If you had $1B for carbon negative tech, where would you invest it?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biochar
Sell the biochar to homeowners:
http://www.ultrakulture.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/4-Ter...
I have no idea about the economics, though, maybe it's just not feasible without subsidies.
Edit: Why? Because the technique is simple, biomass is relatively cheap, you get electricity and heat you can sell in a cold climate, and that terra preta example makes me envious, as someone interested in gardening. If the char was cheap enough, I would want to buy lots of it myself. Helping the planet and helping my own plants.
I think you need a large scale plant to keep costs down. There are large scale biomass power plants where I live, but they specialize in burning everything, so some investment is needed.
Using biochar in your garden, on your lawn etc. is a great way to sequester some carbon at a small scale.
Biochar as a soil amendment is not a reliable means to increase yields. Depending on the produce and the soil, it decreases yields. Sometimes, it seem to have no effect, at all. So far, the most reliable results have been observed in tropical areas. People there don't have the money to invest in farm land, yet.
Refining syn-oil is hard, because its quality is low -- comparable to bunker oil. Tar is one of the few products that can be made out of it, successfully.
Therefore, burying both seem to be the best option. After all, there should be quite a few depleted oil fields and coal mines in the world, so space is not a problem.
Renewable energy and electric transport.
Trying to pull carbon out of the atmosphere is like trying to pull salt out of water. It is far easier and less costly to avoid putting the salt there in the first place.
I'm not saying we shouldn't be invested in carbon extraction, but so long as we have large carbon emissions then the most efficient place for money to go is towards eliminating those. Cleanup should be secondary.
Sure, for most of the carbon we emit, it's easier to stop emitting it. But not all. We won't reach neutrality by cutting emissions alone.
Besides, we will need to take carbon out of the air to fix the climate after we stop breaking it.
What I'm saying is that there is a lot of low hanging fruit to pluck. A 1 billion dollar solar plant could generate revenue to fund research while cutting emissions. A 1 billion dollar solar plant wouldn't eliminate all carbon output, not by a long shot.
It's a real action that could be done in less than a few years.
Until we get to a point where more solar doesn't decrease carbon output, more solar is the way to go.
The same way, we can't wait for the generation problem to be solved before we start exploring the solutions for capture. We have to do everything all the time; just not with the same intensity.
But most of the time, people separate them to get the salt, not the water.
Are you going to make planters again? I hope so! Even if you aren't, I'm curious what the price was for them.
I was just showing off the planter at a party in SF yesterday, it's such an icon.
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they can grow nanotubes with simple electrolysis, and the only inputs are electricity and co2. They've got a version that works in a gas plant's exhaust, and a version that's completely solar. It's still early - like, hand-assembled by grad students early - but I cannot imagine that this is not going to be revolutionary
(sorry for multireplies but this concept is just so exciting to me)
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