y ago
    > There is no point at which sequestering CO2 by use of electricity is going to make sense. Of course there will be. Even burning a small fraction of the Thorium lying in spill heaps today will achieve that. In February 2019, when Tsinghua Uni demos the worlds first commercially viable fusion reactor, everything will change. We will: - convert cubic kilometres of seawater into potable water per day and irrigate the Sahara and the Outback. - convert atmospheric C02 to carbohydrate fuels (while there are still need for them) - extract cubic killometers of C out of the atmosphere and oceans for construction material. - Drop the excess blocks of diamond into the mariana trench, those that we don't use for road base. - etc People really do not appreciate what superabundance of energy would mean for man and our current planet. It will literally be the demarcation point between the age of want, and the ages of plenty.

th-ai 10y ago

https://www.newlight.com/company https://www.newlight.com/company claims to produce plastic from CO2 for less cost than from oil https://youtu.be/GlPyDLGKYSQ?t=1m15s https://youtu.be/GlPyDLGKYSQ?t=1m15s

throwaway5752 10y ago
"After 10 years of research and development, Newlight has commercialized a carbon capture technology that combines air with methane-based greenhouse gas emissions to produce a plastic material" Rather than using natural gas as a plastics feedstock, they are using methane from organic sources (livestock bioproducts, landfills, other agricultural waste). They are using "greenhouse gases" but not CO2.