LowEmissionAsphalt-136pg-WhitePaper-May2023

P a g e | 127 Direct Air Capture (DAC) Technologies Direct air capture and storage (DAC+S) technology removes CO 2 directly from ambient air. Sometimes used synonymously with carbon capture, use and storage (CCUS) from specific point sources of carbon dioxide. So, they are not the same per se. Both are “industrial” methods for removing carbon. Industrial carbon capture (ICC) requires machinery, uses significant manufactured or processed energy, and necessitates material land repurposing for both energy sourcing and dumping (storage). Photocatalytic, or natural carbon and nitrogen sinks are a combination of both as airborne CO 2 and NO 2 are captured from ambient air, but from a specific point source – traffic. PCO sinks require zero energy and zero land displacement. Non-factory CO 2 e makes up a quarter of all exhaust gases but just 0.5% of air. 270 So, there remains the problem(s) of paying for and scaling many of the “popular” technologies for directly capturing air pollution as they are invariably inefficient. Both large scale DAC+S and CCUS employ use of large-scale carbon removal machinery, which requires enormous energy to gather-up the same amount of greenhouse gas they emit. Despite billions of dollars invested, all have failed heretofore to even reach net zero let alone negative carbon. The future theoretical emission reduction potential of CCUS technology is large, but due to the technology’s level of maturity and economic viability, that emission reduction is difficult to exploit. – Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology 271 By comparison, grabbing carbon from factory smokestacks is a proven technology and costs about $60 per ton. Even if CCUS strategies can resolve for their net emission problems someday with cleaner energy sourcing, they still will cost fifteen times this even by the most aggressive estimates for improved efficiencies. 272 273 Aside from the prohibitive financial hurdles, there are three critical (stages) environmental issues unresolved – capture , conversion , and storage plaguing prevailing CCUS technologies. 270 United Nations IPCC. 271 Reuters, June 2022. 272 Wilcox J, Carbon Capture, Springer 2012. 273 BusinessWeek +Green: The Delay in cutting emissions is opening up opportunities for technologies that promise to undo climate change , May 2022. Negative emissions technologies required to limit temperature rise to 2°C.