There are two equally-needed levers we have to reverse climate change: the first is reducing current emissions, and the second is removing carbon from the atmosphere.
Removing emissions from smokestacks is critical to ensuring we can stop dumping waste into the sky, but we are at the point now where we need scalable, low-cost processes to pull carbon out of the atmosphere.
So, we need to definitely do what you're suggesting and capture all emissions from as many smokestacks as possible until we've fully transitioned to a clean grid. And, we also need to begin pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere.
Thanks for taking the time to reply. I'm still not convinced that pulling atmospheric carbon out of the air makes sense until practically all smokestack emissions are captured at source. Something like putting the heating on while all the windows are open.
I wish you guys luck though, hopefully you can carve out a niche market which will mean carbon capture technologies are ready when the time comes.
I hear you and agree - reducing emissions is a very important thing to do, followed immediately by stopping all unnecessary power wasting (like with the windows + heating problem).
In the UN's most recent climate report [1], most of the pathways that are shown to avoid a 1.5°C global temperature rise involve both emissions reduction and carbon removal. Since the current technology portfolio is not anywhere near where it needs to be for any of their suggested pathways, we need new solutions (not just Noya's!) to be developed and scaled to give ourselves a shot of removing the amount of carbon required.
Removing emissions from smokestacks is critical to ensuring we can stop dumping waste into the sky, but we are at the point now where we need scalable, low-cost processes to pull carbon out of the atmosphere.
So, we need to definitely do what you're suggesting and capture all emissions from as many smokestacks as possible until we've fully transitioned to a clean grid. And, we also need to begin pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere.