Direct Air Capture: The Lazy Way to Net-Zero?

This article examines direct air capture (DAC) as a carbon-removal strategy that mimics the process of trees by pulling CO₂ directly from the air and storing it underground or converting it into usable materials. While DAC offers advantages, such as accurate accounting, flexible siting, and the ability to address past emissions, it faces major challenges, including extremely high costs, massive energy and water requirements, material constraints, and lower efficiency compared to capturing emissions at the source. Large-scale deployment would demand huge amounts of green power, infrastructure, and sorbent production that do not yet exist. Despite these limitations, DAC remains central in many net-zero pathways because it is far more land-efficient than nature-based solutions and could remove up to several billion tonnes of CO₂ annually by 2050. Support from governments and the oil and gas industry is accelerating investment, driven by the recognition that emissions will continue for decades and negative-emissions technologies are needed. Still, critics warn that relying on DAC risks delaying real emissions cuts. Even so, the technology is expected to become one of several carbon-removal tools used at scale as costs fall and deployment grows.