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Comment by jl6 | Hacker News Reader

> if we consume the fuel byproduct, presumably we just end up with co2 in the atmosphere?

The process would still be great news if true, as it could be a carbon-neutral source of hydrocarbon fuel for applications that are hard to electrify, like aviation.

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This is mainstream energy science.

Anthropogenic Chemical Carbon Cycle for a Sustainable Future [0]

How to Make Carbon-Neutral Gasoline Out of Thin Air [1]

[0] https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/ja202642y#

[1] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/05/how-to-make-carbon-n...

From what I know, it's electricity intensive to make the fuels. Now, if only we had a very scalable way to make immense amounts of electricity that didn't depend on weather in a world where the climate is now in disarray. Hmm...

You're being unnecessarily negative IMO.

The biggest challenge with renewables always cited is storage. Cabrin neutral feul like this could potentially be a good storage medium.

There's more than enough solar energy hitting the Earth's surface to supply all our power needs, the challenge is capturing, storing, and distributing this power.

After all, fossil fuels are just captured solar energy.

Right, the operative keyword in my comment being scalable. How many solar panels does it take to generate the same amount of power in a full day that nuclear does in a full day? Now, are you assuming a sunny day? What about cloudy days? What about weeks of wildfire smoke blotting out the sun? Are you including the energy it takes to create your fuel battery? How much fossil fuels do we burn in manufacturing to cover the Earth's surface in enough solar panels to meet our collective needs?

Storage isn't the only problem, and I mentioned this in my comment: weather patterns are changing in unpredicable ways. Building more weather-dependent power sources is stupid when we already have a great solution.

I just imagine the scramble to get carbon neutral allowing huge carbon-processing factories and then we enter some kind of carbon deficit, back in the same situation we are in—a teetering balance between overconsumption and moderation.

To be clear, the solution to climate change is first to stop burning fossil fuels, and then to start removing carbon from the atmosphere. This technology won’t help long term removal of carbon if we just burn the resulting fuel, but it might help displace fossils as a source for some applications that would otherwise be at the very end of the fossil ramp-down.

There still must be some input of energy. From what I understand, the Sabatier reaction is really only viable from an environmental perspective if it is powered by some other non-carbon energy, such as solar or wind.

And if you have that surplus clean energy, you should spend it powering things that would otherwise be powered with fossil fuels - not trying to offset someone else's emissions. Carbon removal only makes sense in a world where nobody is burning any fossil fuels, and we're trying to lower atmospheric carbon. Lower, not offset.

I accept the argument that offset schemes have difficult practical problems, but at least theoretically “offset” means “lower”. It just means that your application isn’t necessarily reducing carbon. And it kind of makes sense—for an airline to get carbon neutral it would require immense investment in electric flight and decades of research and then more decades of incremental rollout. Instead that money and effort could be spent helping reduce a lot more carbon elsewhere now (e.g., replacing coal power plants with equivalent solar power).

Depends on the cause of emissions. A few are not for purely energy but involved in some kind of chemical reaction. Concrete and Metal extraction are 2 examples. Having a way to offset is important in a cheap manner. Metal extraction esp is a prob as carbon reacts with several metal oxides and reduces it releasing heat. Since it generates heat and creates the final product, it prob more efficient then the alternative electrolysis route.

But yes offsetting CO2 produced due to energy is a waste.

Which would only make sense if you were trying to initiate the currently deferred glacial epoch.

Yes, to convert CO2 to CH4 you need to break the C-O bonds. This takes energy.

With this technology, assuming it can capture large amounts of carbon, couldn't some of it be converted to fuel for current use and some of it sequestered. It would certainly take longer to significantly reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, but should still do the job. Instead of introducing new CO2 into the atmosphere by burning newly extracted oil, we would be sequestering some and "recycling" some.

If, some day in the future the oil companies all start pushing hard for carbon capture, then we will know this is a real possibility.

The amount of carbon in solid form on our planet is enormous.

If we get into a deficit, we just get some rocks and convert them.

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