[ascar]

>I also think this innovation has a larger impact if it were used to bring existing generators of emissions closer to being carbon neutral. It also reduces the burden of being cost efficient on Day 1 since the carbon intensity of large emission generators is already a cost they'd be glad to mitigate or get rid of

I can't follow this argument. What exactly are you proposing? His process still has a ~50% efficiency-loss, so even using all energy generated from fossil generators would only mitigate a maximum of 50% emissions (even ignoring all other efficiency losses here). And that obviously would be stupid. That energy is generated for a purpose.

The whole point of his process is to use solar/renewable/carbonfree energy to reverse carbon emissions. It would always be more efficient to just use less electricity/energy in other situations.

[ossie]

In its base form this technology is mining a resource - carbon. Would you rather mine in areas of low or high atmospheric intensity? Would you rather capture it where you fund the whole operation yourself, or where someone else (existing polluters) is willing to pay you to take it out of the air because there is a regulatory cost to them putting said carbon in the air?

Maybe i should have been clearer. I wasn't suggesting using the energy from a fossil plant to power this, but co-locating it to areas where there might be more environmental and cost incentives to do so.

As i said in my earlier post, arguments on cost/efficiency are beside the point. The huge deal here is the use of electricity (of any form including all the advances to come in the future...solar cells in space, nuclear fusion etc), to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. One can now envision a future (regardless of cost or efficiency today) where we can sustainably keep the earth whole.

[shawabawa3]

I imagine the only places you can realistic install this technology is next to hydro dams/large wind farms where you can get very cheap electricity at certain times, and there are likely no hydrocarbon plants in these areas.

I'm not sure it's reasonable to install this in a coal plant and try to source cheap solar from hundreds of miles away to power it (if that were possible, why would the coal plant be active? It can't compete with the energy you're using to scrub it)