Gallium helps convert CO2 into Carbon and Oxygen
So let's do some math. Let's consider natural gas. According to the US government [1], natural gas produced 1.358x10^12 kWh of power and 5.6x10^8 metric tons of CO2 so 1 metric ton of CO2 equates to ~2400 kWh of produced power.<p>This post suggests the energy cost is ~230kWh/ton.<p>This is an important sanity check because it means that (capital costs aside) and if it scales you could technically remain carbon neutral for a net output of energy.<p>While this is of course only in a lab and they mention "battery" one should remain skeptical (since pretty much every battery "breakthrough" is nothing more than marketing for research funding).<p>This may be in the paper but in this summary I didn't see anything about how the CO2 needs to be delivered. Does it need to be in a relatively pure form? What sort of preprocessing is required?<p>As for the capital costs, it's hard to say anything concrete here other than if silver and Gallium are catalysts, they're both relatively cheap at that scale (Gallium seems to be <$250/kg according to some quick Googling). Catalysts tend to have a lifespan so those aren't one-time costs generally but still.<p>It's also not clear how much of each material is required.<p>Not to be a broken record on HN, but I've often said--and I'll repeat here--that I don't believe altruism will solve greenhouse gas emissions and global warming: it'll only be solved when it becomes economic to do so.<p>Another way of putting that is when the cost of carbon capture and/or non-greenhouse gas emitting energy sources is profitable, that's when you'll see change.<p>[1]: <a href="https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=74&t=11" rel="nofollow">https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=74&t=11</a>