Carbon Removal Is Falling Behind. One Number Can Fix It
“If we don't invest today, we're just not going to even have it available to us in time,” says Jen Wilcox at the US Department of Energy on the latest Zero.
Construction equipment during a groundbreaking ceremony at the Occidental Petroleum and 1PointFive Direct Air Capture (DAC) plant in Ector County, Texas, on April 28. Upon completion, the DAC plant will be the largest of its kind in the world.
Photographer: Jordan Vonderhaar/BloombergClimate policy discussions tend to circle important numbers — 2050. 1.5 degrees. Net zero. Here’s one more to add to the mix: $100. That’s the cost per ton of carbon that the carbon-removal industry needs to reach in order to be competitive. Getting there is so critical to US climate goals that the country is investing at least $3.5 billion in the fledging sector.
“We are estimating that if we invest and get to the scale of millions of tons of removal per year… we will get down that cost curve with a target of $100 per ton,” says Jen Wilcox, head of the US Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management, on the Zero podcast.