But there are CO₂-rich exhausts in chemical plants and power plants, with concentrations well above 50%. This is where the capture could work efficiently. These likely produce a sizable portion of the carbon dioxide surplus.
Capturing carbon from a jet engine will remain problematic, or slow. Maybe we should just grow more trees, extract solid carbon from them (by burning or otherwise), and bury it in old coal mines.
Even more efficient than carbon capture from power plant exhaust?
not pulling the carbon out of the ground and burning it to begin with
It makes zero sense economically to expend a huge amount of energy to pull the carbon out of power plant exhaust and do something with it, when we can generate the energy without releasing the co2 in the first place.
> It makes zero sense economically to expend a huge amount of energy to pull the carbon out of power plant exhaust and do something with it, when we can generate the energy without releasing the co2 in the first place.
It kind of makes sense, if energy is cheap enough. If we have surplus energy, we can remove enough CO2 from the atmosphere to stop or even revert climate change. If we can desalinate water with that surplus energy, we can even use that extracted carbon to increase the amount of biomass on the surface.
Both climate change and fresh water supply are solvable with abundant cheap energy.
You have to do something to the existing power plants, before you build out enough solar, wind, batteries, and nuclear. It capture is cheaper then rebuilding the plant, it may make sense to run it until the end of its planned service life.
Certain things produce CO₂ as a part of non-power-generating chemical processes, like steelmaking, or producing cement for concrete. If the CO₂ can be captured economically, it would be a great win; there are few known remotely viable alternatives.
You're forgetting all the lifecycle emissions and the whole 'if capture is cheaper' part given that running a coal plant without CCS is more expensive than replacing it with new solar panels in many areas already.
Capturing carbon from a jet engine will remain problematic, or slow. Maybe we should just grow more trees, extract solid carbon from them (by burning or otherwise), and bury it in old coal mines.