They talk about other plants doing over a hundred times as much, too.

You need to build small before you can build big.

Also need to build factories for these like they planned for SMR reactors. Mass produce and ship them out for installation.

The dream would be to build them out of the material that they absorb.

As another yardstick, it will cost about 2x the annual world GDP to mitigate all emissions this way. With normal amortisation rates and operating costs, it will be about 1.5x-2x more than entire energy expenditure worldwide. I wonder if this is simply a scheme to siphon public money. What a good catch for Fox News!

Of course, if $100 per ton ever becomes a reality, then it's just 3% of world GDP and is probably affordable. But that's a pie in the sky "forward looking statement".

If we have additional costs in the economy that just means GDP increases by that amount.

You could also phrase this as 'global GDP would triple from this initiative'. GDP is a silly measurement.

It's the CO2 equivalent of the two economists eat shit joke.

> You could also phrase this as 'global GDP would triple from this initiative'

No, you couldn’t, not in real terms.

Let’s suppose a government diverted 2x GDP to this proposal. It can’t tax 200% of output—it must print money. G goes to 2x prior-year GDP. Pretty much immediately, every other component collapses to zero (besides expectations, the government is basically seizing all base metals production and transportation and labor) amidst hyperinflation. Which makes your real G, and GDP, lower than before.

Alternatively, everybody might starve to death because there are real physical bottlenecks on GDP.

It doesn't matter how much money you print, someone can't be in two places at once, growing food and working in the carbon capture factory

People on this technology forum seem skeptical that technology can improve or get cheaper.

I think they just understand that this is very unlikely to work even with best case estimates from people with a direct financial interest in this working

It’s part of the IEA’s net zero by 2050 plan. An understanding of basic physics is all that is required to see that DAC must be in the mix to achieve net zero emissions globally.

Where is all this energy going to come from? Cause fission is the only thing I’m aware of that we know that can generate enough new electricity capacity to do reclamation. Fusion is too far out and solar/wind can’t handle enough of the grid to have enough left over to also be doing reclamation.

The economic and legal arguments are a joke. The only serious plan would involve 100x or even 1000x our investments in fission R&D and capacity build out (and fusion research too because fission needs to get us there).

Don’t see that happening until the situation getting dire enough and that’s going to be too late because capacity can’t come online fast enough and these are runaway global processes. It’s taken 200 years of really bad destruction and it would take much longer than that running reclamation going at an insane rate to try to undo that damage. Arguably we’re already in runaway territory - We didn’t go to 0 but it was the single largest global reduction in co2 and still one of the worst global warming events we’ve seen so far. Do not expect anything magical from net 0. At this point it’s massively negative 0. That 2c of warming is a dream at this point. I don’t know what the actual number is because the international reports are constantly getting rewritten by politicians because the scientists are just being “too alarming”. It’s a joke.

People on this technology forum are skeptical that an incredibly inefficient technology used to recover carbon from air is a better investment than using technology to emit less carbon in the first place.

Those seem like different goals. Don’t we need both?

Yes. Defense in depth is somehow only applied to computer security around these parts.

This isn't defense in depth, this is deciding what color you want the background of you 'about our security team' webpage, while your system is actively getting compromised.

When there's a giant hole in the bottom of your boat, you don't dispatch your limited resources to start bailing water out with a tablespoon.

You patch the hole. Once you deal with that, then you can start bailing.

It's a defining feature of this place, no optimism is allowed. If it isn't perfect from the start, it can never be good enough.

The first solar panels were completely useless, therefore, it makes no sense that solar panels today are much better. QED

> As another yardstick, it will cost about 2x the annual world GDP to mitigate all emissions this way.

How did you calculate the cost for this number? Is that supposed to be annual operating cost?

> it will be about 1.5x-2x more than entire energy expenditure worldwide

We could use non-carbon sources to triple energy production if we really wanted to.

>How did you calculate the cost for this number?

$53M for 1K tons of capacity vs 37B tons annual mitigation needs, assuming 20 years amortisation, and purchase price being about half of the total lifetime costs including financing, which is typical for renewable energy systems, resulting in ~$200T a year vs $165T world GDP, so yes, oops, 1.2x world GDP :) which is still kinda too costly :D

>We could use non-carbon sources to triple energy production if we really wanted to.

exactly my point.

> $53M for 1K tons of capacity

Nothing says the company is spending all their money on this facility, and I massively doubt the second and third such facility would cost anywhere near the same amount.

Also there's no need to finance, just cap annual builds at N/20 per year.

> exactly my point.

Huh? I thought you were arguing capture needs too much power, and what I was saying was that capture does not need too much power.

If you're suggesting replacing most of our existing electrical production, I agree, but capture would still be useful.

I suggest that capture is a bullshit idea and this company is a bullshit company. We don't need capture, we need carbon-free renewable electricity and stuff powered by that electricity and batteries to store it. That's all solved, scaled, and economics is there. Everything else is just a detestable way to siphon public money.

And how much co2 is emitted while building these structures vs planting trees?