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I'm going to post my favorite graph, it's called the "MAC graph". It shows, in itemized investments, how much it will cost to reach net-zero emissions for the U.S.

Instead of time, the X axis is how much you are willing to invest, in $/Ton of CO2

The types of investments are sorted by their respective cost ; the later they appear on the X axis, the lower their name is on the Y axis

You can observe by yourself here that direct carbon capture is all the way to the bottom of the list

https://www.edf.org/sites/default/files/2021-07/MACgraph_sim...

Each dollar invested in Terraform would net you 100x the results if you invested it in wind, solar, nuclear, electric vehicles or heat pumps

Here's Hank Green talking about this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dRgCsZ1q7g




Two things:

1) Terraform is making Zero carbon fuels, not sequestering into the ground (the purple on the graph, not the orange)

2) I don't think it's accurate to say "each dollar invested" gets the same 100x results. The graph seems to show that wind, solar, nuclear, and electric all taper off in how much CO2 they offset. It looks once you are spending $100/T, you literally can't make any more of an impact with solar or wind. Once you get to spending $250/T (what it currently costs for Terraform to do it, for real), Zero carbon fuels looks like it has the same 1 GTon impact as onshore solar and wind combined.

Finally, "electricity and heat production" (i.e, what solar and wind can help with) accounts for just 25% of GHG emissions. Transportation and industry (excluding electricity used by industry) together account for more than 35% of emissions. Many industrial processes can't simply "use electricity". The only way to get emissions down is to provide a like-for-like substitute - no one can afford to completely redesign their factory or chemical plant, but they could probably afford to pay more for NG as prices for syngas fall to closer to FF NG. There is no silver bullet.

We need every single innovation available.




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