We have two levers for reversing climate change: the first is reducing emissions, and the second is remove carbon from the atmosphere. Most of the pathways in the most recent UN climate report incorporate some amount of carbon removal to maintain global temperature rise below 1.5°C [1].
Humans have been hard at work for a while on our first lever, and we need many shots on goal with the second lever to give ourselves a chance at success.
Agreed, and best of luck with your efforts!
Which is why the primary way to deal with the CO2 problem isn't capture, but by reducing the amount emitted in the first place, via renewables + storage, more and better mass transit, EVs replacing ICEVs, heat pumps replacing furnaces, etc.
Compared to the CO2 reduction potential o
The CO2 footprint per capita in the United States is 15 metric tons [1], so at 300M population, that's 4.5e9 metric tons of CO2 per year.
At 1 metric ton CO2 removed per day per tower, we would need 4.5e9/365 = 12.3M such cooling towers. Even if the efficiency increased 2 orders of magnitude it is still not enough, and I doubt there is a need for even 123,000 cooling towers.
None of this is to say that it shouldn't be pursued as a business opportunity to sell CO2 to commercial customers.
But realistically, given the scale of the CO2 problem, we still need to dramatically reduce the amount of CO2 we are emitting per capita as a primary measure, with any carbon capture as secondary.
1. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC?location...