Building DACCS the right way

Direct Air Carbon Capture and Storage (DACCS), the technology to remove CO2 from the air and store it underground, is a controversial technology, mostly because it is unclear if it ever works at reasonable cost and scale. But it may be the only way for us to abate emissions from processes like cement production and others. So, it might be a good idea to get an idea of how it could be done at scale in Europe and how much it may cost.

Maximilian Bernecker and Felix Müsgens from the Brandenburg University of Technology ran a couple of scenarios to do just that. The six maps below give you an idea of the job at hand. If one aims to capture and store 100 Mt CO2 per year, one can go about this in different ways.

The maps on the top row show the optimal storage locations and pipelines for CO2 across Europe if one looks at the technology in isolation, without taking into account the existing energy infrastructure and emissions sites. The middle row shows the optimal network if electricity demand is added to an existing electricity network, while the bottom row shows scenarios that are fully integrated into the planning of power generation capacity, i.e. new power stations are planned with both conventional electricity demand and DAC in mind.

The scenarios on the left assume only storage in the North Sea basin, while the scenarios on the right assume that storage sites can be developed in suitable locations all over Europe that have already been proposed. Grey bars show the amount of CO2 stored in each site, while green dots show the locations of direct air capture units and grey lines show the pipelines to the storage sites. The number in the top right corner of each chart shows the total storage capacity in each scenario.

Optimal DACCS infrastructure in Europe

It is obvious that planning DACCS in isolation and simply adding it to the existing network leads to a very different network than the other scenarios. Worse, these isolated networks would be significantly more expensive to build and run. While adding DACCS to the existing network or integrating it in the planning for new power generation capacity would cost an estimated €15-17bn, planning and implementing DACCS as a standalone network with its own power supply would cost €20 billion or more.

And if you break that down into the price per ton of carbon emissions for EU businesses (it is almost certain that these investments would be financed through a higher cost of carbon in the European emissions trading system), that is a roughly 30% difference in price. The cost would be €215/tCO2 if storage is only allowed in the North Sea and the system is planned in isolation vs €151/tCO2 if the system is integrated and storage is allowed everywhere in the EU.

Estimated cost of building a DACCS network in Europe