Climeworks’ newest DAC plant, Mammoth, is purported to capture ten times the amount of CO2 as Orca; some 36,000 tonnes of CO2 per year. (…) If 36,000 tonnes sounds like a big number, it’s not: It equates to one one-millionth of our annual global emissions. Even if Climeworks and other DAC companies do build hundreds of these DAC plants, it would not equate to even one per cent of current annual global emissions.
It’s a small project. Hopefully they make money, then they can build a larger project, all while learning about the processes and engineering involved.
Then later if (when ☹️) we need to scale it we might be able to much easier.
Discarding projects like this is like dismissing solar energy 20 years ago because what impact does that small solar project have?
It would be great if these approaches would actually contribute in a meaningful way. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be the case.
This is an article with some relevant info:
Climeworks’ “Mammoth” vacuum cleaner is not a solution to the climate crisis
From our world in data on CO2 emissions:
It’s a small project. Hopefully they make money, then they can build a larger project, all while learning about the processes and engineering involved.
Then later if (when ☹️) we need to scale it we might be able to much easier.
Discarding projects like this is like dismissing solar energy 20 years ago because what impact does that small solar project have?
For comparison, a hectar of trees remove about 10 tons CO2 per year.
A hectar is 100m to 100m.
10 tons is ~22000 lbs
100m is ~330 feet
So a forest of 35 hectar would replace that machine. That’s a very small forest that you can cross in 30 minutes by foot.
Trees don’t grow where this machine is placed, though.
Eh thats 973k machines, 5k to build per country without counting the amount of electricity infrastructure needed (rounded) still too expensive