So, given that we emit ~30 billion tonnes/year, we could do it for only 100 trillion dollars of electricity per year?
At 10 cents/KWH, that would be what, a million TWH?
For the record, the world's total electricity production is ~25,000 TWH.
Re:Scaling Carbon Capture
by thereisnospork on Wednesday November 24, 2021 @03:35AM
(#29328008)
Sounds about right. Borderline[0] nuts presently, but if electricity was 0.1cents per kWh, not much of a big deal. Which is very non trivial of course, but could conceivably be achieved with a few decades of work pushing fission or geothermal (whereas the electrical demands of CCS are fairly static, being thermodynamically limited.)
[0]borderline is probably too optimistic.
Wright's law could apply, but on the supply side. Scaling up CCS is about scaling up green power.[1] Nukes, wind, et. al. An order of magnitude more for an order of magnitude cheaper per kwh would do it. Not easy, but economics of scale are at least plausible[0].
[0]I wonder what mass produced gigawatt level (150x current) nuclear plants would amortize out at.
[1]CCS could be done today for, v. roughly not more than $2-4,000 per tonne with most of that cost being electricity.