Environmental trade-offs of direct air capture technologies in climate change mitigation toward 2100
Qiu, Yang; Lamers, Patrick; Daioglou, Vassilis; McQueen, Noah; de Boer, Harmen-Sytze; Harmsen, Mathijs; Wilcox, Jennifer; Bardow, André; Suh, Sangwon
(2022) Nature Communications, volume 13, issue 1, pp. 1 - 13
(Article)
Abstract
Direct air capture (DAC) is critical for achieving stringent climate targets, yet the environmental implications of its large-scale deployment have not been evaluated in this context. Performing a prospective life cycle assessment for two promising technologies in a series of climate change mitigation scenarios, we find that electricity sector decarbonization
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and DAC technology improvements are both indispensable to avoid environmental problem-shifting. Decarbonizing the electricity sector improves the sequestration efficiency, but also increases the terrestrial ecotoxicity and metal depletion levels per tonne of CO 2 sequestered via DAC. These increases can be reduced by improvements in DAC material and energy use efficiencies. DAC exhibits regional environmental impact variations, highlighting the importance of smart siting related to energy system planning and integration. DAC deployment aids the achievement of long-term climate targets, its environmental and climate performance however depend on sectoral mitigation actions, and thus should not suggest a relaxation of sectoral decarbonization targets.
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Keywords: Climate Change, Electricity, Environment, Prospective Studies, Technology, General, General Physics and Astronomy, General Chemistry, General Biochemistry,Genetics and Molecular Biology
ISSN: 2041-1723
Publisher: Nature Publishing Group
Note: Funding Information: This work was authored in part by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), operated by Alliance for Sustainable Energy, LLC, for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) under Contract No. DE-AC36-08GO28308. P.L. and Y.Q. were supported by the Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) Program at NREL. The views expressed in the article do not necessarily represent the views of the DOE or the U.S. Government. The U.S. Government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the U.S. Government retains a nonexclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, worldwide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this work, or allow others to do so, for U.S. Government purposes. Y.Q. was also funded by the IRES program at University of California, Santa Barbara (National Science Foundation Award No. 1658652). Research by V.D., H.B., and M.H. leading to these results received funding from the European Commission Horizon 2020 Program H2020/2019-2023 (Grant Agreement No. 821124: NAVIGATE). A.B.’s contributions were part of the PrISMa Project (No. 299659), funded through the ACT program (Accelerating CCS Technologies, Horizon 2020 Project No. 294766). We acknowledge Marvin Bachmann, Sarah Deutz, and Leonard Müller for their assistance in designing this study and collecting life cycle inventory data of DACCS systems. We thank Katherine Blumanthal, Maxwell Pisciotta for their assistance in estimating the material requirement data of DACCS systems. Funding Information: This work was authored in part by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), operated by Alliance for Sustainable Energy, LLC, for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) under Contract No. DE-AC36-08GO28308. P.L. and Y.Q. were supported by the Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) Program at NREL. The views expressed in the article do not necessarily represent the views of the DOE or the U.S. Government. The U.S. Government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the U.S. Government retains a nonexclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, worldwide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this work, or allow others to do so, for U.S. Government purposes. Y.Q. was also funded by the IRES program at University of California, Santa Barbara (National Science Foundation Award No. 1658652). Research by V.D., H.B., and M.H. leading to these results received funding from the European Commission Horizon 2020 Program H2020/2019-2023 (Grant Agreement No. 821124: NAVIGATE). A.B.’s contributions were part of the PrISMa Project (No. 299659), funded through the ACT program (Accelerating CCS Technologies, Horizon 2020 Project No. 294766). We acknowledge Marvin Bachmann, Sarah Deutz, and Leonard Müller for their assistance in designing this study and collecting life cycle inventory data of DACCS systems. We thank Katherine Blumanthal, Maxwell Pisciotta for their assistance in estimating the material requirement data of DACCS systems. Publisher Copyright: © 2022, The Author(s).
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