Where does Seattle rank in US cities for air quality? A forced-air system is also efficient for distributing cool air from a central air conditioner with the same ducts, registers, and blower. Climeworks’ solid sorbent system estimates a long-term energy requirement of 7.2 GJ (or 2,000 kWh/tCO2) – equivalent to around one-fifth of a U.S. Going further than this, the Department of Energy launched its Carbon Negative Shot initiative in late 2021, which aims to reduce the cost of carbon removal technologies and approaches that could reach gigaton scale to $100/tCO2 over the next decade. However, depending on the rate of deployment, which could accelerate through supportive policies and market development, costs for DAC could fall to around $150-$200 per tonne over the next 5-10 years. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law also provides an unprecedented amount of funding over the next five years specifically for DAC: $3.5 billion for four DAC hubs, $100 million for a commercial DAC prize, and $15 million for a pre-commercial DAC prize. There is also $4.6 billion funding to support enabling infrastructure like CO2 pipelines and geologic sequestration, which is needed for both DAC and point source capture, like capturing emissions from cement plants.

These concerns are especially salient given a 2020 CO2 pipeline rupture in Mississippi paired with $4.6 billion in funding through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law for CO2 transport and storage. The Department of Energy’s funding for CDR has increased significantly from less than $10 million 2009-2019 to $129 million in the most recent (fiscal year 2022) budget. For example, the Science Based Target initiative’s recent net-zero guidance requires companies to meet their climate targets by reducing more than 90% of their own emissions and using carbon removal to compensate for only the remaining 5-10% that they cannot directly mitigate. Strong policy and private sector guardrails are needed to ensure countries and companies do not over-rely on carbon removal at the expense of emissions reductions. And it’s important to note that DAC offers quantifiable and permanent storage, whereas natural carbon removal solutions like trees are at risk of deforestation and climate change induced threats like wildfires and drought. In addition to federal and state policies, corporate investment in carbon removal and DAC is also increasing. The most important federal policy supporting DAC today is the 45Q tax credit, which provides up to $35-50 per tonne of CO2 captured through DAC and carbon capture at point sources ($50/tCO2 if the captured carbon is sequestered underground and $35/tCO2 if it’s used for EOR or elsewhere).

This credit was instrumental to making Carbon Engineering’s million-tonne DAC plant – currently in development in the U.S. 4. What Policies and Investments are Supporting DAC Development in the US? Fossil fuel company investments in DAC with EOR can thus be seen as a way to continue producing fossil fuels and slowing the energy transition. With DAC, some are concerned about the connection to fossil fuel production through EOR (as mentioned before), which­ uses captured CO2 to produce more oil from depleted wells. The largest market for CO2 today is enhanced oil recovery (EOR), which is controversial given its connection to fossil fuel production. CO2 pipelines have been used since the 1970s and, like oil and gas pipelines, pose non-zero risks. This has been led by companies like Stripe, Shopify and Microsoft which have committed hundreds of millions of dollars to carbon removal, including DAC. While organizations like the IPCC indicate the need for significant amounts of carbon removal to meet our climate goals, care must be taken to ensure that ramping up DAC does not distract from essential attention and investment in other mitigation measures, especially to reduce fossil fuel use. Scientists indicate we will need both faster emissions reduction and carbon removal, and the amount of carbon removal needed is inversely proportional to how deeply we are able to cut emissions.

A similar bill in New York state – the Carbon Dioxide Removal Leadership Act – would require state procurement of CDR. The Federal Carbon Dioxide Removal Leadership Act would require the federal government to procure increasing amounts of carbon removal. Various other bills have been introduced at the federal and state levels to support carbon removal. Public investment in and support of carbon removal technology has increased in the past few years, but more will be needed to scale sufficiently and avoid the worst impacts of climate change. The range of costs for DAC vary between $250 and $600 today depending on the technology choice, low-carbon energy source, and the scale of their deployment; for comparison, most reforestation costs less than $50/tonne. DAC is currently categorized as “technology readiness level” 6 (on a scale of 1 to 9), meaning it’s still in the large-scale and prototype phase, not yet ready for full commercial deployment. Because DAC is a newer type of infrastructure, there is limited information about how it would impact local communities – either positively or negatively. More research will be needed to understand these impacts on a project-by-project basis along with proactive engagement with potentially affected communities.