Direct Air Capture

Scaling Up Innovation to Drive Down Emissions

Find out more about the briefings in this series below:

Green Hydrogen

Direct Air Capture

Building Out Electric Vehicle Charging Infrastructure

Offshore Wind Energy

How Start-Up Accelerators Can Drive Climate Action

The Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) invites you to view a briefing on direct air capture, which chemically removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The captured carbon can be permanently stored underground or used in industrial processes. While climate change mitigation efforts are the priority, carbon dioxide removal will be necessary to help meet climate goals and limit global warming to below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) as outlined in the Paris Agreement. The scale of carbon removal needed will depend on how fast the world curbs greenhouse gas emissions. 

During this briefing, panelists explained what Congress needs to know about direct air capture, including the considerations, challenges, and opportunities involved in responsibly scaling it up.

This briefing is part of a series called, Scaling Up Innovation to Drive Down Emissions, which ran through July and focused on the role of innovative technologies and emerging energy sources in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The series covered green hydrogen, direct air capture, electric vehicle charging infrastructure build-out, offshore wind energy and how start-up accelerators can drive climate action. 

This series ran in parallel with another briefing series, Living with Climate Change, that covered polar vortices, sea level rise, wildfires, extreme heat, and integrating equity into emergency management. 

 

Highlights

 

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Estimates range on how much carbon removal is necessary to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius, but in general the goal is to capture about 10 gigatons of carbon dioxide per year through both land- and technology-based carbon removal solutions, which is about a quarter of total global annual emissions today. Technologies need to be developed now, so they will be ready to be fully deployed in the 2030s and onward. Responsible scaling up of direct air capture, as described in the World Resources Institute’s report, Direct Air Capture: Assessing Impacts to Enable Responsible Scaling, includes understanding the impacts of building and operating plants on the environment and people, considerations for community engagement, and planning direct air capture to be scaled up in an equitable and sustainable way. From an engineering perspective, scaling up direct air capture needs four key things: using front-end engineering and design (FEED) study results to drive research and development funding; building pilot-scale systems to accelerate learning and drive down costs; adopting a set of standards for technoeconomic analysis of direct air capture; and standardizing the scale-up pathway. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act included $3.5 billion for direct air capture hubs and investments in the Environmental Protection Agency’s Class VI well program to fund geologic sequestration paired with direct air capture. The Department of Energy’s Carbon Negative Shot initiative, which is part of a series of Energy Earthshots, is designed to increase federal funding for carbon removal technologies. Its goals are to scale up from thousands of tons of removal now to millions of tons of removal over the next five to ten years; reduce the cost curve to achieve a cost of $100 per net metric ton of carbon dioxide removed; and develop and standardize monitoring, reporting, and verification of durable carbon dioxide removal.

 

Representative Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.)

• The next generation of technologies—direct air capture, clean hydrogen, and offshore wind—are the solutions that are going to help get us over the finish line to a net-zero economy.
• Because they are new, emerging industries, federal involvement can ensure that projects are developed responsibly with robust community engagement and strong labor and environmental standards.
• Even under the best-case scenario, the United States will not be able to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions without major reductions in emissions. It is the responsibility of the United States to invest in removing these emissions to reduce the country’s global impact.
• The Department of Energy (DOE) is moving forward with developing direct air capture hubs with funding from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
• Building upon that investment, Reps. Scott Peters (D-Calif.) and Tonko recently introduced the Federal Carbon Dioxide Removal Leadership Act (H.R.7434), which would require DOE to pay for the removal of a specific amount of carbon each year. Over time, the number of tons would go up and the maximum price DOE can pay would go down as a way to drive cost reductions. The bill would guarantee demand to jumpstart the industry.

 

Giana Amador, Co-Founder and Policy Director, Carbon180

• Carbon180 works closely with U.S. policymakers, entrepreneurs, and peer organizations to design policies that can bring carbon removal solutions to a larger scale in line with climate science, equity, and justice.
• The two pillars often discussed to address climate change are reducing emissions and adapting to the effects of climate change.
• The third pillar of climate action, that is often overlooked, is cleaning up carbon already in the atmosphere.
• Estimates range on how much carbon removal is necessary to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius, but in general the goal is to capture about 10 gigatons of carbon dioxide per year through both land- and technology-based carbon removal solutions, which is about a quarter of total global annual emissions today. Technologies need to be developed now, so they will be ready to be fully deployed in the 2030s and onward.
• Technology-based solutions include direct air capture, carbon utilization, and enhanced weathering.
• Carbon removal and carbon capture are two different solutions. Carbon capture technology scrubs carbon dioxide from point sources like power plants. Carbon removal has the ability to capture carbon from the ambient air.
• The advantages of direct air capture include high rates of private sector investment, permanent and durable carbon storage, and a relatively low land footprint.
• Direct air capture promotes job creation. A Rhodium Group report found that for every megaton capacity of direct air capture, about 3,500 jobs are created throughout the supply chain.
• There is a one-trillion-dollar total available market in the United States for products derived from carbon dioxide. There is a big opportunity to use carbon dioxide in industries currently reliant on fossil fuels, including plastics, fuels, chemicals, building materials, and food manufacturing.
• Carbon180’s direct air capture map displays the full ecosystem of entities working on direct air capture, including active direct air capture plants.
• Because the federal government has invested in foundational research, the private sector has increased its engagement in direct air capture.
• Barriers to scaling up direct air capture include high costs, the lack of an existing market for carbon removal, and the need to develop significant infrastructure like geologic storage wells and clean energy sources.
• Just in the past few years, federal funding for direct air capture and carbon removal solutions went from effectively zero to over $1 billion per year appropriated in fiscal year 2022 for carbon removal solutions.
• The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act included $3.5 billion for direct air capture hubs and investments in the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) Class VI well program to fund geologic sequestration paired with direct air capture.
• Members of Congress have introduced bills on federal procurement (as described by Rep. Tonko), on investment tax credits for direct air capture, and on carbon dioxide transportation infrastructure.
• Another policy need is to update the existing tax incentive for carbon sequestration (45Q) to include direct air capture.

 

Dr. Jennifer Wilcox, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management, Department of Energy

• There is no one silver bullet solution to climate change, and direct air capture and carbon dioxide removal are not a means to replace deep decarbonization.
• Carbon capture at point sources of carbon emissions, such as a power plant or cement facility, is a cheaper and easier way to mitigate carbon dioxide because there are high concentrations of carbon dioxide and the process prevents emissions from going into the atmosphere in the first place. Carbon capture and direct air capture are two separate tools, and they both need to happen in parallel.
• Direct air capture technology captures about 50 to 60 percent of the carbon dioxide from the air that passes through the fans. At a point source, up to 97 percent of carbon dioxide can be removed from the gas stream.

• In November 2021, DOE launched the Carbon Negative Shot as part of a series of Energy Earthshots. The initiative is designed to increase federal funding for carbon removal technologies. Its goals are to scale up from thousands of tons of removal now to millions of tons of removal over the next five to ten years; reduce the cost curve to achieve a cost of $100 per net metric ton of carbon dioxide removed; and develop and standardize monitoring, reporting, and verification of durable carbon dioxide removal.

• The Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management at DOE has given out recent grants that connect direct air capture projects with existing energy utilities. For example, waste heat from a geothermal plant can be used to power a direct air power facility.
• The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act invests over $10 billion in new carbon management funding over five years, including for regional direct air capture hubs and a direct air capture technology price competition.
• Once carbon is captured, it needs to be put somewhere, so there is also funding for infrastructure build-out for geologic storage. This will make it a lot easier for the private sector to be able to invest in carbon capture and carbon removal.

 

Katie Lebling, Associate, Climate Program, World Resources Institute (WRI)

• Responsible scaling up of direct air capture, as described in WRI’s report, Direct Air Capture: Assessing Impacts to Enable Responsible Scaling, includes understanding the impacts of building and operating plants on the environment and people, considerations for community engagement, and planning direct air capture to be scaled up in an equitable and sustainable way.
• The research finds that direct air capture plants are expected to produce zero or almost zero on-site emissions that could negatively impact human health or the environment.
• The impacts this report covers are related to resource usage on site, including land, water, and energy; materials production that happens offsite; and social impacts like job creation.
• Direct air capture facilities require an energy source, construction materials, and the solvent or sorbent chemicals. To help conceptualize the scale of inputs needed by 2050, at the half-billion-ton scale, direct air capture would use less than five percent of current and projected U.S. primary energy supply; less than five percent of cement and steel production; about eight percent of PVC pipe production; and between 19 to 37 percent of the production of specific chemicals.
• The impacts of direct air capture plants are all interconnected. The energy source, the system type, and the location play important roles in determining impacts.
• The process that decides direct air capture facility siting will decide who is impacted positively or negatively. WRI (see figure four) and Carbon180 (see figure one) have both produced maps to show considerations for siting, including access to renewable energy and geologic storage.
• Direct air capture, if done well, can not only remove carbon dioxide from the air, but also offer benefits to communities and workers, such as high-paying jobs, training or apprenticeship opportunities, and local investment in carbon dioxide utilization.
• Policy recommendations include the use of social impact assessments, environmental impact statements, community benefit agreements, and labor agreements.
• At the federal level, the government has made historic investments in carbon removal and direct air capture in recent years. The report recommends that the federal government incentivize meaningful community engagement, the use of local labor and locally sourced low-carbon materials, and the use of social impact assessments and legally-binding benefit agreements.

 

Dr. Kevin O'Brien, Director, Illinois Sustainable Technology Center & Illinois State Water Survey, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

• Scaling up direct air capture technologies involves a feasibility analysis, a pre-front-end engineering and design (FEED) study, a full FEED study, and the process of construction and operation.
• FEED studies include basic design, detailed design, regulatory assessment, and securing financing. They tell researchers and developers if projects are ready to construct or if other steps need to happen before construction is possible.
• The Illinois Sustainable Technology Center is doing FEED studies in Louisiana, California, and Wyoming with the Climeworks technology to explore what it would take to scale the technology to remove 100,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year. Each location uses a different power source with solar in Louisiana, geothermal in California, and waste heat and wind in Wyoming. The different locations will allow researchers to see the impact of different climates, costs, timelines, and lifecycle analyses. This 18-month project includes national labs, private companies, and academia.
• Researchers are also studying a project that combines direct air capture and utilization. The captured carbon dioxide will be incorporated into cement via collaborations across already existing companies.
• From an engineering perspective, scaling up direct air capture needs four key things:
  • Use FEED study results to drive research and development funding.
  • Build pilot-scale systems to accelerate learning and drive down costs.
  • Adopt a set of standards for technoeconomic analysis of direct air capture.
  • Standardize the scale-up pathway.

 

Q&A

 

Q: What are the main limitations to storing carbon underground? How can we be sure that carbon stored underground today will remain underground 50 or 100 years into the future?

Amador:

• The United States has abundant geologic reservoirs that can safely store carbon dioxide. There have been decades of research through DOE that provides a test case for these technologies.
• The one barrier for geologic storage today involves the regulatory system. This mainly involves updating the EPA’s Class VI well program to make sure projects can be permitted and safeguards are in place.

Wilcox:

• DOE has been capturing carbon from a bioethanol plant as a part of the Mount Simon Sandstone project since 2013 with a Class VI permit. DOE also has 40 years of experience storing carbon dioxide deep underground without leakage through enhanced oil recovery.
• The oil industry has experience handling carbon dioxide and that knowledge can be leveraged. The same trapping mechanisms in which the oil and gas were born, are going to trap carbon dioxide. It is really about reversing the flow of carbon back underground.
• DOE has invested in decades of monitoring geologic storage below and above ground. DOE partners with EPA on groundwater protection.

Lebling:

• Education and outreach to communities where direct air capture facilities will be built is important to make sure that they understand the potential impacts and benefits.

O’Brien:

• Regarding Class VI wells, there are a number of states right now that are dealing with a primacy issue, or who has the primary enforcement responsibility for underground injection control. Determining primacy will be key to moving forward with geological storage.

 

Q: What are some products that capture carbon dioxide?

Amador:

• Two examples are aviation fuels and building materials, including cement. Both these industries are challenging to decarbonize, so using captured carbon dioxide for these purposes would allow these sectors to reduce their emissions from fossil fuels. These products using carbon dioxide can also help finance the development of direct air capture.

Wilcox:

• Building materials lock in the carbon creating more permanent storage versus utilization that re-releases carbon into the atmosphere. There are also opportunities to engineer the materials to be stronger and last longer. Using a carbonate versus a sand or gravel increases the reflectivity of the material, which can have a cooling effect versus asphalt, which absorbs heat.

Lebling:

• Concrete aggregate is durable and one of the few products produced globally and at a gigaton scale, making it a promising sequestration pathway.

O’Brien:

• The Illinois Sustainable Technology Center has projects where carbon dioxide is being used to grow algae, which is harvested and used for animal feed and biochar soil amendments.
• The center is also working with a small business to incorporate carbon dioxide in dimethyl carbonate, which is used in batteries for electric cars.

 

Q: Ten years from now, what do you think the landscape of direct air capture will look like? Are there new applications? What barriers have been removed?

Lebling:

• In the near term, the United States needs to build out a variety of different technologies in different locations with different energy sources to understand which systems work.
• In terms of scale, tens of millions of tons of removal will be needed.

O’Brien:

• Direct air capture and traditional capture are starting to merge. This means that industrial facilities are going to employ traditional capture and also be surrounded by direct air capture units. Direct air capture is what is going to eventually allow companies to go carbon negative.

Amador:

• I would love to see us deploying direct air capture at the tens of millions of ton scale.
• It is not only about scale, but also the use of a diversity of technologies to drive down costs and drive technological breakthroughs.
• It will also be important to have defined models of community engagement, gain a better understanding of impacts on the ground, and have longer-term markets or incentives to drive scaling up.

Wilcox:

• If the United States is not at millions of tons in the next decade, we are in trouble.
• Success will depend on where and how direct air capture projects are sited.
• The selective chemistry that captures carbon dioxide will be inhibited if there are other contaminants in the air, so direct air capture will also have the benefit of removing harmful toxins like particulate matter, sulfur oxides, and nitrogen oxides. Direct air capture facilities can be seen as air scrubbers that are cleaning the air in multiple ways.

 

Compiled by Christina Pelliccio and edited for clarity and length. This is not a transcript.