Until hydrocarbon burning is a negligible part of energy production, a kWh of solar exactly displaces the equivalent amount of CO2 production. It is for now the most cost-effective way to keep CO2 from entering the atmosphere, much more so than any extractive process could match, and getting cheaper by the day.
When we are producing much less CO2, we will need to start collecting and sequestering carbon. Turning it into fuel again, by whatever means, just cycles it back to the atmosphere when the fuel is burned.
Probably the main method of capturing existing CO2 for sequestration will be geochemical.
Energy crisis and climate change are happening now, the solution needs to be deployed at massive scale to replace hundreds of gigawats of generation capacity across the continent. This takes decades.
I is not possible to wait another 10 years to conplete research for a moracle solution, then another 10 years untill production scales up. A solution must be built with the tools that are avaliable now.
(!!!)
You are locked in the present, and existing sources of energy that are polluting yet labelled as "green". Think about the future instead!
> Photovoltaic solar is vastly cheaper than any known photochemical process.
Emphasis on KNOWN. There's lot of research going on.
> It is strongly carbon-negative.
Unless a process removes CO2 from the atmosphere, a process is not carbon negative.
You may say that it reduces the interest in other methods that generate CO2, and therefore, by extension, it's like removing CO2, but it's not the same.
> The metals involved do not make it a polluter.
https://www.cfact.org/2019/09/15/the-solar-panel-toxic-waste...
"Solar panels generate 300 times more toxic waste per unit of energy than nuclear power plants. They also contain lead, cadmium, and other toxic (even carcinogenic) chemicals that cannot be removed without breaking apart the entire panel. Worse, rainwater can wash many of these toxics out of the fragments of solar modules over time"
I think you are blind to the various negatives of solar power.
> It is possible that a direct photochemical process cheaper than photovoltaics + electrolysis will be discovered,
Exactly my point. Thanks for at least agreeing in the end.