DAC Companies Pivot on High Costs, Funding Cuts
Companies that banked on the promise of pulling CO2 directly out of the air are now looking at a range of other value propositions.
Direct air capture (DAC) developers are retooling around hybrid business models that blend carbon removal with fuels, power, water and other outputs to survive the sector’s next phase.
This follows waning government funding in the US and increasing selectivity from investors amid technical hurdles and policy uncertainty.
DAC has long promised to do what point-source carbon capture could not: pull CO2 directly from the ambient air, independent of industrial smokestacks or geography.
But that ambition comes at a steep cost. Unlike conventional carbon capture and storage (CCS), which extracts CO2 from flue gases containing a 5%-15% concentration, DAC systems must separate it from the atmosphere, where the concentration is just 0.04%.
That thermodynamic penalty makes DAC far more energy intensive, and expensive.
Author's summary: DAC companies shift focus due to high costs.