Abundant Hype For Direct Air Capture w/o Evidence Of Scalability; Technology Deeply Embedded Within Oil & Gas Sector

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“The reason why direct air capture is such a unique and important part of the carbon removal portfolio is because it gives extremely high levels of permanence,” says Kajsa Hendrickson, director of policy at Carbon180, an NGO that backs DAC as a climate solution. “We can store that captured CO2 underground for thousands of years.” But the technology is contentious, with DAC development tied closely to oil and gas interests. And with critics skeptical about DAC’s effectiveness along with the mammoth challenge of finding sufficient sources of renewable power to run energy-guzzling DAC facilities. “I think [DAC] is intentionally distracting us from actually reducing emissions,” says Jonathan Foley, executive director of Project Drawdown, an NGO. “We’ve maybe at most removed a few seconds of the world’s emissions after spending billions and billions of dollars which would have been better spent elsewhere.”

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“The reason why direct air capture is such a unique and important part of the carbon removal portfolio is because it gives extremely high levels of permanence,” says Kajsa Hendrickson, director of policy at Carbon180, an NGO that backs DAC as a climate solution. “We can store that captured CO2 underground for thousands of years.” But the technology is contentious, with DAC development tied closely to oil and gas interests. And with critics skeptical about DAC’s effectiveness along with the mammoth challenge of finding sufficient sources of renewable power to run energy-guzzling DAC facilities. “I think [DAC] is intentionally distracting us from actually reducing emissions,” says Jonathan Foley, executive director of Project Drawdown, an NGO. “We’ve maybe at most removed a few seconds of the world’s emissions after spending billions and billions of dollars which would have been better spent elsewhere.”

Despite this momentum, direct air capture remains a nascent and expensive investment. As with other carbon direct removal techniques, DAC development costs are currently high — between $600 and $1,000 per captured metric ton. The U.S. government’s Carbon Negative shot is hoping to bring that price down to $100 per captured metric ton. Industry backers and analysts say scaling up hinges upon achieving these lower costs. The most recent State of Carbon Dioxide Removal report, research led by the University of Oxford, estimates that 7 billion to 9 billion metric tons of CO2 must be removed each year by 2050 to have any hope of meeting the 1.5° Celsius (2.7° Fahrenheit) global average temperature goal required by the Paris accord and scientific evidence to avoid catastrophic climate change. However, many experts say this CDR target is already well out of reach, particularly as fossil-fuel greenhouse gas emissions continue to soar annually. Novel carbon removal solutions such as DAC account for a tiny fraction of an estimated 2 billion metric tons of carbon removal occurring today, according to the report. It’s estimated that the few dozen DAC facilities across the globe trapped a mere 10,000 metric tons of CO2 in 2023. That’s dwarfed by other forms of carbon removal, including tree planting and biochar.

As various companies try to prove DAC’s viability, fossil fuel industry interest in the tech has sparked concern among experts and environmental groups. Last year, oil and gas company Occidental purchased Carbon Engineering, a DAC company, and plans to develop two U.S. facilities backed by government funding. Occidental and BlackRock, the world’s biggest investment manager, are partnering on the Stratos facility in Texas, which aims to capture 500,000 metric tons of CO2 annually and is scheduled for completion in 2025. Occidental CEO Vicki Hollub is on record as stating that direct air capture is a route to preserving the oil and gas industry for decades to come. Other oil industry players such as ExxonMobil are actively researching DAC, eyeing it as a potential future investment.

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Critics point to the history of carbon capture and storage with its costly failed ventures. In fact, carbon capture was originally created by the fossil fuel industry to extend the life of oil fields. In truth, about two-thirds of carbon captured via point source emissions today is still used for this purpose via a process known as enhanced oil recovery (EOR). Some DAC companies, including Climeworks and RepAir, state that using their facilities for EOR is a “red line” they won’t cross. But at least some DAC plants may be used for this purpose. “We think [DAC] is a massive distraction from the urgent task of phasing out fossil fuels and it serves as a cover up for industry expansion,” says Lili Fuhr, deputy director of the climate and energy program at the Center for International Environmental Law. “Phasing out fossil fuels as rapidly and completely as possible is our only hope for actually limiting global warming.”

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https://news.mongabay.com/2024/12/direct-air-capture-climate-solution-faces-harsh-criticism-steep-challenges/