Co2 Capture from the Air: Technology Assessment and Implications for Climate Policy

It is physically possible to capture CO2 directly from air and immobilize it in geological structures. Today, there are no large-scale technologies that achieve air capture at reasonable cost. Yet, several strong arguments suggest that it will be comparatively easy to develop practical air capture technologies on the timescales relevant to climate policy [1, 2]. Moreover, we argue that air capture has important structural advantages over more conventional mitigation technologies which suggest that, in the long-run, air capture may be cheaper than some other methods of achieving deep reductions in net CO2 emissions.