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Why isn't there a billion dollar reward to any person or company that comes up with a cost-effective way to capture carbon from the air and convert back to soli

Why isn't there a billion dollar reward to any person or company that comes up with a cost-effective way to capture carbon from the air and convert back to solid carbon? I'd love to understand the physics (or chemistry? maybe economy?) that prevents this from materialising.

jamesblonde 8y ago
We have a solution - reduce carbon/methane emissions. Why bet the bank on a technology that hasn't been invented yet? If you said to somebody with 100 billion dollars: capture as much carbon as you can. What would they do? I would just plant trees for that money. Sure, we need basic research on carbon sequestration, but we need fundamental breakthroughs to make it happen. Time, we don't have.
- nmeofthestate 8y ago
  >We have a solution - reduce carbon/methane emissions. Why bet the bank on a technology that hasn't been invented yet? Unfortunately we haven't invented the technology to implement your broad brush "solution" either. In fact, I'm skeptical about the claim Climate Change could have been solved generations ago, given that we still haven't developed the means to do it yet. Edit: okay, perhaps nuclear could provide us with the masses of power generation we need, but that's been ruled out.
  - majewsky 8y ago
    > In fact, I'm skeptical about the claim Climate Change could have been solved generations ago, given that we still haven't developed the means to do it yet. Path dependence. We have not developed the means to solve climate change from where we are now.
- erikrothoff 8y ago
  Why bet the bank on us humans collectively being able to reduce all our emissions? There are problems will all approaches, a quick Google search pokes some holes in why planting trees is not a good idea: https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/2639/how-many-trees-would-i-have-to-plant-to-solve-global-warming https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/2639/how-ma... So the billion dollar reward would be quite small sum in the grand scheme of things. And for example with a carbon tax, where collectors could offset emitters, it might also become a quite lucrative business.
- ForHackernews 8y ago
  > Why bet the bank on a technology that hasn't been invented yet? Because it's too late. Unless magic non-existent carbon capture technology materializes soon, we're basically fucked. https://www.vox.com/2016/10/4/13118594/2-degrees-no-more-fossil-fuels https://www.vox.com/2016/10/4/13118594/2-degrees-no-more-fos... Check out that middle graphic. If we really want to avoid 1.5 degrees, and we can’t rely on large-scale carbon sequestration, then the global community has to zero out its carbon emissions by 2026. Ten years from now. That article is two years old and, to state the obvious, global CO2 emissions are not on track to reach zero in the next eight years.
  - catawbasam 8y ago
    But the world doesn't end when we hit 1.5. We'll still be here, and we can still shape how much things change.
    - ForHackernews 8y ago
      > we can still shape how much things change. No we can't, because most of the CO2 has already been emitted: https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-four-years-left-one-point-five-carbon-budget https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-four-years-left-one-poi... Unless you invent a time machine, or as postulated by OP, some magic sequestration technology to pull CO2 out of the atmosphere and put it back in the ground, it's too late. It's like we're in a car that's driven over a cliff, and you're saying "Well, we're still here, as long as we invent a way for this car to fly in the next 15 seconds before impact, then we'll be okay"
theBobBob 8y ago
While I don't really know much about the area, one option that I hear has possible potential is forests and then convert them to biochar. Downside is that you obviously need huge quantities of land that some would want to use for farming etc.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
Comevius 8y ago
I'm not a physicist, but isn't the second law of thermodynamics puts a limit on what we can do with the excess energy, most of which are being absorbed by the oceans. Besides most of the damage is already done. EPA: It’s as if you’re sitting in your car, in your garage, with the engine running and the door closed, and you’ve slipped into unconsciousness. And that’s it. McAvoy: What if someone comes and opens the door? EPA: You’re already dead. McAvoy: What if the person got there in time? EPA: Then you’d be saved. McAvoy: OK. So now what’s the CO2 equivalent of the getting there on time? EPA: Shutting off the car 20 years ago. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CXRaTnKDXA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CXRaTnKDXA
- pier25 8y ago
  Yes, we are too late. Emissions affect the climate decades later, some 40 years later. So we're now only seeing the consequences of the emissions from the 70s-80s. We've emitted more CO2 since the 80s to today, than the previous 150 years.
  - catawbasam 8y ago
    Too late for what? Yes, there are going to be more impacts. No, it won't mean the extinction of humanity or life on Earth. There still better or worse. Choose better.
    - ForHackernews 8y ago
      If the entire world went to zero carbon emissions tomorrow, the effects would still be serious. Given that's not going to happen, the effects are likely to be catastrophic. You're right that it won't mean the extinction of life on earth or humanity, but it might turn out to be the end of advanced human civilization if the bad end of the predictions come to pass. If there's not enough arable land left to support the human population, things will get very ugly very quickly.
    - pier25 8y ago
      I doubt it will mean the extinction of humanity, but unless a couple of miracles happen it will mean the end of our current industrial civilization. If we had started working on this 40 years ago reaching zero emissions would be a realistic goal today, but even that is not enough now. Not only we need to reach zero emissions ASAP, but we also need strong negative emissions. And after that we need to figure out how to slow down the feedbacks (Arctic ice melting, methane, etc). Maybe if ALL humanity was working towards those goals we would have a chance, but it's not even a priority for the vast majority of humans.
sonium 8y ago
Physics/Chemistry: Solid carbon (e.g coal) is more energy-dense than CO2 (per molecular weight unit). This is why you can gain energy from burning coal. To go the other way round you need to add this energy back in to break the very stable double-bonds in the CO2 molecule. This energy is what makes it expensive and there is no way around (except finding a really cheap energy source, but then you probably wouldn't burn coal in the first place)
- zaarn 8y ago
  I would, however, propose that once we have CO2-neutral energy production, we use some of it to recapture CO2 if the effect would be even minimal.
  - majewsky 8y ago
    The problem is that "once we have CO2-neutral energy production" is way too late. There are several tipping points where the rising temperature sets off other processes that speed up warming even further. For example, when the Russian permafrost melts, it will release gigantic amounts of methane, a very potent greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere. Once that happens, not only do you have to capture all the CO2 you emitted, you also have to capture all that methane. Also, you'll want to recreate the kilometers-thick ice sheets in the arctic. When those are gone, the earth's albedo will drop, which means that it heats up even more quickly since less sunlight is reflected.
    - jamesblonde 8y ago
      Yes, the clathrate gun hypothesis.
    - zaarn 8y ago
      Let's also not forget the methan hydrate deposits on the coasts. Even minor temperature increase or pressure change at depth would cause them to explosively abandon their place. We have found 3km wide crates in the deep sea formed by such methane deposits going nuclear, I doubt such an event would be pleasant for nearby coastal regions.
adrianN 8y ago
There is a cost-effective way: Planting trees, cutting them down and turning the wood to charcoal. You'd need huge areas dedicated to such forests. You'd also need to "unburn" most of the coal and oil we burned so far. That's a mind-boggling amount of matter we're talking about here. But who would pay for that? If there were the political will we would long have passed a simple carbon tax that, after some adjustment period, would be tied to the price of unburning a ton of CO2.
- agumonkey 8y ago
  What about vegetal roofs ? not strong enough ? because there's a huge surface area to tap into.
  - adrianN 8y ago
    Just having the biomass is nice, but the crucial step is turning it into charcoal. Roofs also don't produce a lot of biomass per area.
    - agumonkey 8y ago
      Ok, I get it, too little. But I heard it's also good for insulation.
      - adrianN 8y ago
        Sure go for it if you have a house. It looks really nice too. It just doesn't do too much for global warming.
  - zaarn 8y ago
    The global CO2 production dwarfs what you could do with trees, I'm fairly certain even if we planted a tree on every square centimeter available, it would not be sufficient to counter our production sufficiently. What we need is to invest in technology to reduce CO2. Nuclear fusion/fission, solar, wind, electric or alternative fuel cars, redesign CO2 industry processes, etc. The petrol and coal industry would have to go entirely bankrupt. No exceptions.
cgdcraig 8y ago
Atmospheric concentrations are low so you need to harvest a lot of air. To put in context the earth has ~2E9 km^3 air, if you wanted to process every cubic meter of air in the world once in 10 years you'd have a system that could process ~6km^3/s , using air flowing at 30kph(18mph) would require ~800km^2 of collecting area.
js8 8y ago
The thing that prevents this from materialising is that it requires energy. For the most part, we get energy from.. converting solid carbon to CO2. Unfortunately, due to 2nd law of thermodynamics, this conversion always incurs a loss of energy in the form of heat. We can also get energy from other sources, such as solar radiation, but I think you get the gist - the most cost-effective way to carbon capture is not to release the carbon in the first place.
- seren 8y ago
  Whatever the solution we could find to turn CO2 into C back it would require to roughly spend as much energy as it has been already spent in the XIXth and XXth century combined burning coal or oil to go back to pre industrial level of CO2 in the atmosphere.
pjc50 8y ago
There are tons of ways of doing it, but all of them necessarily cost more energy than you extracted from the fossil fuel. So, from an energy economics point of view, first we stop extracting the so-called "unburnable" fossil fuels - end conventional and shale oil exploration and phase out their extraction. Then, with our spare renewable energy, we can start condensing fuel out of the atmosphere; there are several processes for this, including one the US Navy is pioneering for at-sea refuelling of planes on nuclear carriers.
roter 8y ago
There is the Carbon Prize which is part of the way there [0]: > A $20 Million global competition to develop breakthrough technologies that will convert CO₂ emissions from power plants and industrial facilities into valuable products like building materials, alternative fuels and other items that we use every day. Teams will be scored on how much CO₂ they convert and the net value of their products. [0]: https://carbon.xprize.org/ https://carbon.xprize.org/
hedgedoops2 8y ago
One source of such an incentive could be a cap-and-trade emissions trading scheme with strict caps [0], in which air-capturers are granted emissions rights they can sell. The EU's ETS [1] is currently the biggest carbon market, regulating about 40% of EU emissions. It does not grant rights to capturers that take CO2 out of the atmosphere - only to those that reduce the emissions at some plant or factory. Apparently this choice is partly because it's not clear how to make sure that the carbon sink is stable - that the CO2 won't get out again. [2] Lets assume you could get emissions rights for removing CO2. Would this provide the incentive we want? The current price for emissions rights is 15€ per 1000 tons of CO2 [3], so an operation to sequester all of the EU's emissions (3.4 * 10^9 t, 2014, [4]) would get a revenue of at most 50 million euro / year. Probably much less since the market would get flooded. Why is this price so low? The ETS' cap could be too low. Also, the ETS does not really cap emissions at all. Only certain industries, like power or aluminium manufacturing need to present certificates [1b], hence the 40%. Also, industries which would be 'at risk' to leave the EU if they were forced to pay, get free certificates [5] - arguably these would pay the most for rights. Overall the EU does seem to be doing something right though, since the overall emissions are going down [4]. But the ETS does not seem to internalize the carbon externality. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emissions_trading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emissions_trading [1] https://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/ets_en https://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/ets_en [1b] https://ec.europa.eu/clima/sites/clima/files/factsheet_ets_en.pdf https://ec.europa.eu/clima/sites/clima/files/factsheet_ets_e... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Emission_Trading_Scheme#Inclusion_of_sinks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Emission_Tradin... [3] https://www.theice.com/products/197/EUA-Futures/data?marketId=5115277 https://www.theice.com/products/197/EUA-Futures/data?marketI... [4] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC?locations=NL-EU https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC?location... [5] https://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/ets/allowances/leakage_en https://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/ets/allowances/leakage_e...
jimmyswimmy 8y ago
I did a back of the envelope calculation or maybe better a guesstimate on this awhile back. At perfect conversion efficiency you could turn emitted CO2 back to carbon using 15-20 average sized nuclear power plants. If you realistically get 10% overall efficiency then maybe you need 200 of them. All that assumes you can actually build chemical cells that don't need continuous replacement. It also just compensates for current emissions, and doesn't turn the clock back. My numbers could be very wrong in either direction. My takeaway was just like losing weight. It's more effective to eat less than to exercise. Here, it's bound to be better to burn less. This was an electrochemical approach however. It's possible some bio guy will figure it out using photosynthesis.
- Lavery 8y ago
  Just to address the "also just compensates for current emissions" point--the way this tends to be thought of in the research is that, if you assume a completed Step 1 of "develop perfect carbon capture technology", Step 2 is "apply that solution to power plant smokestacks and fuel those power plants by burning and replanting trees / crop waste (corn stalks etc)". So you're not carbon negative on the capture process itself, but can be on the broader system by converting to a fuel source that regenerates through carbon capturing via photosynthesis. This poses it's own problems though, one of which being the enormous amount of land you would need to dedicate to this process to have a meaningful impact.
- astrodust 8y ago
  The problem here is that uranium extraction and other elements of nuclear power production (e.g. concrete manufacturing) is itself carbon intensive process and takes a while to pay off.

jamesblonde 8y ago

We have a solution - reduce carbon/methane emissions. Why bet the bank on a technology that hasn't been invented yet? If you said to somebody with 100 billion dollars: capture as much carbon as you can. What would they do? I would just plant trees for that money. Sure, we need basic research on carbon sequestration, but we need fundamental breakthroughs to make it happen. Time, we don't have.

nmeofthestate 8y ago
>We have a solution - reduce carbon/methane emissions. Why bet the bank on a technology that hasn't been invented yet? Unfortunately we haven't invented the technology to implement your broad brush "solution" either. In fact, I'm skeptical about the claim Climate Change could have been solved generations ago, given that we still haven't developed the means to do it yet. Edit: okay, perhaps nuclear could provide us with the masses of power generation we need, but that's been ruled out.
- majewsky 8y ago
  > In fact, I'm skeptical about the claim Climate Change could have been solved generations ago, given that we still haven't developed the means to do it yet. Path dependence. We have not developed the means to solve climate change from where we are now.
erikrothoff 8y ago
Why bet the bank on us humans collectively being able to reduce all our emissions? There are problems will all approaches, a quick Google search pokes some holes in why planting trees is not a good idea: https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/2639/how-many-trees-would-i-have-to-plant-to-solve-global-warming https://earthscience.stackexchange.com/questions/2639/how-ma... So the billion dollar reward would be quite small sum in the grand scheme of things. And for example with a carbon tax, where collectors could offset emitters, it might also become a quite lucrative business.
ForHackernews 8y ago
> Why bet the bank on a technology that hasn't been invented yet? Because it's too late. Unless magic non-existent carbon capture technology materializes soon, we're basically fucked. https://www.vox.com/2016/10/4/13118594/2-degrees-no-more-fossil-fuels https://www.vox.com/2016/10/4/13118594/2-degrees-no-more-fos... Check out that middle graphic. If we really want to avoid 1.5 degrees, and we can’t rely on large-scale carbon sequestration, then the global community has to zero out its carbon emissions by 2026. Ten years from now. That article is two years old and, to state the obvious, global CO2 emissions are not on track to reach zero in the next eight years.
- catawbasam 8y ago
  But the world doesn't end when we hit 1.5. We'll still be here, and we can still shape how much things change.
  - ForHackernews 8y ago
    > we can still shape how much things change. No we can't, because most of the CO2 has already been emitted: https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-four-years-left-one-point-five-carbon-budget https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-four-years-left-one-poi... Unless you invent a time machine, or as postulated by OP, some magic sequestration technology to pull CO2 out of the atmosphere and put it back in the ground, it's too late. It's like we're in a car that's driven over a cliff, and you're saying "Well, we're still here, as long as we invent a way for this car to fly in the next 15 seconds before impact, then we'll be okay"

theBobBob 8y ago

While I don't really know much about the area, one option that I hear has possible potential is forests and then convert them to biochar. Downside is that you obviously need huge quantities of land that some would want to use for farming etc.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

Comevius 8y ago

I'm not a physicist, but isn't the second law of thermodynamics puts a limit on what we can do with the excess energy, most of which are being absorbed by the oceans. Besides most of the damage is already done. EPA: It’s as if you’re sitting in your car, in your garage, with the engine running and the door closed, and you’ve slipped into unconsciousness. And that’s it. McAvoy: What if someone comes and opens the door? EPA: You’re already dead. McAvoy: What if the person got there in time? EPA: Then you’d be saved. McAvoy: OK. So now what’s the CO2 equivalent of the getting there on time? EPA: Shutting off the car 20 years ago. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CXRaTnKDXA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CXRaTnKDXA

pier25 8y ago
Yes, we are too late. Emissions affect the climate decades later, some 40 years later. So we're now only seeing the consequences of the emissions from the 70s-80s. We've emitted more CO2 since the 80s to today, than the previous 150 years.
- catawbasam 8y ago
  Too late for what? Yes, there are going to be more impacts. No, it won't mean the extinction of humanity or life on Earth. There still better or worse. Choose better.
  - ForHackernews 8y ago
    If the entire world went to zero carbon emissions tomorrow, the effects would still be serious. Given that's not going to happen, the effects are likely to be catastrophic. You're right that it won't mean the extinction of life on earth or humanity, but it might turn out to be the end of advanced human civilization if the bad end of the predictions come to pass. If there's not enough arable land left to support the human population, things will get very ugly very quickly.
  - pier25 8y ago
    I doubt it will mean the extinction of humanity, but unless a couple of miracles happen it will mean the end of our current industrial civilization. If we had started working on this 40 years ago reaching zero emissions would be a realistic goal today, but even that is not enough now. Not only we need to reach zero emissions ASAP, but we also need strong negative emissions. And after that we need to figure out how to slow down the feedbacks (Arctic ice melting, methane, etc). Maybe if ALL humanity was working towards those goals we would have a chance, but it's not even a priority for the vast majority of humans.

sonium 8y ago

Physics/Chemistry: Solid carbon (e.g coal) is more energy-dense than CO2 (per molecular weight unit). This is why you can gain energy from burning coal. To go the other way round you need to add this energy back in to break the very stable double-bonds in the CO2 molecule. This energy is what makes it expensive and there is no way around (except finding a really cheap energy source, but then you probably wouldn't burn coal in the first place)

zaarn 8y ago
I would, however, propose that once we have CO2-neutral energy production, we use some of it to recapture CO2 if the effect would be even minimal.
- majewsky 8y ago
  The problem is that "once we have CO2-neutral energy production" is way too late. There are several tipping points where the rising temperature sets off other processes that speed up warming even further. For example, when the Russian permafrost melts, it will release gigantic amounts of methane, a very potent greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere. Once that happens, not only do you have to capture all the CO2 you emitted, you also have to capture all that methane. Also, you'll want to recreate the kilometers-thick ice sheets in the arctic. When those are gone, the earth's albedo will drop, which means that it heats up even more quickly since less sunlight is reflected.
  - jamesblonde 8y ago
    Yes, the clathrate gun hypothesis.
  - zaarn 8y ago
    Let's also not forget the methan hydrate deposits on the coasts. Even minor temperature increase or pressure change at depth would cause them to explosively abandon their place. We have found 3km wide crates in the deep sea formed by such methane deposits going nuclear, I doubt such an event would be pleasant for nearby coastal regions.

adrianN 8y ago

There is a cost-effective way: Planting trees, cutting them down and turning the wood to charcoal. You'd need huge areas dedicated to such forests. You'd also need to "unburn" most of the coal and oil we burned so far. That's a mind-boggling amount of matter we're talking about here. But who would pay for that? If there were the political will we would long have passed a simple carbon tax that, after some adjustment period, would be tied to the price of unburning a ton of CO2.

agumonkey 8y ago
What about vegetal roofs ? not strong enough ? because there's a huge surface area to tap into.
- adrianN 8y ago
  Just having the biomass is nice, but the crucial step is turning it into charcoal. Roofs also don't produce a lot of biomass per area.
  - agumonkey 8y ago
    Ok, I get it, too little. But I heard it's also good for insulation.
    - adrianN 8y ago
      Sure go for it if you have a house. It looks really nice too. It just doesn't do too much for global warming.
- zaarn 8y ago
  The global CO2 production dwarfs what you could do with trees, I'm fairly certain even if we planted a tree on every square centimeter available, it would not be sufficient to counter our production sufficiently. What we need is to invest in technology to reduce CO2. Nuclear fusion/fission, solar, wind, electric or alternative fuel cars, redesign CO2 industry processes, etc. The petrol and coal industry would have to go entirely bankrupt. No exceptions.

cgdcraig 8y ago

Atmospheric concentrations are low so you need to harvest a lot of air. To put in context the earth has ~2E9 km^3 air, if you wanted to process every cubic meter of air in the world once in 10 years you'd have a system that could process ~6km^3/s , using air flowing at 30kph(18mph) would require ~800km^2 of collecting area.

js8 8y ago

The thing that prevents this from materialising is that it requires energy. For the most part, we get energy from.. converting solid carbon to CO2. Unfortunately, due to 2nd law of thermodynamics, this conversion always incurs a loss of energy in the form of heat. We can also get energy from other sources, such as solar radiation, but I think you get the gist - the most cost-effective way to carbon capture is not to release the carbon in the first place.

seren 8y ago
Whatever the solution we could find to turn CO2 into C back it would require to roughly spend as much energy as it has been already spent in the XIXth and XXth century combined burning coal or oil to go back to pre industrial level of CO2 in the atmosphere.

pjc50 8y ago

There are tons of ways of doing it, but all of them necessarily cost more energy than you extracted from the fossil fuel. So, from an energy economics point of view, first we stop extracting the so-called "unburnable" fossil fuels - end conventional and shale oil exploration and phase out their extraction. Then, with our spare renewable energy, we can start condensing fuel out of the atmosphere; there are several processes for this, including one the US Navy is pioneering for at-sea refuelling of planes on nuclear carriers.

roter 8y ago

There is the Carbon Prize which is part of the way there [0]: > A $20 Million global competition to develop breakthrough technologies that will convert CO₂ emissions from power plants and industrial facilities into valuable products like building materials, alternative fuels and other items that we use every day. Teams will be scored on how much CO₂ they convert and the net value of their products. [0]: https://carbon.xprize.org/ https://carbon.xprize.org/

hedgedoops2 8y ago

One source of such an incentive could be a cap-and-trade emissions trading scheme with strict caps [0], in which air-capturers are granted emissions rights they can sell. The EU's ETS [1] is currently the biggest carbon market, regulating about 40% of EU emissions. It does not grant rights to capturers that take CO2 out of the atmosphere - only to those that reduce the emissions at some plant or factory. Apparently this choice is partly because it's not clear how to make sure that the carbon sink is stable - that the CO2 won't get out again. [2] Lets assume you could get emissions rights for removing CO2. Would this provide the incentive we want? The current price for emissions rights is 15€ per 1000 tons of CO2 [3], so an operation to sequester all of the EU's emissions (3.4 * 10^9 t, 2014, [4]) would get a revenue of at most 50 million euro / year. Probably much less since the market would get flooded. Why is this price so low? The ETS' cap could be too low. Also, the ETS does not really cap emissions at all. Only certain industries, like power or aluminium manufacturing need to present certificates [1b], hence the 40%. Also, industries which would be 'at risk' to leave the EU if they were forced to pay, get free certificates [5] - arguably these would pay the most for rights. Overall the EU does seem to be doing something right though, since the overall emissions are going down [4]. But the ETS does not seem to internalize the carbon externality. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emissions_trading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emissions_trading [1] https://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/ets_en https://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/ets_en [1b] https://ec.europa.eu/clima/sites/clima/files/factsheet_ets_en.pdf https://ec.europa.eu/clima/sites/clima/files/factsheet_ets_e... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Emission_Trading_Scheme#Inclusion_of_sinks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Emission_Tradin... [3] https://www.theice.com/products/197/EUA-Futures/data?marketId=5115277 https://www.theice.com/products/197/EUA-Futures/data?marketI... [4] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC?locations=NL-EU https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC?location... [5] https://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/ets/allowances/leakage_en https://ec.europa.eu/clima/policies/ets/allowances/leakage_e...

jimmyswimmy 8y ago

I did a back of the envelope calculation or maybe better a guesstimate on this awhile back. At perfect conversion efficiency you could turn emitted CO2 back to carbon using 15-20 average sized nuclear power plants. If you realistically get 10% overall efficiency then maybe you need 200 of them. All that assumes you can actually build chemical cells that don't need continuous replacement. It also just compensates for current emissions, and doesn't turn the clock back. My numbers could be very wrong in either direction. My takeaway was just like losing weight. It's more effective to eat less than to exercise. Here, it's bound to be better to burn less. This was an electrochemical approach however. It's possible some bio guy will figure it out using photosynthesis.

Lavery 8y ago
Just to address the "also just compensates for current emissions" point--the way this tends to be thought of in the research is that, if you assume a completed Step 1 of "develop perfect carbon capture technology", Step 2 is "apply that solution to power plant smokestacks and fuel those power plants by burning and replanting trees / crop waste (corn stalks etc)". So you're not carbon negative on the capture process itself, but can be on the broader system by converting to a fuel source that regenerates through carbon capturing via photosynthesis. This poses it's own problems though, one of which being the enormous amount of land you would need to dedicate to this process to have a meaningful impact.
astrodust 8y ago
The problem here is that uranium extraction and other elements of nuclear power production (e.g. concrete manufacturing) is itself carbon intensive process and takes a while to pay off.