Africa’s first carbon-removal plant stokes questions about responsible climate solutions
www.nbcnews.com
A joint venture between Swiss company Climeworks and Kenya-based Great Carbon Valley has been billed as a springboard for creating a new, green economy in Africa.

The article puts it up as a question about whether this practice is worthwhile since the only logical solution to climate change is to de-carbonize. Personally I think that question isn’t very nuanced, certainly de-carbonizing 100’a of tons from the atmosphere from just this one plant is a small net positive. Can’t let it be an excuse to keep rolling coal in your F750’a but I’m still in favor of sucking as much carbon out of the air as we can.

  • SpziEnglish
    3•1 year ago

    Capture is needed, but futile if we don’t stop with fossil fuels. The math does not check out. We would need to dedicate like 5% of global electricity production to run DAC plants, unrealistically assuming they run at 100% efficiency at the physically possible optimum, just to keep emissions from rising. However expensive and unpractical it might be to stop using fossil fuels, relying on DAC is probably worse.

    • InstigateEnglish
      4•1 year ago

      We need to act on all fronts simultaneously. Reduce fossil fuels, build more tried and tested renewable energy generators, invest in new and emerging renewable technologies, AND direct air capture simultaneously and we have a chance to take ourselves off the current path to destruction. Doing only one or two of these in isolation just won’t be enough.