Questions About DAC? We’ve Got Answers

Baby’s First Earth Day

By Erica Dodds, Chief Operating Officer

Earth Day is always an opportunity to reflect on the sustainability of our individual and systemic actions and to think about what we’d like to see change in the coming year. This year, I’m feeling extra reflective as my 3-month-old, Ari, experiences his first Earth Day.

As a new parent, I find that I’m always imagining my baby’s future. What will it be like when Ari starts walking to school on his own? When he starts to have sleepovers with friends? When he gets his first job? Has his own family?

Working in the climate space, as I do, the backdrop of these daydreams is always the climate. Will there be days when Ari can’t walk to school safely because the air is toxic with wildfire smoke? Will those days be more frequent than they are now? Will he be worried about the future of our climate? And if so, will he choose a job — as I did — working for a safer future?

My work with F4CR has always been focused on creating a safe and healthy climate for “future generations,” but until this year that concept was never concrete to me. This year, as I imagine the next dozen Earth Days, I’m thinking about the future I’d like to see for Ari, his peers, and their future children. Here’s what I’m dreaming of:

When Ari is a small child, the world will look largely like it does now. We’ll continue seeing and fearing extreme weather events, reading alarming (and alarmist) headlines, and calculating our individual carbon footprints to try to do our parts. As parents, my partner and I will cultivate in Ari a love of nature. He will be aware of concepts like sustainability and mitigation and will feel a sense of personal responsibility for the world around him. He may absorb some of the fear about climate change that permeates the air we breathe. But things will shift.

As Ari gets older, I imagine that the tenor of climate news will change. Alarmist headlines will become hopeful. Personal responsibility will shift to collective responsibility. Ari will still feel that he must care for our earth, but he’ll also know that we must hold powerful industries and corporations accountable for doing their part. Eco-anxiety will lighten as our global community and decision makers work toward climate restoration. New fields of climate restoration solutions will be developed and will grow, bringing hope and inspiration to the next generation of workers.

By the time Ari is in high school (in 2036, for anyone counting), Earth Day will become a true celebration of the progress we’ve made towards climate restoration. There will be more and ongoing work to be done, but we will be on the path towards a safe and healthy climate by 2050 (which is, of course, F4CR’s mission). By the time Ari starts college, there will be a wealth of job opportunities in the climate solution space, but his decision about whether to work in that area won’t be driven by fear.

This Earth Day, I’m dreaming of a future where today’s children will be free to build their futures based on their passions rather than their concerns. I hope you’ll join me in working for a positive climate future for our children.

Solution Series: Direct Air Capture

At F4CR, we’re often asked, “What are the solutions that can restore the climate?” This is a surprisingly hard question to answer, given that:

1. The field of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) is very new and most solutions haven’t yet been studied in detail,
2. Each solution has unique benefits and drawbacks, and
3. There are few resources that compare different CDR approaches to one another in an easily digestible way.

Over the next nine months, we will attempt to answer this question (and more!) as they relate to nine categories of CDR solutions. In month 1 of our new Solution Series, we examine the potential of Direct Air Capture (DAC) to contribute to climate restoration. Our recently released DAC White Paper looks in greater detail at DAC’s climate restoration potential in terms of durability, financeability, scalability, and equity. This blog post gives a brief overview of some key points.

What is direct air capture?

Direct air capture refers to technologies that use a chemical approach to capture CO2 from ambient air. It’s different from carbon capture and storage (CCS), which captures emissions at a point-source like a smokestack. We are focusing on DAC because it has the capacity to address the legacy emissions already present in our atmosphere, rather than being limited to offsetting current emissions.

Can DAC restore the climate?

DAC holds potential as a climate restoration solution as it can be durable, financeable, scalable, and equitable, if developed and deployed thoughtfully.

Durability: Typically, technological CDR solutions like DAC only address one side of the carbon removal + carbon storage/use equation. DAC refers to a method of removing CO2 from the air, but that captured CO2 can then be used in any number of ways. Ultimately it is the use of the CO2 that determines its durability, so DAC does not inherently have a durability score. Some uses of CO2 are highly durable (e.g., pumping it into underground rock formations where it binds with the rock), and others are not (e.g., using the CO2 to carbonate sodas).

Financeability: A learning-by-doing approach, similar to what was applied to driving down the cost of solar energy, can be used to further decrease the cost of DAC while being supported by early policy and initiatives. In recent years, DAC plants have increased in number and scale, and investments in DAC from governments and companies have risen in turn. There is also an opportunity for polluters to take on a substantial share of the cost of DAC as a means of cleaning up the mess of excess CO2 for which they’re responsible.

Scalability: One of the key constraints in scaling DAC is its high energy needs. Locating facilities next to excess energy from waste heat streams, wind, and solar can help curtail DAC’s energy footprint. Simultaneously, R&D is ramping up to reduce DAC’s energy needs through innovation.

Equity: DAC can be implemented equitably, but doing so requires careful consideration of risks and participation of potentially impacted communities. To be equitable, DAC project developers need to work hand-in-hand with local and at-risk communities to ensure they are aware of the potential benefits, burdens, and tradeoffs while deciding on environmental justice safeguards to protect against any unforeseen circumstances. Additionally, allowing the community to have the final decision in project implementation is essential to adhere to the equity principle. DAC’s equitable deployment can be advanced by prioritizing projects that can bring benefit to these communities through job creation, reducing air pollutants, or allocating a portion of the profits to support the community.

In mobilizing the deployment of DAC, it is our responsibility as advocates to work together with a diverse group of stakeholders, acknowledging the concerns and risks that are possible while amplifying the non-climate benefits DAC can provide. We can support the scaling up of DAC by educating ourselves and others while advocating for the increased R&D, financial investment, and policies needed for safe and equitable deployment.

Interested in learning more about DAC? Download our DAC White Paper and register for our DAC expert panel on April 26 at 1:00 pm Pacific.

IPCC Report confirms that carbon dioxide removal is required to limit warming to 1.5°C

You may have heard Working Group III of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recently released a groundbreaking report confirming that all pathways to meet the Paris Agreement goals of limiting warming to 1.5°C require gigaton-scale carbon dioxide removal (CDR).

Working Group III includes a UN-convened panel of 195 member governments established in 1988 and has been the leading group in framing climate policy around the world. In its latest report, Working Group III lays out the immediate steps for combining CO2 reductions (like replacing energy sources with renewables) and removals (like using direct air capture to pull CO2 out of the air) to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. The report speaks to the long-term potential that scaling up CDR has on reducing climate impacts. Large-scale CDR can address the legacy emissions that will still be in the atmosphere even after fossil fuels are completely phased out and the world reaches net-zero emissions.

The report also highlights that CDR must not be a substitute for deep emissions reductions (see the moral hazard argument). Rather, it can play a complementary role in further reducing emissions in the near-term, counterbalancing emissions from hard-to-transition sectors (like aviation), and achieving net-negative emissions in the long-term. The report also notes that we must urgently phase out fossil fuels in order to sustain life on this planet.

A range of CDR solutions will be needed

Notably, the report mentions various solutions that could remove CO2, all of which we will be featuring in our Solution Series. Like our Solution Series, the report highlights how options differ from one another based on processes, timescales for durability, cost, risks and impacts, co-benefits, trade offs and spillover effects, and the technology readiness level. Constraints on deploying these methods will include the rate of emissions reductions, political preferences, and social acceptability.

CDR implementation requires social acceptance and equity considerations

Building social acceptance of a CDR solution requires:

• research and education on the potential climate and non-climate risks and benefits of implementation,
• building trust with stakeholders and local communities, and
• showcasing the way CDR works in tandem with mitigation, rather than detracting from it.

These factors emphasize the need for procedural justice processes and distributive justice to remain central to any project design or implementation. These principles and processes have been baked into climate restoration through the addition of our fourth pillar of Equity.

To promote distributive justice, local and regional CDR projects will need to consider air and water quality, impacts on human health, energy needs, land-use, and ecological integrity to ensure that the burdens of these projects are equitably distributed. To promote procedural justice, implementers will need to engage with local communities to ensure the scale up of CDR is done responsibly. The report confirms the importance of bottom-up and community-driven strategies for equitable carbon removal projects.

Finally, the report emphasizes that the engagement of civil society organizations and the public will be important in shaping CDR policy and deployment. This confirms the approach we have taken at the Foundation for Climate Restoration through our Local Chapters Program and Youth Leaders for Climate Restoration Program to engage with a wide array of stakeholders and mobilize the public. Deploying CDR at the gigaton scale will require that the global community demonstrate that climate restoration is the future we want. Now is the time for us to partner together to educate, advocate, and build the ecosystem needed to create a habitable planet for each other and future generations.