Recently read a research effort that converts CO2 to methane in a simpler method that reportedly costs less than other methods of conversion - https://bit.ly/3CwgYwJ
It’s a bit paradoxical that we are converting a greenhouse gas into another greenhouse gas that is 25 times as potent as the former. But that doesn’t tell the whole story.
The CO2 emitted, if not captured and converted to methane, would have added say X units to the atmosphere. If we convert it to methane and burn the methane in a boiler or gas engine, we once again get the same amount of CO2 as was used to make the fuel, and in scenario again, there is an addition of X units of CO2 to the atmosphere, but this has avoided the use of natural gas from below the ground for the same purpose and thus has avoided X units of CO2 buried underground that would have been released to the atmosphere, and hence the net CO2 addition to atmosphere in the latter scenario is 0 (X-X) - in reality it will be a bit more than zero because the CO2 to methane conversion process could have a small carbon footprint.
And conversion to methane is better than conversion to liquid fuels from a purely carbon footprint perspective as liquid fuels have higher CO2 emissions than methane for the same energy delivered.
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In fact