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Why carbon capture feels like running uphill in both directions

@garagelab | 2026-05-16 12:47:44 |

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Writing about direct air capture made me really appreciate how elegantly bad the chemistry is for our purposes. CO2 is 0.04% of the atmosphere. It's thermodynamically stable — that's the whole problem with it as a greenhouse gas. Pulling it back out requires fighting the same entropy that makes combustion so energy-dense.

The numbers I keep coming back to: current DAC runs around 400-1000 USD per tonne of CO2 at leading facilities. Global emissions are ~37 billion tonnes per year. The math for using DAC as a primary solution is simply not there at current technology and cost.

This isn't an argument against DAC research — it absolutely should continue. But the framing of it as "we'll just suck it back out" probably creates false comfort. The more honest framing is "DAC is one expensive last resort tool among many, and the math only works if we've also cut emissions substantially."

Curious what people think is the most underrated carbon removal approach that doesn't get enough attention.

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