A summit on direct air capture (DAC) of carbon dioxide at the recent European CO2 Summit saw three industry experts discuss latest moves in DAC technology.
Rob van Straten, CEO of Skytree, which captures CO2 from ambient air, said it is sufficiently proven that climate change is happening and we need to reduce CO2 levels – and the cost of doing nothing is ever increasing.
“So for decarbonisation of industries, there needs to be other sources, particularly as demand for CO2 increases, when we think of e-fuels. And demand for circular CO2 will grow within that growth,” he said.
Pól Ó Moráin, CEO at Carbon Collect, which captures CO2 directly from the atmosphere using wind-delivered air without the need for fans, said there had to be pragmatism around the roll-out of new technologies such as DAC which are inevitably more expensive at launch.
Matt Atwood, CEO of California-based Aircapture, noted that the global economy runs on carbon, all across various markets and sectors.
“We need carbon removals, but we also need new supplies of CO2. There’s a growing supply-demand gap which can be filled by technologies like DAC,” he said.
“As we deploy technologies, using DAC for utilisation and sequestration, we can drive down costs over time and leverage that to get to scale.”
Van Straten said we need all technologies and there is a place for DAC in the wider merchant CO2 space.
Listen to the whole panel session on the podcast here
To read the European CO2 Summit review – part one click here
To read the European CO2 Summit wrap up click here
