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ThurberMingus  ·  1855 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: CO2 from air gets turned into coal by scientists

    Major oil and gas companies, like Shell, are spending billions of dollars to develop carbon sequestration plants that store CO2 in porous reservoirs within Earth. However, this approach is expensive as it requires CO2 to be compressed into liquid form and injected into rock formations within Earth. Due to cost, this approach is not economically viable without heavy subsidies and/or a carbon tax to help offset costs.

Using energy to mine coal, burning it releasing co2, using energy to convert the co2 back to coal, and using energy to bury it. Thats a loop with a giant net energy loss.

I'm not knocking the researchers for this, it's important to research stuff that isn't practical yet.

But talking about sequestration without talking about a hard stop to fossil fuel production is nonsensical. If you want to sequester one ton of carbon you get a bigger net benefit by extracting one ton less.

It's cool that we can make coal from air. I'm glad somebody is researching it.

Burning a ton of coal to make electricity to concentrate coal combustion products and electrify a catalyst to make a fraction of a ton of coal so you can bury it is so obviously stupid I'm kinda mad the article talks about sequestration without mentioning it.