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Eh thats 973k machines, 5k to build per country without counting the amount of electricity infrastructure needed (rounded) still too expensive

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.

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?

This particular project doesn't do that. And it's all very much in the proof of concept stage. There may still come a time when this sort of technology is our last resort. In the meantime it won't hurt to keep developing it.

"Greenwashing". Always look at the full process and the total energy cost. Marketing can sell anything, including saving the planet.

CNN is notorious for stretching the truth in pursuit of the class interest of their owners.

AFAIK, the oil companies need a large volume of gas that's free from oxygen. I wonder how energy intensive this "carbon capture" tech is compared to capturing the 78% nitrogen that makes up our atmosphere? This implementation of the technology might be worse for the environment than doing nothing.

Hey whats your background in this field?

Are you also saying it will never work no matter how many iterative improvements are made for the design, and no matter how cheap production becomes after refining the manufacturing process?

For forests to be a meaningful part of a carbon capture discussion we'd need to be intentionally cutting down and regrowing some trees (which with current technology isn't not something I'm actually suggesting). Once cut down, the tree matter would need to be stuck somewhere that wouldn't return to the carbon lifecycle. All the oil we ever burned into the atmosphere over the last century had been firmly removed from the carbon cycle for hundreds of millions of years. Essentially all living plant matter draws carbon from the atmosphere/oceans, but most of that carbon goes back to the atmosphere eventually due to all the things that eat plants, the things that eat those things, the things that eat their waste, etc. Most of the chain after plants weren't around when the organic deposits that eventually turned into oil were first laid. Heck, I'd bet none of the exact species that gorged on the carbon rich atmosphere are around now either, they've probably been outcompeted by organisms that adapted to lower carbon environments. Plants didn't even decompose initially, because nothing had evolved to do that.

Basic carbon cycle science aside, in my opinion, bringing up forests when discussing carbon capture is exactly like talking about consumer recycling. It's an easily digestible distraction away from the dozens of solutions that corporations don't want you thinking about. Wikipedia says if we covered all available land in forests we'd sequester 20 years carbon at the current rate of consumption. Bear in mind, humans are using that land for food and housing, and we're making every effort to grow the population even more.

about that.....