News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Carbon dioxide extraction company Carbon Engineering receives $68M investment.

Re:Carbon dioxide extraction company Carbon Engineering rece... by HocusLocus on Friday April 05, 2019 @03:29AM (#19580494)
They must really hate plant life. So where is all the energy to run this process (and refine and process the magic chemicals) going to come from? Oh yea, it's going to be clean energy like wind power, taken from that giant surplus when wind scales up to power all homes and factories and municipal treatment plants. So much left over. Many happy energy.

Meanwhile, in the making not using energy department, Kirk Sorensen gets a paltry ~3 million from DOE that isn't even to be put towards development of Weinberg's MSRE concept.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lG1YjDdI_c8&t=44m40s

I fear for the human race.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Carbon dioxide extraction company Carbon Engineering rece... by abainbridge on Friday April 05, 2019 @04:26AM (#19580750)
They could put their plants next to wind farms that have over-capacity of what the local grid infrastructure can handle - ie on a windy day they make more electric than the grid can take. The air capture would only run on windy days. That might be a reasonable way to make jet fuel.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Carbon dioxide extraction company Carbon Engineering rece... by Brakenshire on Friday April 05, 2019 @07:22AM (#19581467)
Yes, renewable energy is becoming very cheap per unit but intermittent, likely one of the ways we will tackle that is overbuilding supply, I think it’s likely we will have a class of industries popping up that can use cheap electricity available intermittently.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Carbon dioxide extraction company Carbon Engineering rece... by JetSpiegel on Friday April 05, 2019 @02:15PM (#19585457)
Mining bitcoins on AWS spot instances.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Carbon dioxide extraction company Carbon Engineering rece... by behindmyscreen on Friday April 05, 2019 @06:05AM (#19581133)
Nuclear energy
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Carbon dioxide extraction company Carbon Engineering rece... by HocusLocus on Friday April 05, 2019 @11:39AM (#19583600)
Shh! Can't mention it when wind is being discussed.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Carbon dioxide extraction company Carbon Engineering rece... by mizchief2 on Friday April 05, 2019 @11:11AM (#19583316)
Maybe the numbers don't work out but using excess energy created by wind solar etc. to offset the carbon produced by coal burning when we need power but the wind isn't blowing or the sun isn't shining could be a promising idea.

Could be a cheaper alternative to massive battery storage if the desired effect is to always have energy in a way that produces the lowest amount of CO2

[ Parent | on HN ]