But when there's a much much much broader research space to explore, such as methods to capture carbon, I don't think that such focused projects are as useful.
We already have the technology to get completely off of carbon, it's the industrial scale-up that's the issue. At current prices, energy costs would increase no more than 3-4x, at the very very worst, and double in a more likely scenario.
So what we really need is political will to cause the market to make these existing technologies efficient on the industrial scale. We need a stiff carbon price. And we also need a way to incentive pulling carbon out of the air, perhaps direct transfer of the carbon tax to those that are able to securely sequester carbon without the possibility of it escaping into the atmosphere. That way, if somebody wants to burn natural gas, that's fine as long as they also pay the cost of taking the carbon out of the atmosphere at the same time
With those two things, we could be off carbon in a few decades, worldwide, economically efficiently. All it takes is the political will, and the investment of a tiny fraction of our global GDP.
Most of all, we need to never, ever, vote for politicians who deny reality and live in a fantasy land on important issues like this. It's affected an entire political party in the US, and the disease is practically contained within them. They have politicized the science, have led large chunks of the US to believe these lies. And they have a huge persecution/inferiority complex so if you even mention that the Republicans are bad on this issue, they get defensive and dig deeper into their lies. There are a few respectable Republicans on this issue, such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, but they are the exception, and the rest of the Republicans ostracize them them for it.
The technology and science is practically there for a solution, it's the politics that needs fixing right now.