This is not a matter of technology, this is the first law of thermodynamics. CO2 to gasoline will be a very energy intensive process and more expensive than preventing the CO2 in the first place.
It is also important to be careful about framing the intent. Carbon capture does not make continued emissions okay, but might conceivably help to minimize emissions that occur during transition.
No! It is not possible. It will always be more efficient to use the solar power directly to reduce CO2 emitters (like coal plants), because that skips the losses the CO2-emitting and CO2-capturing mechanisms will have.
Due to the enormity of the physical work involved, we don't expect to have solar/wind/nuclear/hydrogen/whatever at 100% of the energy grid for many years to come.
In the meantime, cracking open limestone to make it absorb carbon is a good idea.*
We cannot redeploy literally everyone into making solar panels and building nuclear plants, therefore there is a relative gain to be made by switching at least some people from $UNRELATED_JOB_X to carbon capture.
* Worth mentioning: carbon capture doesn't require enormous amounts of electricity or really any significant amount of energy at all AFAIK - crack rocks, when rocks full, put somewhere.
My local utility sent me a message last year: they generated more power from wind than all customers total used. All it took was building windfarms all across Iowa, and they are still building more (I assume to sell to Chicago or Minneapolis, but I don't know how the grid is connected)
Sure there are times when the wind isn't blowing. However there is a lot of time when it is blowing, and most of the world isn't even 100% wind during those time. Get busy building instead of being defeatists or pointing out the times wind doesn't blow - those times are why you keep the old power plants operational. (though battery storage should be investigated)
Just getting todays low hanging fruit: Wind powered grid, and replacing cars with EVs would make a massive difference. Then we can start talking about other uses of energy, but between electric and cars we have covered most energy uses and those are ready to be fixed today, with today's technology.
Limestone needs 2.3
Basalt 6
nothing on seaweed, unfortch
(source: https://www.economist.com/special-report/2023/11/20/carbon-d..., stick archive.is in front if you need to, I feel bad doing that directly as a customer)
That's really aggressive.
> It will always be more efficient to use the solar power directly to reduce CO2 emitters (like coal plants)
Until you run out of coal plants. Then it stops being "always".
There are uses where it's very hard to switch to batteries, to the extent that it's easier to make biofuel or synthetic fuel.
Then you continue with, as i called them, other "CO2 emitters". Like cars or concrete production.
But airplanes are an example where producing fuel seems like a pretty good option.