A joint venture between Swiss company Climeworks and Kenya-based Great Carbon Valley has been billed as a springboard for creating a new, green economy in Africa.
I think it’s clear we need to remove carbon from the atmosphere in addition to moving away from carbon-producing energy sources entirely. It’s also obvious that these systems will only have net-negative carbon impacts if they’re powered by renewables. At this point it’s much more carbon-removing and cost-effective to transition to renewables than for energy companies to “offset emissions” by buying “carbon credits” in the form of running these technologies while still producing CO2 etc. At the same time, many countries in Africa have ample renewable resources and would benefit from investment in electrical infrastructure, and if there’s incentive to choose renewable instead of fossil fuel to develop Africa and bring up the quality of life of the people living there while industrializing, I think that’s ok, and might lead to fewer emissions overall (assuming African countries’ industrialization follows the trend of other developing nations).
This comment is well reasoned. Carbon capture is worth continued development and research, it should be a long-term goal once we have moved to 100% renewable sources of energy, until that point it’s just wasteful to spend money on this where it would better be spent on provisioning more renewables or infrastructure as you very rightly point out.
I think it’s clear we need to remove carbon from the atmosphere in addition to moving away from carbon-producing energy sources entirely. It’s also obvious that these systems will only have net-negative carbon impacts if they’re powered by renewables. At this point it’s much more carbon-removing and cost-effective to transition to renewables than for energy companies to “offset emissions” by buying “carbon credits” in the form of running these technologies while still producing CO2 etc. At the same time, many countries in Africa have ample renewable resources and would benefit from investment in electrical infrastructure, and if there’s incentive to choose renewable instead of fossil fuel to develop Africa and bring up the quality of life of the people living there while industrializing, I think that’s ok, and might lead to fewer emissions overall (assuming African countries’ industrialization follows the trend of other developing nations).
This comment is well reasoned. Carbon capture is worth continued development and research, it should be a long-term goal once we have moved to 100% renewable sources of energy, until that point it’s just wasteful to spend money on this where it would better be spent on provisioning more renewables or infrastructure as you very rightly point out.