Of course, if $100 per ton ever becomes a reality, then it's just 3% of world GDP and is probably affordable. But that's a pie in the sky "forward looking statement".
You could also phrase this as 'global GDP would triple from this initiative'. GDP is a silly measurement.
It doesn't matter how much money you print, someone can't be in two places at once, growing food and working in the carbon capture factory
No, you couldn’t, not in real terms.
Let’s suppose a government diverted 2x GDP to this proposal. It can’t tax 200% of output—it must print money. G goes to 2x prior-year GDP. Pretty much immediately, every other component collapses to zero (besides expectations, the government is basically seizing all base metals production and transportation and labor) amidst hyperinflation. Which makes your real G, and GDP, lower than before.
The economic and legal arguments are a joke. The only serious plan would involve 100x or even 1000x our investments in fission R&D and capacity build out (and fusion research too because fission needs to get us there).
Don’t see that happening until the situation getting dire enough and that’s going to be too late because capacity can’t come online fast enough and these are runaway global processes. It’s taken 200 years of really bad destruction and it would take much longer than that running reclamation going at an insane rate to try to undo that damage. Arguably we’re already in runaway territory - We didn’t go to 0 but it was the single largest global reduction in co2 and still one of the worst global warming events we’ve seen so far. Do not expect anything magical from net 0. At this point it’s massively negative 0. That 2c of warming is a dream at this point. I don’t know what the actual number is because the international reports are constantly getting rewritten by politicians because the scientists are just being “too alarming”. It’s a joke.
You patch the hole. Once you deal with that, then you can start bailing.
How did you calculate the cost for this number? Is that supposed to be annual operating cost?
> it will be about 1.5x-2x more than entire energy expenditure worldwide
We could use non-carbon sources to triple energy production if we really wanted to.
$53M for 1K tons of capacity vs 37B tons annual mitigation needs, assuming 20 years amortisation, and purchase price being about half of the total lifetime costs including financing, which is typical for renewable energy systems, resulting in ~$200T a year vs $165T world GDP, so yes, oops, 1.2x world GDP :) which is still kinda too costly :D
>We could use non-carbon sources to triple energy production if we really wanted to.
exactly my point.
Nothing says the company is spending all their money on this facility, and I massively doubt the second and third such facility would cost anywhere near the same amount.
Also there's no need to finance, just cap annual builds at N/20 per year.
> exactly my point.
Huh? I thought you were arguing capture needs too much power, and what I was saying was that capture does not need too much power.
If you're suggesting replacing most of our existing electrical production, I agree, but capture would still be useful.