[civilitty]

Back of the napkin math: 0.055 metric tons of CO2 per Mcf * 2,300 Mcf/year = 126 metric tons of CO2 per year - that much checks out.

It lists 1 MW power input so ~8,760 MWh at 100% utilization. According to [1] it's .44 metric tons of CO2 per MWh, or 3,850 metric tons of CO2 per year if the Terraformer Mk 1 is powered by natural gas. 126/3850 = ~3.2% round trip efficiency - that much also checks out so this doesn't seem like a perpetual motion style scam. Even if those stats are only for 20% utilization with solar, that's still a realistic(-ish) round trip efficiency of 15%. I can't tell what kind of utilization the infographic actually assumes ("between 0.2 and 1"...) and it mixes metric, imperial, annual, daily, and instantaneous units!

The big problem is that the opportunity cost of not using that 1MW of solar to displace dirty energy elsewhere is huge. It's just wildly uneconomical without free surplus renewable energy and possibly CO2 reduction incentives like a carbon tax.

[1] https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=74&t=11

[snewman]

Regarding opportunity cost, it depends on what your limiting factors are. For instance, to the extent that solar installations in the US are currently limited by grid interconnect, this is a good way to deploy additional solar in service of emissions reduction.

Also, in the medium run, we are going to need to scale hydrogen and e-fuels and this is a good way to start climbing that learning curve.

[hnav]

I think the idea would be to capture excess solar energy, this could be an alternative to grid upgrades, battery installs or opportunistic industrial use.

[mrkstu]

This seems to be most logical for time shifting solar when you've over provisioned it. Long term it will come in very handy.