The cost of removing large quantities of CO2 from the air will fall in the medium term, but not as much as previously hoped.
The cost of removing large quantities of CO2 from the air will fall in the medium term, but not as much as previously hoped. This is the conclusion reached by ETH researchers on the basis of new calculations. Efforts to reduce carbon emissions should therefore continue at pace, says the research team.
Switzerland plans to reduce its net carbon emissions to zero by no later than 2050. To achieve this, it will need to drastically reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. In its climate strategy, the Swiss government acknowledges that some of these emissions, particularly in agriculture and industry, are difficult or impossible to avoid. Swiss climate policy therefore envisages actively removing 5 million tonnes of CO2 from the air and permanently storing it underground. By way of comparison, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that up to 13 billion tonnes of CO2 will need to be removed from the atmosphere every year from 2050.
These targets will be hard to achieve unless ways can be found to reduce the cost of direct air capture (DAC) technologies. ETH spin-off Climeworks operates a plant in Iceland that currently captures 4,000 tonnes of CO2 a year, at a cost per tonne of between 1,000 and 1,300 dollars. But how quickly can these costs come down as deployment increases?
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