[ffhhttt]

I understand/understood the inherent inefficiency. My entire point was that if solar/wind makes up majority of you power generation capacity there will be certain periods of time when significantly more power will be generated than there is demand for.

> totally, totally ignoring the fact that it will cost more energy to do the carbon capture and store said captured carbon, than the mechanical work we get out of it

Which is fine if you essentially have free energy during those periods.

Don’t get me wrong, it would only make any sense if carbon capture processes improve significantly but I don’t see how the laws of thermodynamics are an issue if you have an excess of energy you can’t use for anything else (of course other forms of storage might still much cheaper, you can make more aluminum during those times do even less sensible things that carbon capture like mining bitcoin etc.)