Why can’t we just sequester CO2 into plants we eat or forests?

1.36K viewsBiologyOther

I saw a youtube video about how Japan burns materials that can’t easily be recycled to produce energy and captures the CO2 produced from the process. The CO2 is then sold to some local factories to produce various things like fire extinguishers, and some algae farms (I googled this and algae is used to produce food and oil).

I googled that at sea level, CO2 in the atmosphere is at 350 PPM, but certain plants thrive at 1500 PPM.

It got me thinking – why can’t we pump CO2 into indoor farms, plantations or forests to sequester more carbon?

Would that even work? Is the carbon just released into the air again once the plants are eaten or broken down?

In: Biology

23 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Interesting fact: The Biosphere 2 experiment was created as a prototype mars colony and remains the largest fully sealed lab space ever created. The team was sealed inside for a year and early on their CO2 levels began skyrocketing (unknown at the time, there were still chemical processes releasing CO2 from the fresh cement still curing).

One of the ways they tried to offset this was by doing exactly what your suggest- growing fast growing plants, cutting them, then just setting them side.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosphere_2

You are viewing 1 out of 23 answers, click here to view all answers.