this post was submitted on 15 May 2025
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Yeah doh, been saying this for years. A highschooler can figure this out.
Every chemical reaction has losses. A typical gas car has an efficiency of only about 30-ish %, for example. Converting fuel to energy has losses and it generates CO2 (mostly)
Similarly, capturing CO2 costs energy but also has losses. Storing the CO2 takes energy, or alternatively converting it, takes energy, all with losses.
While capturing and processing CO2, you need energy that also creates CO2 . Because of the losses, you generate more CO2 than you actually capture and process.
Okay, so you switch to solar/wind/nuclear or some other semi CO2 free source. Now you take CO2 free energy away from someone that now will have to use co2 generating energy instead. That too generates more CO2 than you are capturing.
The only way that CO2 capturing will finally be useful is when all energy producers are CO2 free. Until then, you're just a drain that keeps generating more CO2 than you capture
Otherwise unusable wind and solar exist seasonally in some places, and the same goes for geothermal in Iceland where climeworks operated.
This kind of thing makes sense as a research operation, not as a commercial endeavor right now.
Research, of course, is fine but as I understand it, this is supposed to be a commercial operation
Yep. The idea has been to provide greenwashing services to major emitters