Thanks a lot for this great work ! What would be really interesting to dive a bit more could be to compare your Gigatons analysis with the potential emissions of the whole list from now to 2050 (R&D, Capex, energy etc.). As we compare with VC ROI (75% failure rate), there is no "below zero" impact when thinking about money. While thinking about carbon, the 25% succeeding have to compensate the negative impact of the 75% during 30 years I guess. Any guess ?
Thanks for the suggestion Guillaume! In order to sell carbon removal offsets from DAC or to make low-carbon or carbon-negative products, DAC companies have to use life cycle assessment (LCA) and other means of monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) to prove their processes are net carbon negative all things considered. This means that even if a DAC company fails, it will still likely have been carbon negative during its operations.
The few companies that will fail before ever operating at all will probably also have negligible emissions in terms of team flights, testing equipment, early lab energy use, etc. Given all these considerations, there's not really an expectation that some DAC companies will have to compensate for emissions from others that don't make it. One way or another, we also need to hit net zero by 2050, which will include the operations of companies not directly tied to removal offset-generating processes.
If what you say is true, then LCA analysis don't include infrastructure materials ? Let's take an example : one company build a large facility to remove carbon from the air. After 2 years, its tech is proven to be non profitable and it has to shut down. It's not possible that during only 2 years CO2 processing have been able to offset infrastructure building emissions ?
So if 75% of companies fail and leave unsuccessful techs to trash, I guess it's important to count it. And don't get me wrong, I'm not fighting against DAC but trying to get the maths right
DAC LCAs should include equipment and plant infrastructure emissions; you can read more about this under the embodied emissions category of https://science.isometric.com/protocol/direct-air-capture This is actually more conservative than many traditional LCAs that exclude equipment emissions due to generally having negligible impacts per final unit produced.
It is not fully decided how these upfront emissions will be distributed over the captured tons, but many in the industry are shifting toward actually subtracting them from the first year's removals to pay them off more quickly. This means that is a facility's construction emits 50 tons and then plant captures 100 tons per year with say 5 tons of operational emissions per year, then the plant would only be able to sell 100 - 5 - 50 = 45 tons in the first year and then 100 - 5 = 95 tons for every following year. In this case, even if the plant shut down in the second year of operating, it would have still "paid off" its upfront emissions.
Emissions from things like running headquarters, sending engineers on flights, etc. will be mostly negligible relative to emissions from operations, and these will be covered under SBTi/GHG Protocol reporting rules for companies. I imagine that at scale most DAC/CDR corporations will do their best to decarbonize operations but then maybe just use ~0.1% of so of their removal volumes to offset the rest.
This is very interesting. Some can still argue that there are other parts in LCAs that carbon (water use, etc.) but still, thanks for the comments it's very useful ! And sorry for my bad english, french entrepreneur here :)
Some of the references cited in the "Sources" tab, such as the Carbon Removers Index, contain great lists of companies working on other CDR pathways. I am just a huge fan (pun intended) of DAC!
Hi Grant, it would be amazing if we could add the technology type (solid/liquid sorbent, electrochemical etc) to the list. Should I make a start?
Hi Anna, Ryan Anderson from Parallel Carbon is expanding on this list in the MegaDAC database, which features the technologies offered by many companies and more. Check it out and feel free to contribute here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1NGV-ZW-mS5I-RfHnQG307s82DWEfXvoMdMWL7x6NaR4/edit#gid=0
Thanks a lot for this great work ! What would be really interesting to dive a bit more could be to compare your Gigatons analysis with the potential emissions of the whole list from now to 2050 (R&D, Capex, energy etc.). As we compare with VC ROI (75% failure rate), there is no "below zero" impact when thinking about money. While thinking about carbon, the 25% succeeding have to compensate the negative impact of the 75% during 30 years I guess. Any guess ?
Thanks for the suggestion Guillaume! In order to sell carbon removal offsets from DAC or to make low-carbon or carbon-negative products, DAC companies have to use life cycle assessment (LCA) and other means of monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) to prove their processes are net carbon negative all things considered. This means that even if a DAC company fails, it will still likely have been carbon negative during its operations.
The few companies that will fail before ever operating at all will probably also have negligible emissions in terms of team flights, testing equipment, early lab energy use, etc. Given all these considerations, there's not really an expectation that some DAC companies will have to compensate for emissions from others that don't make it. One way or another, we also need to hit net zero by 2050, which will include the operations of companies not directly tied to removal offset-generating processes.
If what you say is true, then LCA analysis don't include infrastructure materials ? Let's take an example : one company build a large facility to remove carbon from the air. After 2 years, its tech is proven to be non profitable and it has to shut down. It's not possible that during only 2 years CO2 processing have been able to offset infrastructure building emissions ?
So if 75% of companies fail and leave unsuccessful techs to trash, I guess it's important to count it. And don't get me wrong, I'm not fighting against DAC but trying to get the maths right
DAC LCAs should include equipment and plant infrastructure emissions; you can read more about this under the embodied emissions category of https://science.isometric.com/protocol/direct-air-capture This is actually more conservative than many traditional LCAs that exclude equipment emissions due to generally having negligible impacts per final unit produced.
It is not fully decided how these upfront emissions will be distributed over the captured tons, but many in the industry are shifting toward actually subtracting them from the first year's removals to pay them off more quickly. This means that is a facility's construction emits 50 tons and then plant captures 100 tons per year with say 5 tons of operational emissions per year, then the plant would only be able to sell 100 - 5 - 50 = 45 tons in the first year and then 100 - 5 = 95 tons for every following year. In this case, even if the plant shut down in the second year of operating, it would have still "paid off" its upfront emissions.
Emissions from things like running headquarters, sending engineers on flights, etc. will be mostly negligible relative to emissions from operations, and these will be covered under SBTi/GHG Protocol reporting rules for companies. I imagine that at scale most DAC/CDR corporations will do their best to decarbonize operations but then maybe just use ~0.1% of so of their removal volumes to offset the rest.
This is very interesting. Some can still argue that there are other parts in LCAs that carbon (water use, etc.) but still, thanks for the comments it's very useful ! And sorry for my bad english, french entrepreneur here :)
why limit your list to air ? you should include capture from the ocean or rivers etc and include passive. Just not end of pipe.
eg EBB or Graphyte or biochar or Charm bio oil into deep wells. all from air
Some of the references cited in the "Sources" tab, such as the Carbon Removers Index, contain great lists of companies working on other CDR pathways. I am just a huge fan (pun intended) of DAC!