Some Facts And Figures
By Some numbers and more of that thermodynamics I wish everyone would learn.
1. Yes, it will require additional energy to capture carbon dioxide, whether at the source or from the atmosphere. That energy, in order to keep the carbon balance negative, would have to come from wind or solar or nuclear – sources that don’t produce more carbon dioxide than is taken up by the capture technologies. The energy balance is not the determinative factor here; fixing the atmosphere is.
2. Biomass is nice, and I love a good forest or bog, but the balance (as many commenters noted) is tricky and not well understood. Compost spread on fields will release some carbon dioxide. Forest fires undo whatever carbon capture was done by the trees and other biological mechanisms in a forest, and we can expect more forest fires with global warming. I couldn’t easily find numbers, but my sense is that forests and bogs are not going to be up to the challenge. We should do what we can with biosequestration, but it won’t be enough.
3. In case you haven’t noticed, we are seeing serious effects from global warming NOW. We need to start doing everything we can. Yes, the very best would be to downsize or electrify cars and trucks NOW, and build rapid transit everywhere. And we should start doing that. But given the politics of the last few years, it ain’t gonna happen soon. Thus carbon capture is also one of the things we should do. We have to do EVERYTHING, NOW! Arguing is fun, but removing carbon dioxide and its sources is better.
4. Even if we turned carbon dioxide to a net negative tomorrow, global warming effects will continue to get worse for a while. That is why we have to act NOW. The earth’s climate system moves slowly.
As promised, numbers and charts.
Percentage of different sources of energy used for fulfilling global energy demand.This is given in a pie chart in this article, which is under copyright to one of the giant scientific publishers, whose model for making money does not allow me to reproduce the pie chart here. The article also discusses biomass.
- Oil 34%
- Coal 28%
- Natural gas 23%
- Hydroelectricity 7%
- Nuclear energy 4%
- Renewables 4%
The EPA provides some usable pie charts
Global Emissions by Economic Sector
Global Emissions by Gas
Global Emissions by Country
Trends in Global Emissions
Amelioration Methods.This article estimates the contributions from various methods of carbon dioxide removal.
- Bioenergy with carbon capture and reliable storage 12 Gegatons of carbon dioxide/year
- Direct air capture with reliable storage 12 GT/year
- Land management 6 GT/year
- Mineral carbonization 5 GT/year
Pulling this up from the comments: Global CO2 emissions related to energy production in 2022 were around 36GT/year.