I know that there is ‘legacy carbon’ in the atmosphere that needs to get removed but why aren’t we leveraging carbon capture as part of industrial processes (e.g. at the factory’s smoke stack, for example). Or maybe we are already?
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There are some companies that do this. Although their ability to capture everything they pollute isn’t 100% yet.
One of the problems with our current carbon capture technology is that it’s mostly taking carbon out of the air and putting it back into the ground for more fertile crops. The carbon is pumped directly into the ground so it only works when you have polluting facilities near farmland…. which is actually a lot rarer than you’d think.
Other carbon capture products are available but are less useful. Like there’s companies developing fuel from carbon capture. But that fuel can only be used in some equipment and honestly would be best used for blending fuels…. but it’s also incredibly expensive so most companies just aren’t interested in that product.
Ultimately in most jurisdictions with a carbon tax it’s cheaper to pay the tax than it is to clean up the solution. This puts governments in a bad place because it means most carbon taxes are too low.
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