Why is it difficult to develop a large scale and energy efficient carbon capture technology?
In: Earth Science
It is an old engineering adage, quality, cost and delivery – pick any two to optimize and the third cannot be. Scaling up means large. Large means more inputs needed (labor, land, capital, energy).
Say the idea is tree planting. Fairly energy efficient (just need labor to plant, simplistically), not very high cost (not much capital needed but lots of land) but it is SLOW (long time to deliver results).
Any technological solution that is scaled to be reasonably effective involves capturing BILLIONS of tons of carbon EVERY YEAR. This isn’t something that can be stored in a warehouse or buried in a backyard.
Think of it this way, to count to 1 billion in 1 year would require counting speed about 30 numbers a second. So a ten billion of something a year requires a rate of 300 per second – in this case 300 TONS of carbon each second. This would be the order of magnitude of the rate needed to offset our output of carbon in the carbon dioxide emitted and to make headway against the excesses of the past.
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