Post #4276565

2026-07-31 09:28 UTC

I had a chat/debate with a guy about this, and the info is: - it costs 2.4 kWh per kg of CO2. - there are 18 of these in the world, and the largest can sequester 8,000 tonnes pa. - to operate at scale, it needs to be able to process billions of tonnes. So, it would have to scale to 12,760,000% - for 1 Bn tonnes of CO2 the energy cost would be the same as for the whole energy usage of all of the EU combined. On the other hand, simply planting trees won't fix this. Too little, too late. The only realistic scenarios are to - immediately halve our energy consumption. - insulate so we don't need as much energy. - produce as much energy as we can ourselves (solar, etc.) - Then to use as many renewable as possible to the supply of the remainder.

Replies (4)

@MarkHoltom@mastodonapp.uk 2026-07-31 09:35

There is research on Carbon Capture Systems here https://web.stanford.edu/.../Articles/I/NatGasVsWWS&coal.pdf The results in Table 3.4 suggest that carbon capture does not come close to eliminating CO2e emissions from coal or gas power plants. Data from real world projects (Section 3.2.3) indicate even less reduction in CO2e emissions due to carbon capture than Table 3.4 suggests

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@forthy42@mastodon.net2o.de 2026-07-31 12:47

@MarkHoltom@mastodonapp.uk And it costs more energy to capture it than you usually get work out of fossil fuel.

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@csolisr@hub.azkware.net 2026-07-31 13:18

If our current worldwide hyper-connected economy could survive falling back to literal sailboats, it could have been way easier to halve energy consumption...

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@david_chisnall@infosec.exchange 2026-07-31 19:00

@MarkHoltom@mastodonapp.uk That 2.4 kWh / kg of CO2 seems fairly comparable to the emissions number for a fossil fuel plant, so simply using the energy to displace fossil fuels would have about the same impact. It’s almost certainly going to be important in the future, but generally the advice if you’re in a sinking boat is to plug the hole and then start bailing.

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