[dv_dt]

Of course there is, for companies with technology to reduce or reverse the carbon in our atmosphere there's a giant profit potential.

This of course balanced by the interests of those protecting their current cash flows in established carbon releasing industries.

[PeterisP]

There's no innate profit potential for this technology. If the governments decide to pay lots and lots and lots of money to sequester carbon, then there's a giant profit potential for anyone who can do it. But note the "if" - as of now, there's no indication that they're going to do so; and if/when it comes to such an emergency that they will, they might as well nationalize (or 'globalize') that tech and implement the solutions at-cost without any meaningful profit for the owners of these technologies; if push comes to shove enough so that the major powers of the world will be willing to invest a nontrivial share of their GDP in fighting climate change, honoring international intelectual property agreements will be the least of their concerns.

[dv_dt]

> There's no innate profit potential for this technology.

I don't know if that's true or not in the long term - not even first order. Wind turbines weren't innately profitable until at one point they became a low cost leader in power generation by some measures. Humanity may find a fairly low-power input catalyst that give us cheaper fuels than digging it up from miles underground, shipping it thousands more miles, refining it and shipping it hundreds of more miles. Right now, in this instant of technology, I'd agree on first order profitability.

Second order systemically it's almost certainly a profit vs needing to rebuild so much civil infrastructure for hurricane resistance, new and expanding flood plains, fire resistance, farm droughts, etc.. or incurring all sorts of other health costs for fossil fuels infrastructure. The cost of acting to curb climate change is still cheaper than letting it all go chaotic.