We also aimed to show the ranges wherever possible. For simplicity, we chose an average of the two estimates to show on our charts. The report presents low and high estimates for each category. It also ranked how well each technology is developed, on a scale of 1-9. We got our data from the 2022 IPCC report, which compiled data from dozens of carbon removal studies that estimated the cost, capacity, and storage duration for each carbon removal idea. There are dozens of other ideas for removing carbon from the atmosphere, and they’re all a little different when it comes to cost, readiness level, capacity, and storage duration. So while the goals of direct air capture and tree-based carbon removal are the same, they are really different approaches - and they’re not even the only ones. When direct air capture facilities put carbon back underground, that carbon could stay there for 10,000 years or more. Technologies like direct air capture allow us to do the exact opposite: to put that carbon back into the slow carbon cycle where it came from. As we burned coal and oil from the ground, we were inadvertently pulling massive amounts of ancient carbon out of the slow carbon cycle and into our atmosphere, leading to the climate crisis we’re in today. Normally, it takes up to 200 million years for carbon in this cycle to move between rocks, soil, ocean, and atmosphere, but humans short-circuited this cycle when we started digging up fossil fuels. ![]() This is all the carbon that’s stored deep in the Earth. If you want to remove carbon for a really long time, your best bet is the slow carbon cycle. But the choice is not nearly as clear-cut as it might seem. Given those arguments, trees seem like the obviously better approach for carbon removal. Trees, on the other hand, are pretty cheap, and they’re self-powered by the sun. Critics of direct air capture think there are way better uses for all that energy and money. (Keep in mind, CO2 makes up a much smaller proportion of the atmosphere than gin does in a martini.) That’s part of the reason why carbon-removing machines have to rely on energy-intensive chemical reactions and processes, which come with a pretty hefty price tag. To better understand why pulling carbon out of the atmosphere is so difficult, imagine being given a martini and being asked to somehow extract all the gin. The direct air capture industry does exist, with a few facilities up and running today, but experts say it still has a ways to go. They’re ready to go compared to direct air capture, which is only a few decades old. Trees are also a tried-and-true method for removing carbon. These two approaches are often viewed as technology versus nature. The other idea is to simply plant trees! After all, trees have naturally sequestered carbon for millions of years. One is direct air capture, which involves big factories that suck in tons of CO2 from the atmosphere, chemically concentrate it, and store it deep in the ground. So how do we remove all that carbon? There are two carbon removal ideas that have really captured the conversation. To meet the world’s climate goals, we would need to do this on a massive scale - anywhere from 440 billion to 1.1 trillion metric tons before the end of the century. ![]() The challenge is that no one can agree on the best way to do it.Ĭarbon removal is a catch-all term for anything that people do that pulls CO2 out of the air and stores it somewhere else. ![]() But many of those plans also require something else: sucking carbon out of the atmosphere. The successful plans all require serious emissions cuts - not surprising, as humans have put more than 1.7 trillion metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere over the past three centuries. This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.Įvery few years, the world’s top scientists come up with hundreds of different scenarios, all aimed at limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels.
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