But if the
costs of air capture decrease to $ 100 per ton of carbon, then it would prove much more cost - effective than stabilizing at 450 ppm or 550 ppm.
This is necessary, he contends, given the fact that industry and venture capitalists view the
prospects of air capture as too remote to justify substantial investment.
Adding to the skepticism over the
feasibility of air capture is that there are other, cheaper ways to create the so - called negative emissions.
Broecker also outlines several potential advantages
of air capture over carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), including the potential to sequester carbon dioxide on - site rather than piping it over long distances, the need to only strip out a relatively small percentage of carbon dioxide from the air (30 %), and the potential for mass production of units instead of custom design of CCS units for existing facilities.
Columbia University Professor Wally Broecker has recently published a thoughtful opinion piece (open access) on the judiciousness and
potential of air capture geoengineering in the new journal Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene.
If you are going to go down the
path of air capture, serpentine mineral carbonation (a la the UBC group) seems like a much more sensible alternative.
If it is, the modular
production of air capture units would result in economies of scale, and units could be shipped in standard containers anywhere in the world, away from population centers in dry wastelands.
Hence, geoengineering in the
form of air capture (as capturing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is often called) would be the only way around this.
But if your purpose is to use the CO2, «then all these advantages plus others might counteract the one
disadvantage of air capture — the lower concentration.»
His analysis, soon to be published in Environmental Science and Policy [uncorrected proofs available from Pielke], compares the average costs
of air capture over the 21st century to other mitigation options (namely international greenhouse gas regulation under the UN framework convention) assuming that technologies available today are used to fully offset net human emissions of carbon dioxide.
Also, as Broecker himself points out, if the ultimate
cost of air capture is in the range of $ 600-1000 per ton, it will not prove viable.
Also, point source CCS can be the «second stage»
of an air capture system (and can be directly used in a bio-energy power plant).
For the two upper values, the cost
of air capture would be comparable to the estimated cost of stabilizing atmospheric carbon dioxide at 450 ppm or 550 ppm given by Nick Stern in 2007 and by the IPCC in its last report.
He runs the analysis for 3 different (and citable) estimates of the cost
of air capture — $ 500, $ 360 and $ 100 per ton of carbon.