DAC technology is still in development. The first commercial DAC plant only started operating in 2021, so this new and nascent technology has some way to go. Government policies and private sector initiatives are currently helping to catalyze amazing technological progress in this area. And while DAC technology will always be energy-intensive, geothermal areas like Kenya can use natural heat to supply>85% of the energy DAC requires.

For some context, one car sized DACC machine can absorb as much CO2 from air as 10 hectares / 25 acres of forest. DACC is a highly scalable solution to removing CO2 from air and it can safely lock up CO2 for millennia, which equals how long humanity’s emissions will stay in the atmosphere. DACC is integral to achieve the world’s climate goals of limit global warming to well below 2°C, which is why the world’s leading climate scientists now include it in their modelling. This is not to say that planting trees is an inadequate way of climate conservation, but rather that it should work hand in hand with DACC amongst other efforts.

DAC is indeed an expensive form of carbon removal today, costing up to $1,000 per ton of CO2 removed from the atmosphere. However, there is reliable trajectory to bring this below $100per ton of CO2 by 2030, and progressively lower beyond that. In that, DAC reflects the potential of other climate tech, such as solar PV, to become more cost-effective quickly. DAC also delivers a premium product: an exact, directly measurable amount of CO2 is removed from the air and locked up forever by turning CO2 into a rock. Many organizations see the value of this as per leading scientists’ recommendations and are very willing to pay a premium price for DAC to help push it down the cost curve.