Direct air capture gathers steam, led by tech giants

afr.com:

Global technology and e-commerce giants are driving demand for direct air capture technology to remove carbon emissions, according to Sydney-based carbon removal company, AspiraDAC. but Australian firms are lagging behind,

Direct air capture is an embryonic industry that aims to fight climate change by extracting carbon dioxide from ordinary air then storing it or making products out of it.

AspiraDAC chief executive Julian Turecek says frontrunners like Microsoft are setting the agenda with offtake agreements for early-stage direct air capture, and they are paying a premium to remove legacy emissions dating back to when their operations commenced.

The only way for a company or country to go carbon negative is to remove more CO2 from the atmosphere than it emits, Turecek says.

AspiraDAC CEO Julian Turecek: Ecommerce giants will drive the direct air capture industry 

While tech giants throw money at driving down costs and improving economies of scale, some industry experts worry that direct air capture credits will surge above $US1000 ($1540) a tonne as deployment ramps up and early adopters encounter teething issues. But it should trend down to around $US400-700 a tonne by 2030, they say.

AspiraDAC is on track to begin “sponging” carbon dioxide out of the air in 2025 to store in underground reservoirs as part of a $700,000 deal with Frontier – a $US1 billion carbon removal fund backed by Stripe, Meta, Alphabet, Shopify and McKinsey – inked last year.

AspiraDAC will capture and store 500 tonnes of carbon dioxide by 2027 at an agreed price of $US1000 a tonne under the advanced market commitment.

“The buyers of these voluntary credits are typically United States corporations,” says Rohan Gillespie, whose company Southern