Direct Air Capture: A key technology for net zero

Direct air capture plays an important and growing role in net zero pathways. Removing CO2 from the atmosphere – by capturing it directly from the air and permanently storing it – provides a way to balance emissions that are difficult to avoid, including from hard-to-abate sectors such as long-distance transport and heavy industry, as well as legacy emissions. Air-captured CO2 can also be used as a climate-neutral feedstock for a range of products that require carbon.

In the IEA Net Zero Emissions by 2050 Scenario, DAC technologies capture more than 85 Mt of CO2 in 2030 and around 980 Mt in 2050, requiring a large and accelerated scale-up from less than 0.01 MtCO2 today. Currently 18 direct air capture facilities are operating in Canada, Europe and the United States. The first large-scale plant of up to 1 MtCO2/year is in advanced development and is expected to be operating in the US by the mid-2020s.

Please join the IEA leading authors and the invited panellists Dr Julio Friedmann (Chief Scientist at Carbon Direct and Non-Resident Fellow at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University SIPA) and Dr Emily Grubert (Deputy Assistant Secretary of Office of Carbon Management, US Department of Energy, and Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and, by courtesy, of Public Policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology) to explore the growing momentum behind direct air capture, together with the opportunities and challenges for scaling up the deployment of direct air capture technologies consistent with net zero goals.