r/science • u/Wagamaga • Feb 13 '25

Chemistry Researchers have developed a reactor that pulls carbon dioxide directly from the air and converts it into sustainable fuel, using sunlight as the power source

https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/solar-powered-device-captures-carbon-dioxide-from-air-to-make-sustainable-fuel
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u/ImSuperHelpful Feb 14 '25 edited Feb 14 '25

That’s all well and good, but absolutely negligible towards global warming. They’re piggybacking on the carbon capture fad for hype and making direct comparisons to underground storage, but in the end they aren’t actually capturing anything since it gets released right back. That’s what I’m criticizing. (And that it’s impossible to scale to a meaningful level in that same conversation)

Edit I should add that we know new sources of clean energy don’t shut down dirty sources… capacity is only added, never replaced. Consumption must always rise under capitalism (which is why a carbon neutral source of fuel doesn’t matter… we’re building wind and solar like crazy but fossil fuel consumption continues to rise)

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u/buttsparkley Feb 14 '25

Well hold on it would be recaptured, we would use less of fuels that release it , so this way we could atleast stay where we are instead of making it worse, it bides us time. Once it's being used as energy (in many forms), there will be a certain % that will be constantly in storage waiting for usage eg propane, methane or even ethanol.

We can also store the CO2 in different ways, putting it back underground in oil reserves or water alternatives, we can learn to create closed systems grabbing the c02 and trapping it into a cycle in said system.

It can be turned into solid format that can be used for construction material.

It provides us with options , there is no point sitting here and saying ,this solution isn't perfect , ditch it , oh no I don't have a better solution I just don't believe in this one. Planting more trees inst going to fix this problem , we are unfortunately more effectient at polluting at the moment. Once we no longer add but recycle , then planting trees will mean something, alot actually. It's like pressing the pause button before reversing.