Direct Air Capture is a proposal to build industrial facilities to capture CO2 directly from the air. Giant fans would blow air over a fluid that chemically binds to the CO2 in the air. Chemical reactions would then strip the CO2 from the fluid, allowing the fluid to be recycled and producing a pure stream of CO2. In many iterations, this pure CO2 would then be compressed and pumped deep underground into stable rock formations. 

This process theoretically offers an opportunity to capture CO2, but it would be very energy intensive and cost a lot of money. Current estimates show that capturing 25% of the USA annual carbon emissions would take as much energy as the nation generates in a year.

While commercial plants are now being built, they currently only capture a very tiny fraction of the CO2 we emit each year. What’s more, the theoretical development of Direct Air Capture facilities is also regularly used to justify less ambitious climate targets, and where carbon is currently captured, 95% of it is not locked away, but used in the extraction of more fossil fuels. New technologies and improved processes could render Direct Air Capture a useful tool in the fight against the climate emergency, but even if we can develop and scale this technology, in almost all cases it will be cheaper and easier to cut CO2 emissions at their source.

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• Direct air capture (Wikipedia)

• Direct Air Capture (International Energy Agency, IEA)

• 6 Things to Know About Direct Air Capture (World Resource Institute)

• Study chemistry or chemical engineering and you might be able to contribute to the development of this technology.

• Contact your political representatives to urge international rules and scrutiny about the test or use of risky technologies such as these.