Direct Air Capture

We have an air carbon dioxide problem, too much of it. Wouldn't it be great if we could just... pull it out? Welcome to the world of DAC (Direct Air Capture) technologies

Good news first, we can do it and are in fact doing it

Bad news, it's ungodly expensive

Expensive

Its $1 000 per ton CO₂ when you buy it yourself from climeworks

That doesn't tell you anything so let's put it in context

How much to remove the 37 150 000 000 ton CO₂ released world wide in 2022?

Let's see, carry the two, ignore that and slap on 3 more zeroes. Wow Big Number!

Or in other words about; 37% of world GDP in that same year (so of everything produced about a third of it would be DAC)

But there is hope!

Learning

Humans are amazing, we can learn. Do more with less, and follow Wright's law

Which tells us that as the production doubles, the cost is reduced at some rough percentag

Currently we got about 10 000 ton CO₂ of DAC. So to reach the 2022 numbers we can double that 21 times

That leaves "some percentag" where we can look at other learning rates and find about 8 - 15% of cost reduction per doubling of production (Coal Power 8%, Wind Power 12%, Gas Power 15%)

So if we scale DAC to handle 2022 carbon dioxide release

Or in GDP & Gasoline

For another comparision EU Carbon Permits were $90 per ton CO₂ 2022

Punchline

If it's like gas power then DAC will save us all. If it's like coal power then DAC will be a nich tool to be used when nothing else can

It's probably more like coal