Earlier this summer, a Harvard researcher said he can potentially pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere for as little as $100 per metric ton. The news reinvigorated many people who had resigned themselves to an ever-warming planet. The announcement also received push back from some scientists and environmentalists who fear creation of a “moral hazard” if experimentation undermines the political will to halt emissions and the subsequent technology turns out to not work well enough to halt global warming.
Nevertheless, money is already flowing into this “negative emission technology” research. Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and others are supporting at least three demonstration projects — in Iceland, British Columbia and Switzerland — that strive to take carbon out of the air, and more investment is on the way. The U.S. tax code has also improved the risk profile of carbon sequestration projects in the United States with new Section 45Q tax credits offering up to $50 per metric ton and lifting a pre-existing annual cap on emissions.
Until recently, it was believed carbon sequestration would involve industrial locations that produce concentrated amounts of carbon emissions (such as power and heavy industrial plants) and then pump the carbon underground where it could be stored with rocks. The concept of air carbon capture implies a much larger degree of flexibility for customers and companies, somewhat analogous to the flexibility and utility of rooftop solar over centralized commercial solar farms.
At the root of the problem is cost. For air capture technology to be affordable without slowing the economic activity that higher energy costs would create, costs will have to fall at least 10 times from current day experiments.