It may not be possible to get the literal cost of DAC to $10 / tonne - there are some interesting thermodynamic analyses which suggest skepticism (eg https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/108/51/20428.full.pdf … ).
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But there are nonetheless three reasons to be optimistic: (1) research has already led to substantial cost reductions (arguably a factor 3 or so), and may well go further with more work;
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(2) carbon intensity (CO2 / GDP) has been dropping by 18% per decade. If it continues, then as a fraction of GDP, the cost of capturing CO2 will go down commensurately; and
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(3) large, wealthy countries like France and Sweden have CO2 emissions about 4 times lower, per capita, than the US. With similar approaches, the total cost of capturing CO2 in the US could be reduced several-fold.
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Of course, points (2) and (3) are intertwined, not independent!
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Does this mean a Clean Air Act priced solution (as a fraction of GDP) possible? Not yet. But it does seem like a real possibility.
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There are also many potential problems - in particular, the cost estimates may simply be much too optimistic. More research needed on this and other points!
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Finally, a point to emphasize: none of this means DAC is the right approach. Rather, I did this as a kind of bounding, worst-case analysis to see just how bad the problem is. In fact, there may well be much better approaches than DAC, and combinations of approaches.
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I often chat with people who fatalistically see climate as an insoluble collective action problem. I'm reminded of people I met growing up who thought nuclear war (or acid rain) was inevitably going to kill us.
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There can be a kind of hubris to pessimism, a failure to account for human ingenuity, & to think that if we can't see a full solution now, then one must be impossible. This doesn't mean one should just hope for the best; it does mean valuing small progress & imperfect solutions!
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To me, it seems like direct atmospheric carbon capture is running seriously uphill just because of the densities. The thermodynamic efforts of trees to capture carbon seem instructive here — they develop 10 bar of osmotic pressure just to supply water, of which about 90% is lost
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