Is Capturing CO2 a Good or Bad Idea?

[Natural ChemE]

Hey guys,

I have to deliver a major report on how much it’ll cost to build a major CO₂ capture facility. It’s not my job to go into why capturing CO₂ is important, but given that the company that’s doing it is considering spending a few hundred million dollars per year just to operate the darn thing, I think that it’d serve to refresh those considering it on why this plant might be a better use of such a gross amount of money than any of the many other things that they could spend it on.

So, hypothetically, say that we could rip out of the atmosphere at the cost of, hypothetically, . Is this a good or bad idea? And why?

For the purpose of this question, assume that this is the cheapest way to rip CO₂ out of the atmosphere. In other words, this isn't a bad idea for the reason that there's a cheaper way.

[Natural ChemE]

Just to note it, this is an Environmental Science question as opposed to an Engineering one. So help me Karana, I get the Engineering.

What I don’t know about is the environmental side of things. I mean, burning several hundred million dollars per year? That’s a lot! Do our friends in Environmental Science tell us that getting the atmosphere's CO₂ concentration down is really this important? I mean, there are a lot of great uses for that much cash - is this better than the rest? Why or why not?

How much is getting a tonne of CO₂ out of the air actually worth to society?

PS- I'm assuming (or, rather, hoping) that there's a known answer. That someone over in the Environmental Science world put together a decent enough model that they can at least take a stab at how much a tonne of CO₂ removal is worth. However if this isn't the case, knowing that would be helpful too (so at least I won't burn any more time looking for something that doesn't yet exist).