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How Much Energy Would It Take to Pull Carbon Dioxide out of the Air? (www.wired.com)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 3 months ago (15 children)

If we wanted to remove enough CO2 to get back to the preindustrial level of 280 ppm, it would take 2.39 x 10^20 joules of energy. For a reality check, that's almost as much as the world's total annual energy consumption (5.8 x 10^21 joules every year).

Isn't that over an order of magnitude difference? What am I missing? How is that "almost as much"?

[–] [email protected] 15 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Yep, it's close to 4% of the total. Not really "almost as much".

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

That's honestly pretty good, I can see world leaders coming together and just doing that. There must be other technical challenges to this other than raw power usage

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I don't know much about the technology, so I can't comment on that. But I don't really see politicians pushing for this, at least not succesfully. There are too many rightwing obstructionists in most Western governments right now...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

Other than the currently dying Tory party (and even sort of them), every single major UK political party is for green energy and against climate change to varying degrees. And I mean on a policy level, not just words.

I'm not too familiar with other governments, but Europe seems to be going well on that front too. And as much as China bad, they seem open to green policies, and the US democrats seem pretty okay on climate, especially as carbon capture helps out fossil fuel companies.

I know that's not a massive ringing endorsement, but considering the cost of 4% energy expenditure for a single year, it seems like a no brainer. If you spread it over 20 years that's 0.2% of energy, less than AI or crypto uses by far

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