A large number of prospective climate scenarios rely on Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) technologies to limit global warming below 2°C. To date, however, a comprehensive understanding of the overall life-cycle...

Direct air carbon capture and storage (DACCS) is an emerging carbon dioxide removal technology, which has the potential to remove large amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere. We present a comprehensive life cycle assessment of different DACCS systems with low-carbon electricity and heat sources required for the CO2 capture process, both stand-alone and grid-connected system configurations. The results demonstrate negative greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for all eight selected locations and five system layouts, with the highest GHG removal potential in countries with low-carbon electricity supply and waste heat usage (up to 97%). Autonomous system layouts prove to be a promising alternative, with a GHG removal efficiency of 79–91%, at locations with high solar irradiation to avoid the consumption of fossil fuel-based grid electricity and heat. The analysis of environmental burdens other than GHG emissions shows some trade-offs associated with CO2 removal, especially land transformation for system layouts with photovoltaics (PV) electricity supply. The sensitivity analysis reveals the importance of selecting appropriate locations for grid-coupled system layouts since the deployment of DACCS at geographic locations with CO2-intensive grid electricity mixes leads to net GHG emissions instead of GHG removal today.

Low-carbon (green) hydrogen can be generated via water electrolysis using photovoltaic, wind, hydropower, or decarbonized grid electricity. This work quantifies current and future costs as well as environmental burdens of...

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Prospective energy scenarios usually rely on Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) technologies to achieve the climate goals of the Paris Agreement. CDR technologies aim at removing CO2 from the atmosphere in a permanent way. However, the implementation of CDR technologies typically comes along with unintended environmental side-effects such as land transformation or water consumption. These need to be quantified before large-scale implementation of any CDR option by means of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). Direct Air Carbon Capture and Storage (DACCS) is considered to be among the CDR technologies closest to large-scale implementation, since first pilot and demonstration units have been installed and interactions with the environment are less complex than for biomass related CDR options. However, only very few LCA studies - with limited scope - have been conducted so far to determine the overall life-cycle environmental performance of DACCS. We provide a comprehensive LCA of different low temperature DACCS configurations - pertaining to solid sorbent-based technology - including a global and prospective analysis.