How much energy does it take to remove carbon dioxide from the air?

But how much carbon dioxide is there in the atmosphere? It’s not an easy question. Yes, the ratio is about 400 ppm, but we need to know how many particles are in the atmosphere. Well then. Let’s make an approximation (it’s what physicists do).

Suppose we take in the air up to 5 kilometers above the Earth’s surface. I can assume that it has a constant density of 1.2 kilograms per cubic meter and that 400 of every million of these molecules are CO₂which gives us a total mass of CO₂ from 1.2 x10^fifteen kilograms, or 1.2 billion metric tons. Yes, that’s a LOT, and it’s probably an underestimate.

If we wanted to remove enough CO₂ To return to the pre-industrial level of 280 ppm, 2.39 x 10 would be needed^twenty joules of energy. Realistically, that amount is almost the same as the world’s total annual energy consumption (5.8 x 10^twenty-one joules per year).

But that does not matter. The most pressing problem is that we increasingly issue further carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. By 2023, total CO2 emissions₂ They will be about 37,000 million metric tons. If we wanted to eliminate only this amount each year, to prevent the level of carbon dioxide from increasing, we would need 764 gigawatts of energy.

To be clear, one nuclear power plant produces about 1 GW. If you include the inefficiencies of the entire direct air capture process, you would probably need more than 1,000 nuclear power plants.

This is a rough estimate: things get much more complicated if we take into account the interaction of CO₂ atmospheric with rocks, oceans and so on. But I think the conclusion is pretty clear: any idea that we can maintain our current lifestyle and just suck up the CO₂ of the air afterwards is a fantasy. It would be much better to devote that effort and expense to eliminating emissions.

Article originally published in WIRED. Adapted by Alondra Flores.