Out of masterresource
By Robert Bradley Jr.
“The economy is even darker … without the 45Q loan, only a few although [Direct Air Capture projects] Would be viable. As a memory, the… Republican House, which is moving through the congress, lowers the IRA incentives for a number of technologies, but leaves 45Q solely for CO2 recording. “(- Michael Barnard, below)
An article in CleanTechnica by Michael Barnard, “Klimachworks DAC & Fiscal Collapse & the brutal reality of pulling carbon from heaven”, documents the failure of another anti-CO2 program. The article begins:
In 2024, the mammoth work of Climeworks' Direct Air Capture (DAC) in Iceland only recorded 105 tons of carbon dioxide. This is not a day, not per week, that is overall in the course of the year. For the context, this is less than the annual ray tube emissions of a dozen long -distance trucks or about a thousand of what the company built for removal. In mid -2025, the company began to relieve at least 10% of its ~ 500 employees. The numbers are sobering for a company that was collected over 800 million US dollars of equity and subsidies and was celebrated as a pioneer of direct air. But they are not surprising. They are only the inevitable result of the colliding hopeful techno-optimism with the brutal restrictions of physics, business and scale.
Barnard then visits the exaggeration that surrounds so many state -capable projects.
DAC has always promised a seductive narrative: the ability to suck carbon from heaven, store underground and buy us a climate mulligan. It promised to clean up fossil fuels without requesting too many changes to the lifestyle. It was a technology that yes for oil companies, for airlines, for governments that slow down their emission policy …
The private sector Greenwashing was instrumental.
Big names such as Microsoft, Stripe and Shopify to buy CO2 credits for carbon removal for 600 US dollars per ton or more. Government authorities began to pour cash. The tax credit in the USA 45Q was sweetened at $ 180 per ton. Europe and Japan put aside. And dozens of startups bloomed. But under the marketing gloss, physics was never on DAC's side.
''Thermodynamic slog''
“Removing CO₂ from ambient air is a thermodynamic slog,” continues Barnard. “The concentration is massively 0.04% – less than a molecule in 2,500.” Enter the complications and costs:
If you capture it, this means to move large amounts of air over chemically active surfaces and then apply heat, vacuum or electrical fields to regenerate the Sorbents. The most sophisticated systems such as the massive sorbent modules of the climatic or the hydroxid calculation loop of carbon engineering require energy per ton of CO₂ in the order of 2,000 to 3,000 kilowatt hours. Even newer concepts that promise electrochemical recording are still 700 to 1,000 kWh per ton. And that's just to catch it. Compression, transport and underground injections increase a further layer of complexity and costs.
Barnard carried out the calculations.
Already in 2019 I analyzed the Carbon Engineering system in detail and came to the conclusion that it was not ready for the main time. The energy requirement was steep, the system architecture was complex and the economic case was strongly based on theoretical scale and generous subsidies.
Fast lead to this day, and these conclusions are still holding. Squamish Pilot from Carbon Engineering has caught a few hundred tons for several years. The first commercial area, Stratos in Texas, is still under construction. Occidental Petroleum did not acquire the company in 2023 because it had a sustainable climate protection solution, but because it had a narrative that could buy the time for oil and gas. Stratos also runs on natural gas. The recorded CO₂ is injected underground and earns 45Q credits, while Occidental continues to sell hydrocarbons. This is not a carbon removal. It is the company theater that is wrapped in a green ribbon.
Barnard documents the energy -intensive, carbon -intensive processes associated with the leading technologies (climate works; carbon engineering).
Why the senselessness?
Why is there support for a boondoggle-in-progress that only a few really like? It is magical thinking, an “justification instrument”.
Direct aerial absorption, like the more comprehensive class of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) projects, was used less as a reasoning as a reason. Capture projects in the Smokestack should save coal. You didn't do it. DAC should save the aviation. It is not.
Now it is positioned as a baking stop for the oil and gas production of Net-Null, a way to continue the carbon Ledger during the measuring device. The problem is that mathematics never adds up. In order to remove a gigaton from CO₂ annually, the lower end of what IPCC paths until the middle of the century-we need thousands of DAC systems the size of one climay that cannot get to work. This would require hundreds of terawatt hours of energy every year, which corresponds approximately to doubling the electricity consumption of a medium -sized industrial nation.
The unsuccessful crusade
“In the meantime, global CO₂ emissions still float around 40 billion tons a year,” Barnard allows.
DAC in all companies, all technologies and every year has so far removed less than 20,000 tons. That is 0.00005% of annual global emissions. It is noise in every respect. And it won't get any better to play a role. Mammuts 105 tons are not just a small number – they are a warning. The technology does not scaled. It does not stabilize. And it doesn't get cheaper at the pace in which its supporters claim. The laws of thermodynamics are not in line. They force a cost floor.
The economy is even darker. The removal credit of the climatic was sold between 600 and 1,000 US dollars per ton. Carbon Engineering contracts are in the range of 400 US dollars. Erbstschück, another promising startup with carbonate looping, has not released cost data, but works at similarly high levels. All are subsidized. Without the 45Q loan, only a few would be viable, if at all. As a memory that the fossil fuel and tax cuts for the Republican House Act of billionaires reduces the IRA incentives for a number of technologies by the congress.
Eco-Mirage
Climate activists do not like any direct air incemplation or CO2 recording and sequestration of more. Barnard gives the reasons why.
And yet politics continues to promote this imagination. Climate machines, especially from oil and gas states, are now interspersed with assumptions about large-scale commitment removal from the 2030s. It is a climate budget with monopoly money. It shifts the hard decisions. Today, emissions enable them to be replaced for speculative cleanup today.
Even if DAC removes carbon, the resistance is not a guarantee. Some companies experiment with CO₂ usage and transform them into synthetic fuels or chemicals. This is okay if your goal is to recycle carbon. But it is not removed. It is delay. Others combine DAC with improved oil recovery, which is neither air -conditioned nor economically transparent. Do only a handful, such as B. Charm industrial with its organic oil injection strategy, actually deliver meaningful quantities from a distant and saved carbon. And even charm is still in thousands of tons per year – not from a distance, which is needed on the level.
Diploma
Where does this modern equivalent of synthetic fuels? “In the best case,” concludes Barnard, DAC is “a very niche technology with specific applications:
Legacy Cleanup in Overhoot scenarios after 2050, support for incredibly expensive sectors to decarbonize…. But as a pillar of the global decarbonization strategy, it is a imagination. It is climate alchemy: an expensive, energy-intensive attempt to make it back, which did not have to be done at all. Every ton of carbon is now exponentially more than one that has been captured tomorrow. And yet politics, financing and media stories continue to bet on the latter.
He continues as a climate activist who does not recognize that false solutions and waste are the downside of the anti-CO2 coin.
We have been here before. The carbon intake should save coal. It didn't. DAC should save oil. It won't. What will save us is electrification, efficiency and prevention…. Every watt clean current that is used today reduces the need for exotic techno fixes tomorrow. Each avoided tonne CO₂ is one that we do not have to chase through the sky with a billion dollar dollar machine and a bag of subsidies.
To his honor, he is ready to draw the connector to a politically correct, economically/environmentally friendly technology.
The 105-ton year of climatic should be a turning point. Not only for a company, but for a whole class of false solutions. If DAC ever works on a scale, it will be a backup – not as a plan. Until then, we have to stop doing it as if we can get out of this problem. We have to stop illuminating carbon. Because that's the only distance that really works.
It is still better that the CO2 reduction guidelines and technologies have failed, it is time to reverse the course for the entire climate cross and to reduce resources to adapt to extreme weather (for any cause). Thirty -five years of misconduct and waste are sufficient.
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