MIT engineers make converting CO2 into useful products more practical

To remove the co2 we put into the atmosphere will always take way more energy than we got out of putting it into the atmosphere in the first place. That is just thermodynamics.

To remove all the co2 we put into the atmosphere would take more energy than we extracted from fossil fuels since the industrial revolution. And all that energy would, of course, have to be produced in an absolutely carbon-free manner.

So this is and will remain an entirely impractical method of combatting global warming. MIT engineers know this. The people who funded this research know this. Why are they doing this?

Think of carbon in the atmosphere as a debt.

Obviously you cannot effectively pay off debt using the money that you borrowed: that just leaves you with a net loss of the interest/friction/inefficiency.

But if you can earn enough money to pay down the debt (which naturally also requires weaning off of the deficit spending in the first place) via other means such as renewable energy sources in great excess to the quantity of fossil fuel energy we have produced thus far, then figuring out how to pay down the debt as efficiently as possible as soon as possible absolutely makes sense.