> Someone else pointed out that we would have to build some 30,000 of these facilities just to be able to keep up with current CO2 contributions.
Must be a miscalculation here, the articles cites 4k tons scrubbed per year for this facility, and 31bn tons emited per year (to which you would have to add 5-6bn for land use change). So that's about 10 millions such facilities we need, only for co2.
I am trying to be kind. Even if you take the 30K number, the scale is pretty close to nonsensical.
I have yet to find a single purported solution that passes what I call the "Excel Test". In other words, running something slightly above a superficial mathematical model of the solution that includes some physics and economics. In my experience the model doesn't have to be deep and complex to quickly reach the conclusion that the so-called solution isn't, in fact, a solution. The problem is that almost nobody does this. Nobody seems to care to take these delusion merchants to task and ask the hard questions. And so we keep talking about a fantasy rather than the hard and cold reality of the matter. We cannot fix a planetary scale problem. We simply can't. We need to focus on living with it.
No, you have to do the math. Do you mean to say we have excess energy availability? If so, you have to support that statement by running through the calculations.
For starters, we don't build power plants to provide two or three times the power we need. Most power plants run at somewhere around 80% utilization with a margin for peak periods.
In addition to this, if we are serious about a transition to an electric transportation infrastructure by means of electric cars, trucks, boats and planes, well, there is no way the current installed base of power plants can handle this.
Again, easy math. For example, the US has somewhere around 300 million cars and trucks. The power (not energy, power is very important) an electrified version of this fleet would require far outstrips what we have available today.
Aside from this, you have to look at the historical timeline. 62K power plants were not built in 10 years. If we are optimistic and assume a 50 year timeline, well, quite a few of the people reading this will not be alive by the time 30,000 non-trivial anything is built. And the impact from these 30,000 whatever-they-are will not be seen for a long time, more than likely thousands of years. That's on the very benign assumption that they actually do something. The more likely scenario is that they do nothing or make matters worse.
Everyone was convinced that renewable energy was the answer...until someone actually bothered to do the math and physics work to try to understand. And the conclusion? Paraphrasing:
Even if we deploy the most optimal forms of solar and wind energy (forms so efficient they are yet to be invented) at a global scale, not only will this not stop atmospheric CO2 accumulation, it will continue to rise exponentially.
This facility, which is small and really still basically a prototype, scrubs 4K tons. However future facilities that are currently in the works will scrub 1M tons. That brings you to the 30,000 facilities to meet existing demand. Google tells me that there are 62,500 power plants in existence currently, so it would seem that 30,000 capture plants is entirely feasible.
The thing is, these plants are in Iceland for a reason: they can't be anywhere like powerplants, they need to depend on a clean energy source that is also for some reason not easy to use for other means. Such constraints aren't solved that easily.
Finding the energy for 30k plants that are 250* more productive than this one (which, the article says, is the most efficient to date) is still kind of a problem.
Must be a miscalculation here, the articles cites 4k tons scrubbed per year for this facility, and 31bn tons emited per year (to which you would have to add 5-6bn for land use change). So that's about 10 millions such facilities we need, only for co2.