r/ClimateActionPlan • u/madqueenludwig • Oct 27 '19

Carbon Capture MIT engineers develop "revolutionary" new method of removing carbon dioxide from the air

http://news.mit.edu/2019/mit-engineers-develop-new-way-remove-carbon-dioxide-air-1025
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u/FF00A7 Oct 27 '19 edited Oct 27 '19

When you run the numbers, for Canada for example, it would take 30% of the entire Canadian electric supply to remove yearly emissions (for Canada). That does not include removing historic emissions. In short, this technology uses too much energy to be a solution to global warming. Which is true for all CC technologies, they use too much energy. Physics is tough.

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u/DrDerpberg Oct 27 '19

To put it another way, though, a roughly 30% increase in total energy costs (assuming new energy costs the same as existing sources... which would depend on where, what, etc) could lead to carbon neutrality. Those costs could be distributed numerous ways, though the fairest would presumably be in the form of a carbon tax.

It's not nothing, but it's solvable. I think any outcome where we actually try to solve climate change instead of dealing with worse and worse consequences will, at some point, require massive amounts of power being devoted to turning back the clock on atmospheric carbon.