Environmental trade-offs of direct air capture technologies in climate change mitigation toward 2100

Direct air capture (DAC) is critical for achieving stringent climate targets, yet the environmental implications of its large-scale deployment have not been evaluated in this context. Performing a prospective life cycle assessment for two promising technologies in a series of climate change mitigation scenarios, we find that electricity sector decarbonization and DAC technology improvements are both indispensable to avoid environmental problem-shifting. 

Decarbonizing the electricity sector improves the sequestration efficiency, but also increases the terrestrial ecotoxicity and metal depletion levels per tonne of CO2 sequestered via DAC. These increases can be reduced by improvements in DAC material and energy use efficiencies.

DAC exhibits regional environmental impact variations, highlighting the importance of smart siting related to energy system planning and integration. DAC deployment aids the achievement of long-term climate targets, its environmental and climate performance however depend on sectoral mitigation actions, and thus should not suggest a relaxation of sectoral decarbonization targets.

Authors

PBL Authors
Vassilis Daioglou Harmen Sytze de Boer Mathijs Harmsen
Other authors
Yang Qiu
Patrick Lamers
Noah McQueen
Jennifer Wilcox
André Bardow
Sangwon Suh

Specifications

Publication title
Environmental trade-offs of direct air capture technologies in climate change mitigation toward 2100
Publication date
25 June 2022
Publication type
Article
Publication language
English
Magazine
Nature Communications
Issue
volume 13, Article number: 3635 (2022)
Product number
4975