Hanes et al. (2026): Energy Emissions Accounting Methods Can Determine Whether Direct Air Capture with Storage Achieves Net Removal
Rebecca J. Hanes, Keju An, Wilson McNeil, Yijin Li, Isaias Marroquin, Soomin Chun, Sarah L. Nordahl, Kimberley K. Mayfield, Sarah E. Baker, Corinne D. Scown and Evan D. Sherwin, IN: Environmental Science & Technology, https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.5c13494
The voluntary carbon market within the United States has expanded rapidly in recent years and enabled private companies and other organizations to provide revenue streams to carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies. For a CDR technology to participate in the voluntary carbon market (VCM), the emissions associated with constructing and operating the technology must be less than the COâ‚‚ captured from the atmosphere. Assessing the extent to which this is true for direct air capture with storage (DACS), a relatively energy-intensive CDR technology, strongly depends on the accounting method used to assess the emissions intensity of purchased energy. The authors simulate the hourly weather-dependent operation of sorbent- and solvent-based DACS in California, Louisiana, Texas, and Wyoming, representing a wide range of local weather and electric and natural gas grid compositions.