News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Q&A: Bill Gates on investments in energy technologies. Parent comment

Re:Q&A: Bill Gates on investments in energy technologies by paulsutter on Saturday July 23, 2016 @07:09PM (#12151413)
A ton of corn costs about $166, let's say that's half carbon. So each gigaton will cost about $300 billion, and thats just to buy the corn, not including the digging, etc.

You'd need to collect about 900 gigatons to return the atmosphere to preindustrial CO2 levels.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Q&A: Bill Gates on investments in energy technologies by falsestprophet on Saturday July 23, 2016 @07:47PM (#12151531)
The cost of corn stover (leaves and stalk) is $40-$80 including transportation it's about $100 per ton [1].

So, that's $90 trillion at US biomass production prices (assuming that much biomass was available) or 1.2x world annual gross world product [2].

Still $90 trillion seems like a lot.

[1] https://www.extension.purdue.edu/extmedia/EC/RE-3-W.pdf [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gross_world_product

[ Parent | on HN ]