[mitchellvdub]

To your first point, it's like wringing out a sponge to continue soaking up water. A sponge saturated with water still has the ability to soak up more water, just not the capacity. The issue isn't storing the water, we can do that in buckets (and in the earth in the case of CO2), the issue is collecting it in the first place.

To your second point, we need to find a way to sequester CO2, not simply stop generating anymore. It's also more complicated than 1 MWh generated by solar = 1 MWh generated by coal, there's a time dimension, among other complications, to it as well. If we produce more solar energy during the day than we use, we can turn that towards capturing CO2.

It's going to take work, but if we can sequester more CO2 than we generate, than we can ostensibly reverse climate change, or at least mitigate it.

[fuzzfactor]

Depending on how the organization is operated, some individuals are going to be in position to prosper financially in proportion to the size of the cash flow they preside over or participate in, rather than the net positive outcome to the entire whole. Often quite a net negative outcome, usually due to a hidden flaw which is not obvious to many.

On really big scales things can take a lot of work and this could be a lot of people.

Until there is truly not only an abundance of clean renewable energy, but an absolute surplus left over after everyone ends up with more than they ever thought possible, and almost all sources of atmospheric carbon have been addressed, the best use of renewable energy will continue to be the elimination of carbon at the source[0] rather than direct removal from the atmosphere no matter what you do.

Something about you can't fool mother nature.

During these uncertain times the renewable energy (like any form of energy) will also continue to have a greater financial value on the market directly, compared to the alternative return after involvement with inefficient processes.

So for the forseeable future there will always be incentive somewhere in the chain to sell the valuable energy outright, maybe even clandestinely, rather than "divert" some of it to an inefficient fate. Unless of course that is a subsidized fate.

Like wholesale release of any kind of CO2 from limestone ever. Give me a break. When limestone is already one of nature's best known forms of long-term solid carbon repository on the geological scale, and for best results the natural limestone needs to have its chemical composition stay undisturbed for additional eons.

Limestone is simply Calcium Carbonate. CaCO3.

If you're going to turn CO2 into limestone or some other solid, that would be great as long as you start with something that's not limestone to begin with. Almost anything else would be more sensible.

It's just that capturing CO2 using slaked lime or quicklime (carbon-free alkaline compounds of calcium) is a well-known laboratory process. For centuries. That's all most people are ever going to know. Which seems to work so great on the bench because you can merely open a jar of the raw lime and it spontaneously absorbs CO2 from the atmosphere, eventually turning into you guessed it, limestone. Deceivingly cheap enough at lab scale, the raw lime is one of the lab chemicals where the packaging and shipping cost more than the contents, because it was made industrially in bulk from abundant limestone and discounted energy. So the jars of raw lime in the chem lab are among the very lowest-cost lab chemicals[1] and that's still not good enough when you do the math at scale, "absorbing" the externalities.

>There are now hundreds of startups around the world racing to develop a variety of methods to do this. But many of them, including Heirloom, are still operating at a tiny scale, if they are even at the point of removing carbon at all. So this latest Microsoft deal stands out for signaling a high degree of confidence in Heirloom’s unique approach.

As unique an approach as you can get without any material advances in millennia.

What's needed instead to efficiently turn gaseous carbon to a stable solid is something that is not a known laboratory process. Yet.

Corollary to Murphy's Law says Mother Nature always sides with the hidden flaw. Mother Nature is a bitch.

[0] such as by direct substitution for fossil fuels

[1] the kind that any lab budget can afford if there are chemicals at all. So any lab can start out opening new jars of lime, removing CO2 from their closed systems, then dumping the resulting CaCO3 as harmless solid waste. This scales only so far before financial reality can not be overcome. So the creativity has been focused more so on financial approaches with nothing unprecedented about the engineering or chemical research. Maybe enough to make Microsoft look good but not making a real dent in the overall picture. And what percent of people other than Microsoft have the level of profitability where they can afford to sequester any significant amount of their respective carbon emissions whatsoever?

[natch]

Great post, thank you.

As you acknowledge in your wording, we don't know for sure, but for me this part states it very clearly what might unfortunately be a key driver at least at this stage of that company:

>Depending on how the organization is operated, some individuals are going to be in position to prosper financially in proportion to the size of the cash flow they preside over or participate in, rather than the net positive outcome to the entire whole.

[mitchellvdub]

Wait so the argument is: "There exists the possibility of corruption, so we should discount the opportunity to research further??"

I understand the trepidation for fear of greenwashing. But it's just that, a fear. Until you have evidence of wrong doing why trample on possible world saving research?

As for the above posters second rebuttal, is the argument: "This proccess has been done in the lab before, so this company couldn't have possibly found a more efficient process for doing the same thing?" Isn't this how every incremental step in efficiency is gained? Isn't it a good sign that the process is already known and proven, and so all this company has to do is make it more efficient?

Every new battery chemistry is given front page service, all the while everyone knows there's a slim chance in hell they'll ever be market viable. Shouldn't we be investing in tech that is already proven? Not wild moon shot ideas?

[natch]

There exists an incentive for corruption, is more like it. Therefore we should be skeptical.

Then, with a skeptical eye, we examine the scheme and we see that in order to capture carbon, they are first freeing equivalent carbon that was already captured. And then they are proposing to repeat that process whilst sending the carbon to an unproven magical place that might not work (no concern of theirs) and then claiming credit for it.