This isn't about removing CO2 from the atmosphere. It's about not adding any.

Two things to consider: Energy conservation and Carbon conservation.

Almost all energy on earth ultimately comes from the Sun. We can use it directly through solar panels or indirectly through wind, waves etc (nuclear energy is somewhat of an exception). Or through fossil fuels. Fossil fuels contain the sun's energy that was sent to Earth millions of years ago as they used to be organic matter and thus ultimately come from plan photosynthesis which turns CO2 into organic matter (and later fuel) with the energy of the sun.

Now before humans came along, the carbon cycle was somewhat at a steady state for the most part meaning that CO2 levels in the atmosphere were kind of steady. Then we started burning all that really old carbon from the ground and disrupted that steady state. This technology is basically emulating photosynthesis in that it's taking the sun's energy and CO2 and turning both into fossil fuel like combustibles. All that CO2 will end up back in the atmosphere, but the good thing is that that's where it came from before and not from the ground, so we don't ADD to it.

I still don't think this is such a great piece of news because we hopefully will move away from combustibles anyway (except maybe for rockets and such), especially as battery technology gets better. So this might both be not that useful and maybe be counterproductive because it doesn't help people move away from combustion engines and try to develop other forms of storage not focused on combustion.