A new study, conducted by an international team of researchers and co-led by Assistant Professor Morgan Edwards of the La Follette School of Public Affairs at UW–Madison and Ph.D. student Zachary Thomas at the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies, found that direct air capture with carbon storage (DACCS) could help to combat climate change if the emerging technology develops at a rate similar to other technologies that grew quickly in the past.
According to the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the technology, which uses chemicals to capture the heat-trapping gas directly from the air, could remove nearly five gigatonnes of carbon dioxide by 2050 if it follows the path of rapid-growth technologies such as solar photovoltaics; however, it might only remove 0.2 gigatonnes per year if it scales at a similar rate to slow-growth technologies such as natural gas pipelines.
Study coauthors will share additional insights in the new edition of the State of Carbon Dioxide Removal report, launching on June 4.
This research is part of a broader portfolio of work on climate and energy technologies, or climate-tech, funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, which focuses on combining data on startups and investments with systems models to better understand the role of innovation in shaping climate outcomes.
