Direct air capture of CO2 and climate stabilization: A model based assessment

By Cheng Chen, Massimo Tavoni. Climatic Change, 2013

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This paper provides a novel assessment of the role of direct air capture of CO2 from ambient air (DAC) on the feasibility of achieving stringent climate stabilization. We use the WITCH energy-economy-climate model to investigate the long term prospects of DAC, implementing a technological specification based on recent estimates by the American Physical Society (APS 2011). Assuming global cooperation on a stringent climate policy we find that: (1) DAC is deployed only late in century, after other low carbon options, though at a very significant scale; (2) DAC has an impact on the marginal and total abatement costs (reducing them) and on the timing of mitigation (postponing it); (3) DAC also allows for a prolonged use of oil, with a positive welfare impact for energy exporting countries. Finally, we assess the role of DAC in a less than ideal climate policy by exploring its potential for engaging energy exporting countries in climate mitigation activities by means of a “clean oil” market in which oil exporters can sell oil decarbonized via DAC.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Global and Planetary Change, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/96c9dd375f3a9ade30a1a90a41f782398b7bf403

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Citations in the corpus

Fast growing research on negative emissions (2017, background): “Only very recently have a growing number of scenarios considered other NEToptions (Wise et al 2009, House et al 2011, Chen and Tavoni 2013, Fuss et al 2013, Humpenöder et al 2014, Strefler et al 2015, Kreidenweis et al 2016).”
On the History and Future of 100% Renewable Energy Systems Research (2022, background): “in the order of 20-30 GtCO2/yr in the second half of this century for ambitious climate targets [144], [381].”
Quantifying the potential scale of mitigation deterrence from greenhouse gas removal techniques (2020, background): “Chen and Tavoni (2013) model DAC alongside BECCS, and find 130Gt-C DAC cumulative removals alongside 80Gt-C from BECCS.”
Beyond “Net-Zero”: A Case for Separate Targets for Emissions Reduction and Negative Emissions (2019, background): “Similarly the inclusion of DAC as a tradable contribution to measures of fuel carbon intensity, for example in the California Air Resources Board system, risks slowing the adoption of e.g., electric vehicles.”
Negative emissions—Part 1: Research landscape and synthesis (2018, background): “At the same time, modelling teams have started with the implementation of larger portfolios of NET options beyond BECCS (e.g. Chen and Tavoni 2013, Marcucci et al 2017, Streffler et al 2018).”
A Review of Criticisms of Integrated Assessment Models and Proposed Approaches to Address These, through the Lens of BECCS (2019, background): “, [77]) that focus on expanding the set of NETs beyond BECCS—for example direct air capture—but these are still relatively uncommon.”
Negative emissions—Part 3: Innovation and upscaling (2018, background): “An integrated assessment modeling study found a primary impact of DACCS is that it extends the use of oil under climate policy (Chen and Tavoni 2013). Another IAM study found that the availability of DACCS can substitute for BECCS to achieve 1.5 ◦C targets (Marcucci et al 2017). Another source of de”
Negative emissions—Part 2: Costs, potentials and side effects (2018, methodology): “These studies looked at afforestation and reforestation (AR) (Humpenöder et al 2014, Kreidenweis et al 2016, Tavoni et al 2007, Edmonds et al 2013, Reilly et al 2012, Popp et al 2017, Rose et al 2012, Calvin et al 2014), enhanced weathering (EW) and direct air carbon capture and storage (DACCS) (Ma”