Direct Air Capture: Sci-Fi or Solution?
Climate-Positive Shopping
🌱
Earn carbon credits on every euro you spend
Same prices as direct · 25,000+ partnered stores.
It’s real. It works. It’s expensive. It’s necessary. And it’s nowhere near enough yet.
Dear IMPT Family,
In the Swiss Alps, there’s a machine built by a company called Climeworks. It looks industrial and ordinary — boxes, vents, pipes. But it does something that sounded impossible 15 years ago: it sucks CO₂ directly out of the air.
Not from an exhaust pipe. Not from a coal plant. Just from the atmosphere. Then it compresses that CO₂ and either buries it underground or sells it to companies that use it in products.
This is called direct air capture (DAC). And while it sounds like science fiction, it’s real. It’s just slow, expensive, and nowhere near the scale we need.
Here’s the honest breakdown.
🔥 Key Highlights 🔥
1️⃣ DAC machines extract CO₂ directly from the air at 10,000–50,000 ppm concentration
2️⃣ Current cost: €100–300 per tonne of CO₂ captured, down from €600 in 2013
3️⃣ Global DAC capacity today: ~10,000 tonnes per year (humanity emits 37 billion)
4️⃣ DAC requires massive energy input — only works with renewable power
5️⃣ Scaling will take 20+ years and trillions in capital
6️⃣ But DAC is the only technology that can remove carbon from emissions we can’t easily avoid
1️⃣ How DAC Actually Works
There are two main technical approaches. Both are based on clever chemistry.
Solid sorbent capture: A fan pulls air through a filter made of porous material (often a polymer) that chemically bonds to CO₂. When the filter is saturated with CO₂, you apply heat (usually 80–100°C) and the CO₂ releases as a concentrated gas. You compress it and store it or use it.
Liquid solvent capture: Air passes through a liquid (usually an alkaline solution) that absorbs CO₂. You then heat the solution to drive out the CO₂. Same result, different chemistry.
Both work. Both have trade-offs. Solid sorbents are simpler mechanically but require precise temperature control. Liquid solvents are more flexible but require careful chemical handling.
The key innovation: concentrating dilute atmospheric CO₂ (410 ppm) into dense, compressible CO₂ gas. That concentration step is what makes capture possible. And it’s energy-intensive.
2️⃣ The Energy Problem
Here’s the catch that’s often glossed over: capturing and compressing CO₂ requires energy. Lots of it.
A rule of thumb: you need about 200–300 kWh of heat and 50–100 kWh of electricity to capture one tonne of CO₂ via DAC. For comparison, one tonne of CO₂ contains about 6 MWh of chemical energy. So you’re spending 20–30% of the energy in the captured carbon just to grab it from the air.
If you use fossil fuel energy to capture carbon, the math breaks. You emit more CO₂ in the energy than you capture. You need renewable electricity. Specifically, you need cheap renewable electricity.
This is why DAC plants are being built in Iceland (geothermal + hydro = cheap, clean power) and why they’re planned for North Africa (abundant solar). The energy source is half the economics.
3️⃣ The Cost Trajectory
DAC was impossibly expensive. In 2009, first-generation machines cost €600+ per tonne. Today it’s €100–300. The benchmark target is €100 by 2030, maybe €50 by 2050.
This cost reduction is coming from:
- Learning curve: Scaling production teaches engineers how to make DAC cheaper.
- Electricity price: As renewable electricity gets cheaper, the energy cost per tonne drops.
- Integration: Some DAC projects are combining capture with industrial uses (cement, chemicals) that offset capture costs.
But even at €100 per tonne, DAC is 10x more expensive than forest carbon projects (€10–30) and 5x more than renewable energy offsets (€20). It’s the expensive tool in the climate toolkit.
4️⃣ What Happens to the CO₂?
Once you’ve captured it, you have two options:
Permanent sequestration (CCS — Carbon Capture and Storage): Compress the CO₂ to a supercritical fluid and inject it deep underground (1,200m+), where it stays for geological timescales (thousands of years). This is permanent. It’s also heavily regulated and requires suitable geology. Europe, the US, and Australia have CCS capacity. Many other regions don’t.
Utilization (CCU — Carbon Capture and Utilization): Sell the CO₂ to companies that use it. Concrete manufacturers. Beverage companies (carbonation). Chemical producers. Synthetic fuel makers. The CO₂ delays release back to the atmosphere but doesn’t permanently remove it. A plastic made from captured CO₂ still releases the CO₂ when the plastic degrades.
Most existing DAC projects use CCU because permanent storage requires specific geology and regulatory frameworks. But climatically, only permanent sequestration counts as real removal.
5️⃣ The Scale Reality
There are roughly 10 commercial DAC facilities operating globally as of 2026. Combined, they capture maybe 10,000 tonnes of CO₂ per year.
Humanity emits 37 billion tonnes per year.
To offset our current emissions with DAC alone would require 3.7 million commercial facilities the size of today’s plants. That’s obviously not happening.
To make a meaningful dent — say, removing 5% of our annual emissions (1.85 billion tonnes) by 2050 — you’d need 185,000 large DAC facilities. That’s technically possible. It would cost 50–100 trillion euros. And it would require deploying renewable energy equivalent to all global electricity generation today.
Is it doable? Technically yes. Is it practical? No. Not without dramatic cost reductions, energy abundance, and deployment at a scale we’ve never attempted.
6️⃣ Why DAC Matters Despite the Scale Problem
Here’s the honest answer: we can’t decarbonize fast enough to avoid needing DAC. Some sectors — aviation, cement, steel — are structurally hard to decarbonize. And even if we cut emissions to zero, we’re already in atmospheric overshoot (too much CO₂ to stay safe). We need removal.
DAC is one of the few technologies that can remove CO₂ from the air regardless of where it was emitted. It works in any geography. It doesn’t require the certainty of forests or the infrastructure of CCS.
This is why climate scientists take it seriously. It won’t replace emissions cuts. But it’s the only removal tool that scales without land or geological constraints.
7️⃣ The Technology Roadmap
The next decade will be critical. DAC companies are raising capital. Governments are setting targets. Companies like Microsoft and Stripe are pre-buying DAC credits to fund deployment.
The scaling challenge is real but not insurmountable:
- Costs will fall — maybe to €75–100 per tonne by 2035 as volumes scale.
- Energy will get cheaper — renewable electricity continues to fall in price.
- New chemistries will emerge — we’ll find more efficient capture materials.
- Integration will improve — DAC plants will pair with industrial processes to reduce energy use.
None of this is guaranteed. But it’s plausible.
8️⃣ Should You Buy DAC Credits Today?
DAC credits are expensive (€200–300 per tonne) and won’t exist at scale for years. If you’re buying voluntary offsets today, you’re probably better off with verified forest or renewable energy projects.
But if you’re a large company, government, or institution that wants to fund the technology’s development? DAC credits are worth considering. You’re paying premium prices to fund innovation and scaling.
IMPT and other platforms are starting to include DAC projects in their mixes. As costs fall and volumes rise, DAC will become part of the standard offset portfolio.
9️⃣ The Honest Verdict
DAC is real. It works. It’s too expensive and too small to be a solution by itself. But it’s necessary for the climate scenarios where we actually stop warming.
Think of it like renewable energy in 2005: technically proven, economically painful, necessary for the future. DAC is at that stage now. In 15 years it will be economically viable. In 30 years it will be standard.
For now: understand what it is, acknowledge its limits, and recognize that funding DAC development today is an investment in tomorrow’s climate toolkit.
Looking Ahead — The Scaling Question
The real question isn’t whether DAC can work. It’s whether we’ll deploy it fast enough. That depends on:
- Policy: Will governments mandate or fund DAC?
- Capital: Will investors keep funding when costs are high?
- Electricity: Will renewable energy scale fast enough?
- Urgency: Will societies decide removal is worth the cost?
None of these are certain. But all of them are possible.
Let’s keep building — together. 🌍💚
