The carbon output isn't pure carbon, but carbon oxides. Some of the oxygen is stripped from CO2 and the result is carbon-oxygen solids which are apparently industrially useful.
The problem is that if you turn around and use those carbon materials in industry, then you really haven’t captured the carbon at all. All that would accomplish is playing an emissions shell game, allowing fossil fuel consumers to shift the emissions to someone else.
For carbon capture to be useful from a climate perspective, we have to actually lock away the consumed carbon somewhere where it can’t enter the fast carbon cycle.
For carbon capture to be useful from a climate perspective, we have to actually lock away the consumed carbon somewhere where it can’t enter the fast carbon cycle.