Turning CO2 from a coal plant into useful material seems like an oxymoron. The reason that we produce CO2 in the first place is that we get so much energy from

Turning CO2 from a coal plant into useful material seems like an oxymoron. The reason that we produce CO2 in the first place is that we get so much energy from turning it into CO2. Going the other way will cost about as much (probably more) energy than we got from burning the original fuel. That is not to say that bad policy can't cause such practice.