Reply To: The Harmful Economics of Biofuels

[dennisp]

I’ve seen other estimates that ended up with similar numbers.

You can take CO2 out of the atmosphere directly using “artificial trees”…google for “artificial trees CO2,” or ctrl-f on my climatecolab entry here:
http://climatecolab.org/web/guest/plans/-/plans/contestId/3/planId/12803

Cost is estimated at $150/ton carbon initially, dropping to $20 at scale. Each absorbs as much CO2 as around a thousand natural trees. So if our numbers are right, we could drop your estimated price about in half, and dedicate a lot less land area to the task.

One additional step is required this way, to convert CO2 to CO. Here’s one method of doing that:
http://www.science20.com/news/turning_carbon_dioxide_into_fuel_using_solar_power

Obviously with cheap fusion we don’t necessarily need to restrict ourselves to sunlight to power this.