Climate and environment / climate/direct-air-capture
Direct air capture
proposednot assessedcritical gap open
Plants that remove CO2 from ambient air and store it durably, at a cost low enough to remove gigatonnes per year.
Scope
In: capture of CO2 from air by sorbents or solvents, with transport and geological storage. Out: capture at point sources, biological and mineral removal, and the storage site itself (climate/geologic-co2-storage).
- Readiness
- not assessed
- Serves
- Climate action
- Last reviewed
- never
Proposed: the statement and scope are written, but the metrics, target or gaps are not complete yet. One sourced number is a real contribution.
Metrics
No metric yet.
Gaps
Projected cost stays in the hundreds of USD per tonne
criticalcostlayer: deploymentopen
Design and learning-curve estimates put the levelized cost of capture in the hundreds of USD per tonne: 94 to 232 USD/t for a designed aqueous-KOH plant (capture only, a design not an operating plant), and 341 to 374 USD/t of CO2 net removed with transport and storage at 1 Gt-CO2 per year of cumulative capacity. No source found for the cost of a plant operating today. Closing the gap needs cheaper sorbents, lower regeneration energy and cheaper storage.
Held open by: Low-cost CO2 sorbents, Geologic CO2 storage
Dependencies
Requires
- Low-cost CO2 sorbents The sorbent sets the capture capacity, the regeneration energy and a large part of the plant's cost.
- Geologic CO2 storage Removal counts only if the CO2 stays out of the air for centuries; the storage is also part of the cost per tonne.
Required by
Nothing in the atlas depends on it yet.
Arrows point from a technology to what it requires. Select a node to open it.
Evidence
Keith, David W. · Joule · 2018
extrapolationmachine checkedarticlecited by 1
Sievert, Katrin · Joule · 2024
extrapolationmachine checkedarticlecited by 1
Source TOML · Page on GitHub · Suggest a correction