2 ms·
How about for the long term? My napkin math last time I did it said that if we took the current annual production of solar panels and used it to built solar fa
by tzs 2y ago
How about for the long term?
My napkin math last time I did it said that if we took the current annual production of solar panels and used it to built solar farms in the world's subtropical deserts and built carbon direct air capture (DAC) plants in those deserts powered by those solar farms (using the energy requirements per kg of capture that current DAC plants achieve), and continued doing this each year, in around 200 years we'd be removing about 10% more CO2 per year than we'd be emitting assuming that the human population peaks as expected somewhere in the 10-11 billion range and the per capita CO2 emissions do not go much higher than they are now.
Using the entire current annual production of solar panels for this is clearly impractical now, but if production of solar panels continues its current growth trends for several more years we should reach a point where diverting an amount equal to current production might be practical.