Part 1: Tackling the trillion tonnes. Deep dive on 'what will it take to scale-up modular direct air capture technology to a gigatonne scale' research article
Carbon purchase agreements, dactories, and supply-chain innovation. Direct air capture has a long way to go but the path to scale has been partially paved by what we can learn from recent history
This past week I passed a big milestone in my academic career (I can’t quite believe I’m writing that) and my first peer-reviewed article was published. To be honest, I had no intention of writing the article. It was purely the prompt by the Frontiers in Climate team reaching out which put the wheels in motion to put my still developing mental ideas into words. (And actually the comments I received on the drafts I’d credit with subsequently starting this blog).
The aptly timed, Stripe sponsored research topic titled ‘Scaling-Up Negative Emissions: The Power of Leveraging Policy, Philanthropy, Purchasing and Investment’ gave plenty of room for authors to articulate current gaps in facilitating and catalysing the deployment of carbon removal solutions. The 3,000 word limit however, did not. The domain focus my company and I have been working on in the last 18 months is a modular direct air capture (DAC) carbon removal technology, hence the focus of the article on the practical considerations at play to catalyse a globally consequential modular DAC industry. This piece is the first in a series of blog posts exploring and building on the various sections of the article:
Tackling the Trillion Tonnes
Lessons From the Laws
The Chicken and Egg Conundrum
REAP Rewards
“Increasingly broad consensus exists within the scientific community with respect to the necessity of widespread carbon removal to limit temperature rise…where all pathways that limit global warming to 1.5°C with limited or no overshoot project the use of CDR on the order of up to 1,000 GtCO2, that is 1 trillion tonnes of carbon dioxide, over the twenty-first century.”
The scientific arithmetic of carbon removal has been baked into climate models for a number of years, and this is increasingly being recognised in the policy world - especially after coming to prominence in the IPCC’s 2018 Special Report. What is less clear, especially for nascent engineered carbon removal solutions like DAC, is the best path forward, and how to (and who should) pay for it.
“To put the scale of the challenge further into perspective, to scale-up from 9,000 tonnes of CO2/year in 2020 to a capture capacity of 1 billion tonnes (Gt) of CO2/year in 2050, i.e., to grow by 111,111 times in 30 years, will represent a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 47.3%.”
Creating a brand new market with a brand new type of technology like modular direct air capture is inherently difficult. Bringing solar or wind power to market with regards to commercial competitiveness was challenging and took a number of decades, but there were already existing markets and a mature use case for its final product, aka electricity. The same cannot be said for the state of the current carbon removal market. Economics 101 dictates that the supply component to the scaling of modular DAC to 1 billion tonnes of CO2/year will not materialise without sufficient demand, and that’s assuming scaling supply of DAC capacity by nearly 50% per year for three decades is a feasible proposition given supply-chain, know-how and multiple other lingering question marks.
“While numerous studies have focused on the techno-economic feasibility of DAC technology…this perspective explores the fundamental considerations around what it will take in practise to scale-up DAC to the gigatonne scale.”
Plenty has previously been said of techno-economics, policy developments and the necessary technical advances to facilitate the emergence of a DAC industry at scale. Maybe the industry is not quite there yet, but I believe there is insufficient attention on practical considerations of scaling a technology like modular DAC to a climate consequential position. Who will produce said millions of modules? What will the supply-chains look like? What business model innovations can be applied to move the industry forward? I’ve not heard these questions asked in the context of direct air capture and I think they deserve at least some consideration.
Further, I am personally under no illusions (seemingly unlike some in the DAC industry) as to the challenges to go from where we are today to where we need to be to start making even a dent in the climate crisis and to stabilise, and hopefully reduce, global temperatures. There is a long way to go regarding core technological maturity (sorbent performance, thermodynamic optimisation, etc) to support modular DAC technology in shifting down the cost curve, and broaden the total addressable market (TAM) away from niche applications today at ~US$600/tonne to the ‘north star’ of ~US$100/tonne. We will not get to that position without a comprehensive approach. An approach which takes us DAC and carbon removal practitioners away from our siloes, to one contemplating a suite of variables - particularly drawing on lessons from recent history in tangential industries and technologies to facilitate the development of modular DAC.
The remainder of this series will cover the main body of the article and my concluding thoughts. In particular, this focused on three key practical considerations, irrespective of the state of development of the core DAC technology, to scale-up modular DAC to a gigatonne scale:
“• Lessons from the laws: potential for DAC cost and performance improvement using examples of historical innovation and “learning by doing” to move down the cost-curve;
• Chicken or egg: the barriers to scaling-up manufacturing and supply-chain capacity in the absence of demand-side drivers for DAC technology; and
• REAP rewards: resilience and efficiency aligned policies (REAP) developing integrated yet resilient supply chains, addressing resource constraints, and supporting the scale-up of a globally consequential DAC industry.”
As pleasantly surprised as I was in how the article articulated this thesis in such a concise manner, I’m looking forward to venturing deeper into these three areas in this blog. Stay tuned for the next part of the series as I explore what lessons we can take from historical observations in the scale-up of tangential technologies (solar PV, lithium-ion batteries) to accelerate carbon removal pathways and avert a climate catastrophe. For those who haven’t already, subscribe below to receive it directly in your inbox!
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Excited for this!