I find it impressive that people use CAT to justify a fatalistic attitude.
You can compare the predictions year by year and see the "current policies" values drop every year, from "3.1-3.7" in 2017 to "2.5-2.9" in 2021. Do those also depend on DAC?
Also, as far as I understand, the technology exists (in the sense of "there are plants already running") and scales horizontally, it's just currently too expensive by a factor of around 10 compared to current carbon pricing. Expecting general industrial progress, economies of scale, and an increase in carbon pricing to bring this into alignment doesn't seem unreasonable to me.
> I find it impressive that people use CAT to justify a fatalistic attitude.
I guess looking at that map of the world showing responses ranging from "Insufficient" to "Critically Insufficient" fills you with a warm fuzzy sense of optimism for the future.
When you say "there are plants already running" - you must mean the demonstration projects that produce CO2 for soft drinks (that will go back into the atmosphere)[0]
> There are currently 18 direct air capture plants operating worldwide, capturing almost 0.01 Mt CO2/year...In the Net Zero Emissions by 2050 Scenario, direct air capture is scaled up to capture almost 60 Mt CO2/year by 2030.
So great, we only need to increase by a factor of 6000 in 7 years.
> Plans for a total of eleven DAC facilities are now in advanced development. If all of these planned projects were to go ahead, DAC deployment would reach around 5.5 Mt CO2 by 2030; this is more than 700 times today’s capture rate, but less than 10% of the level of deployment needed to get on track with the Net Zero Scenario.
^This is your optimistic scenario: IFF every single one of these planned facilities are actually built, we'll have 10% of requirements.
You can compare the predictions year by year and see the "current policies" values drop every year, from "3.1-3.7" in 2017 to "2.5-2.9" in 2021. Do those also depend on DAC?
Also, as far as I understand, the technology exists (in the sense of "there are plants already running") and scales horizontally, it's just currently too expensive by a factor of around 10 compared to current carbon pricing. Expecting general industrial progress, economies of scale, and an increase in carbon pricing to bring this into alignment doesn't seem unreasonable to me.