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Comment by sanderjd | Hacker News Reader

I think the idea seems to be that this uses algae, which "eats" the carbon.

Assuming that's right, then like any other plant-based carbon absorption method, it matters what happens later, whether the carbon is released back into the atmosphere in some form during decomposition, or if it's buried, or whatever else.

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That sounds like a byproduct to me.

The question is what's the circle? for all the "ZOMG You're just burning it back into the sky!" worries - which are legitimate in a sense... this seems like a usable circle where CO2 gets pulled from the air and turned into Carbon, Oxygen and Electricity... then the carbon that's now algea can be turned into more electricity via burning which puts CO2 back into the air sure but now you have a cycle.

The issue with gas/oil/petrol is that the "cycle" is pull from ground and pump into air without a way to pull it back from the air.

So yes, this puts CO2 back into the air... after pulling it out of the air. So how is it not a step forward?

I'd call such a cycle carbon neutral but not carbon negative. Things that are neutral are good, but we also need to figure out how to scale up some things that are truly negative.

Carbon Neutral is the term I was looking for so thank you for that.

Don't give up good in the pursuit of perfect.

If we get a few of these types of solutions - IE Growing algea to pull it from the air and burning it to get electricity and "putting it back"? If scaled? that can be the path forward - especially if we're getting electricity on both sides of the fence.

I'm just pretty allergic to the word "the" in discussions of this, in general. This seems like it could be a useful technology, but no one thing is the path forward.

The path forward is to invent and scale and tweak and improve lots of different things.

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