That's what most carbon capture tech seeks to do, this would be direct carbon capture from the air. You are completely correct in assuming this is highly ineffi

That's what most carbon capture tech seeks to do, this would be direct carbon capture from the air. You are completely correct in assuming this is highly inefficient. As long as we are still blasting new CO2 into the atmosphere, it will always be easier to capture it at the source. Direct air capture only becomes significant when we get access to enough clean energy to power the absurdly inefficient technology. Thermodynamically, even if you are capturing at max efficiency, it still sucks (something like 250kwh+ minimum to extract 1ton of CO2, not even close to reality). We need either abundant renewables or fusion/fission energy to make it viable.