Highlights

• Carbon removal will be needed, likely at a large scale, to limit global temperature rise to 1.5°C, which is necessary to avoid the worst impacts of climate change; direct air capture (DAC) is one carbon removal technology that is receiving growing investment and interest. Understanding its environmental and social impacts will be critical to scaling up equitably.
• DAC plants are expected to have similar on-site resource usage impacts as other types of industrial infrastructure (e.g., land, energy, and water use), but significantly less on-site greenhouse gas (GHG) and conventional air pollutant emissions, particularly if powered by renewable energy. Responsible project design and regulation under the existing U.S. environmental regulatory framework can reduce adverse environmental impacts.
• At the same time, because DAC is an emerging technology and its impacts vary by project, assessments will be needed on a project-by-project basis to understand expected environmental and social impacts in relation to alternatives or a no-action scenario.
• Social impacts depend on the degree to which potentially impacted communities have access to information and can provide input into siting and project development decisions. Enactment of policies that require consideration of equity in DAC development will be necessary to avoid historical patterns of inequitable infrastructure siting.

Background

Limiting global warming to 1.5°C, as set out in the Paris Agreement, will require carbon dioxide (CO₂) removal from the atmosphere (IPCC 2018; NASEM 2019). This must be a complement to, not a substitute for, deep reductions of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Carbon removal includes natural approaches, like planting trees, and technological approaches, like direct air capture (DAC), which uses chemicals to capture CO₂ from the air, and, when combined with geological storage or sequestration in a durable product, remove it permanently.

Among technological carbon removal options, DAC is attracting investment and interest. Its social and environmental impacts must be better understood, as with any new type of infrastructure. Today, more than a dozen DAC plants are operating worldwide, and plans are underway for two large-scale (0.5–1 million tonnes/megatons of carbon dioxide per year [MtCO₂/yr]) plants (Carbon Engineering 2021; Beuttler et al. 2019). These represent only a fraction of the up to 10 billion tonnes of CO₂ per year of carbon removal needed globally by midcentury across all carbon removal pathways (NASEM 2019). Given this expected large-scale need for carbon removal, it is important to understand DAC’s social and environmental impacts—both positive and negative. DAC’s nascency provides the opportunity to use this information and community engagement processes to counter historical patterns of inequitable energy and infrastructure siting to scale DAC responsibly from the outset (U.S. DOE 2021).

Key Findings

Ongoing impacts of operating DAC plants will come from energy, land, and water use (for DAC plant and energy source), and chemical use for the sorbents and solvents that capture CO₂. For a project removing a million tonnes (Mt) of CO₂ per year, these impacts would be similar to those of other industrial infrastructure, except that DAC would produce little to no GHG and air pollutant emissions on-site. DAC has siting flexibility, so it can be placed in locations that minimize impacts to people and the environment, for example, in climates that reduce water usage or on marginal land.

• Energy: Using renewables would avoid on-site emissions of GHGs or air pollutants but would be relatively land intensive, while using natural gas with carbon capture would require much less land but would produce small amounts of GHGs and air pollutants and may be less acceptable to some communities.
• Land: At a million tonne scale, solvent DAC plants (excluding energy sources) require roughly 0.4 square kilometers (km²) per plant while sorbent plants require 0.5 km² (Carbon Engineering 2020; Uzor 2022). By comparison, around 860 km² of forest is required to capture one million tonnes of CO₂ in the United States (Cook-Patton et al. 2020). Land area for energy resources would increase the footprint by 34 km² or 66 km² for solar and wind, respectively, at a million tonne scale. This land area could be used for other purposes, however, like grazing animals under wind turbines. In some cases, wind energy could be sited offshore to eliminate land use.
• Water: Water usage is comparable to other industrial uses (Gerbens-Leenes et al. 2018). Locating solvent plants in cool, wet climates can reduce water usage; for sorbent plants, new variations in the technology can make plants net water producers in some locations.
• Chemicals: On-site impacts of DAC chemical usage are expected to be minimal. Solvent DAC plants would release small amounts of solvent aerosols into the environment, but the amount is below the regulated limit (0.2 milligrams/cubic meter [mg/m³] or around 10 percent of the limit). Sorbents used in DAC plants degrade, but these degradation products, including ammonia, would likely be sequestered with the captured CO₂ and not released into the environment. Workplace use of chemicals always poses a non-zero risk, but chemical use in DAC plants would not be expected to be meaningfully different from use in other industrial applications, for which workplace handling guidelines mitigate risks.

Scaling up today’s DAC systems will require expanded production of some chemicals. Reaching the half billion tonnes (0.5 gigatons [Gt]) of technological carbon removal outlined in the U.S. Long-Term Strategy, if it were met entirely with DAC (half sorbent, half solvent capacity), would use around a little more than one-third of today’s global sorbent chemical production, the supply chain for which is still in development. Solvent DAC would use around one-fifth of today’s solvent production; scaling up solvent use is not expected to limit DAC deployment at a gigaton scale (McQueen, Gomes, et al. 2021). These amounts are based on sorbents and solvents used in commercially ready DAC systems today—the types and amounts of these chemicals will differ as DAC technology advances.

DAC scale-up will require expanding energy infrastructure to avoid competition with other uses for renewables. Based on today’s technologies, at a 1 MtCO₂/year scale, a sorbent plant requires an estimated 270 megawatts (MW) of power, and a solvent plant requires an estimated 280 MW of power (Keith et al. 2018; Beuttler et al. 2019).¹ With current technology, solvent plants use natural gas to provide high-temperature heat, whereas sorbent plants can use low-temperature heat from renewable energy or waste heat sources. DAC at 0.5 Gt scale would use around 4.4 percent of 2020’s primary energy supply and around 3.8 percent of 2050’s projected primary energy supply (U.S. EIA 2021).² New energy infrastructure would have upstream impacts associated with the materials supply chain and could impact ecosystems where sited, akin to building energy for non-DAC purposes.

DAC plants will need cement, steel, and other materials for construction, as will new energy infrastructure to power the plants. DAC scale-up would increase demand for materials that are already produced at a multimillion tonne scale in the United States, so near-term demand growth would generally be incremental. DAC at 0.5 Gt scale would use around 1–3 percent of current U.S. concrete and steel production each year. Scaling up materials production would also increase GHG and pollution impacts where those facilities are sited; reducing these materials’ supply chain impacts will require broader efforts from industry and government. DAC plants may also use low-carbon cement and steel alternatives.

A significant social impact of DAC is expected to be job creation, both on-site to operate the plant and elsewhere associated with manufacturing components and infrastructure. Other benefits could include financial compensation through pore space royalties or benefits codified through community benefit agreements. More work is needed to identify potential benefits and address community needs on a project-by-project basis. Potential social impacts are entwined with environmental impacts and include construction activity, increased traffic, and land use change, which will vary by project.

Since DAC is a new technology that is largely unfamiliar to the public and will require new infrastructure, investing in inclusive community engagement will be critical to responsible scaling. Community engagement should inform equitable decision-making around siting and project development and could help build understanding of DAC. Community engagement can also help maximize community and societal benefits and minimize negative impacts. These efforts my require additional resources but would help lay the groundwork for a more equitable and successful long-term scale-up.

Federal and subnational governments can support equitably scaling DAC through policies, and private sector actors can establish demand-side environmental and equity guardrails. The federal government can invest in foundational research, design, and demonstration; ensure that DAC is appropriately regulated under existing federal regulatory frameworks; and require social and environmental impact assessments (EIAs) and robust community engagement as a precondition to accessing federal funds. State and local governments can enact policies that enable zoning, planning, and permitting powers to support equitable DAC siting and development. In addition to policy guidance, carbon credit–certification programs can incorporate social and environmental impact criteria that must be met before DAC-generated carbon credits can be sold in voluntary markets.

These findings are preliminary as data are not comprehensive and DAC technology is evolving and improving. Data on the environmental impacts of different DAC and energy configurations in various locations will be needed to better understand impacts on a project-specific basis.

About This Working Paper

This paper builds on earlier WRI work on carbon removal—CarbonShot: Federal Policy Options for Carbon Removal in the United States—which identified the likely need for DAC in the United States. It analyzes the expected environmental impacts of building and operating DAC plants in the United States and provides considerations related to decision-making and DAC siting. It was written in collaboration between World Resources Institute and the University of Pennsylvania and is intended to inform policy and stakeholder discussions on DAC scale-up in the United States and to spur further research.

To avoid the worst impacts of climate change, global average temperature rise needs to be limited to 1.5°C, as outlined in the Paris Agreement. This means reaching net-zero carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions globally by midcentury (IPCC 2018). The United States has committed to go further: net-zero across all greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2050 (U.S. Department of State 2021). While emissions reduction is top priority, it will not be enough to meet global temperature goals; the IPCC (2018) indicates that all pathways that limit global warming to 1.5°C require carbon dioxide removal (CDR) to some extent. Large-scale carbon removal would reduce atmospheric CO₂ concentrations and neutralize emissions in sectors that are difficult-to-decarbonize by midcentury, like aviation and shipping (IPCC 2018; NASEM 2019).

Carbon removal includes both natural and technological approaches that pull CO₂ directly from the air and differs from carbon capture and storage (CCS), which captures CO₂ at sources like cement plants. Nature-based approaches include tree planting and agricultural practices that increase carbon in soil and plant biomass, while technological approaches accelerate natural carbon cycles or directly remove CO₂ from the air. Direct air capture (DAC) is a technological approach that removes CO₂ from the atmosphere through reactions with certain chemicals, and can be paired with several sequestration methods. Nature-based carbon removal strategies can be scaled up given sufficient workforce and infrastructure (Fargione et al. 2021), but their potential will be constrained by land availability, sensitivity to a changing climate, and the need to maintain ecological integrity (Seddon et al. 2020). To minimize risks, a robust carbon removal portfolio should include a variety of natural and technological approaches, including DAC (Mulligan et al. 2020).

Compared to other carbon removal approaches, DAC has several benefits: it can be configured to use relatively small amounts of land; it can be sited relatively flexibly within practical constraints, so it does not compete with agricultural or other productive land uses; and it offers quantifiable and permanent CO₂ removal when combined with geological sequestration or used in durable products (e.g., concrete). These are some of the reasons it has received attention and increasing investment in the past few years.

The amount of technological and natural carbon removal needed will depend on the speed at which countries are able to decarbonize. The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) both suggest the potential need for up to 10 billion tonnes (gigatons [Gt]) of carbon removal per year globally by 2050 to stay below 1.5°C warming (IPCC 2018; NASEM 2019). The United States’ Long-Term Strategy (LTS) points to around 0.5 GtCO₂/year of carbon removal domestically by 2050 (roughly 8 percent of U.S. emissions in 2019) across all technological solutions (U.S. Department of State 2021; U.S. EPA 2021b). If mitigation efforts are less successful or nature-based solutions fall below potential, both the amount of technological carbon removal and its deployment rate would need to increase. Regardless of the ultimate amount of DAC, near-term investment and scaling are needed to make future large-scale DAC feasible (Hanna et al. 2021; Repmann et al. 2021).

Estimating carbon removal needs is typically based on Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs), which use economics as a basis to identify the most impactful, low-cost mitigation pathways but are not designed to account for social or local impacts or externalities and may not include new technologies. This paper seeks to complement assessments that prioritize cost by considering environmental and social impacts of DAC that could also help inform scale-up levels and approaches.

How DAC Works

In a DAC plant, air is exposed to a capture medium—a chemical that selectively binds CO₂ while allowing the other components to pass through. Applying energy, typically as heat, releases the CO₂ into a contained environment and regenerates the capture medium for subsequent rounds of capture. Ideally, a zero- or low-carbon energy source, such as renewable energy or natural gas with carbon capture, produces that heat. After the CO₂ is released, it can be transported for permanent underground storage or used in products ranging from beverages to concrete.

There are currently two leading DAC technologies, determined by capture media: solvent and sorbent plants (Figure 1). Solvent plants use a liquid solvent (e.g., dilute potassium hydroxide [KOH]) to absorb CO₂ as ambient air passes through. The dissolved CO₂ then binds with calcium to form a stable solid mineral. CO₂ is released through application of high-temperature heat (900°C/ 1,652°F), which is achieved today with natural gas, but could be achieved through other options like clean hydrogen in the future. Solvent-type plants are built at larger scale today because of cost advantages specific to the plants’ components. Sorbent plants use a solid sorbent as the capture medium, which functions like a filter, selectively binding CO₂ and allowing other components to pass through. Sorbent plants use low-temperature heat to release the CO₂ from the capture medium—80–120°C (176–248°F), which allows use of renewable energy and waste heat—and are built in a more modular fashion with many smaller repeating units.

Figure 1 | Illustration of Two Leading Types of DAC Systems in Development Today

Notes: CO₂/H₂O = Carbon dioxide/water; GJ/tCO₂ = Gigajoules/tonnes of carbon dioxide; O₂ = Oxygen; CaO = Calcium oxide; CaCO₃ = Calcium carbonate; Ca(OH)₂ = Calcium hydroxide; CO₂^3-= Carbonate. These schematics show the contactor unit for the sorbent-based DAC (top) and solvent-based DAC (bottom). In step 1, the contactor ensures “contact” between CO₂ in the air and the capture media. The key difference is that in the sorbent-based approach, ambient air passes through a porous support where it contacts the sorbent, whereas the solvent-based approach uses a counterflow configuration: ambient air passes horizontally through a packed bed while solvent is pumped through vertically. In step 2, the capture media is regenerated for subsequent capture.

Source: Based on NASEM (2019).

DAC is a nascent industry: the largest commercial plant in operation is Climeworks’ Orca plant in Iceland, which came online in September 2021 and uses geothermal energy to remove 4,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year (tCO₂/year) (Figure 2). Additionally, the first million tonne/megaton (Mt) scale plant is in development in the United States, with another planned for Scotland, and there are over a dozen smaller-scale DAC plants operating globally already (Beuttler et al. 2019; Carbon Engineering 2021).

Figure 2 | Part of Climeworks’ 4,000 tCO₂/year DAC Plant in Iceland

Note: tCO₂/year = Tonnes of carbon dioxide per year.

Source: Climeworks.

American public officials have stated DAC’s importance in achieving global climate goals by providing $3.5 billion for DAC hubs—locations where DAC will be able to store or use at least 1 MtCO₂/year—in the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA, also known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law) (U.S. Senate 2021). Due to DAC’s commercial immaturity, operational data are limited or in some cases nonexistent, and technologies and processes are expected to change as more plants are deployed. New approaches are emerging that can shift or minimize resource intensity, like all-electric DAC configurations or sorbents with longer life times. For these reasons, this analysis is preliminary and conclusions may change as technologies develop and more data become available.

Scope and Methods

This assessment considers a range of impacts, beyond DAC’s intended goal of carbon removal, from building and operating DAC plants—both on-site and in the supply chain—including pollutants, use of land, energy, and water, and benefits like job creation. These impacts are associated with a range of activities in the construction and operation of DAC plants (Figure 3).

Impacts were assessed based on a literature review of papers from peer-reviewed, government, and industry sources. Policy and procedural recommendations were assembled from a broad review of environmental justice; community engagement; and just transition literature from academic sources, and from community organizations, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and government sources. Peer-reviewed papers specifically examining the environmental impacts of DAC are few (e.g., Deutz and Bardow 2021; Terlouw et al. 2021; Madhu et al. 2021), given the nascency of the technology.

We discuss the broad categories of impacts expected at the plant level (capturing 1 MtCO₂/year) and at a larger potential scale by 2050 (0.5 GtCO₂/year, as outlined in the U.S. LTS, or 500 1-Mt plants), using the previous sources as well as those specific to the impacts of each activity. We assess impacts in relation to today’s leading DAC technologies.

While impacts of end uses and transportation of captured CO₂, such as CO₂ pipelines and geological sequestration, concern stakeholders and communities (Livermore Lab Foundation 2021; Batres et al. 2021) and must be considered in any build-out of DAC, they fit into a larger landscape of needs related to carbon management. As such, we do not consider these impacts in-depth and limit this analysis to elements specific to DAC or required for the construction and operation of DAC plants.

Figure 3 | Scope of DAC Activities Considered

Notes: PV = Photovoltaic; CO₂= Carbon dioxide.

Source: Authors’ analysis.

DAC Siting and Configuration

DAC can be sited flexibly within certain practical constraints. Siting decisions will likely be made by first identifying regions with land and energy availability and proximity to storage (Figure 4) and/or CO₂transportation infrastructure. First-generation plants may prioritize on-site use or storage of CO₂ or connecting to existing CO₂ pipelines to avoid the need for new transport infrastructure. After land, energy, and storage criteria are met, locations would be further narrowed by other environmental, community, regulatory, and economic considerations, including community willingness to host DAC plants and local zoning restrictions. Considerations like water scarcity, proximity to solvent/ sorbent producers, existing roads, and/or availability of disturbed or brownfield land, among others, could also influence siting location.

Figure 4 | Map of Potential for Deployment of Renewable Energy (Solar, Wind, Geothermal) and Geological Storage for DAC

Notes: This map shows where potential for solar, wind, or geothermal power is located, CO₂ could be stored in geological formations, and potential for both energy and storage are colocated. Due to data limitations, wind and solar availability are mapped only on converted lands, while geothermal potential is mapped across any land. Utilization of CO₂ in products would expand the above range to include areas where renewable energy, but not geological storage, is available. Transport infrastructure for CO₂ and/or consideration of locations where DAC could be powered by fossil fuel with carbon capture and storage (CCS) would also expand the above range.

Sources: Developed by Hélène Pilorgé using solar and wind data from Baruch-Mordo et al. 2019; geothermal data from NREL n.d.; Williams et al. 2008; and geological storage data from USGS 2013.

Importantly, DAC does not need to compete with productive or agricultural land uses and can be sited on marginal land. However, siting to maximize net CO₂ removal by, for example, colocating with low-carbon thermal energy resources, may impact local communities, ecosystems, or culturally significant lands. Although on-site pollutant emissions from DAC operation are expected to be small, other environmental and social impacts such as land and water use, noise associated with construction and plant operation, using fossil fuels, and the visual impact of the facility can add to existing burdens that some communities face. Low-income communities, and particularly low-income Black, Latino, and Indigenous communities, in both rural and urban areas, bear a higher burden of pollution and corresponding poor health outcomes than do higher-income, majority-white communities (Mohai et al. 2009), so it is vital that DAC siting decisions consider existing burdens on nearby communities.

Given that DAC plants are a new type of facility, it is particularly important that early projects are carefully evaluated through social and environmental impact assessments (EIAs) and use robust community engagement processesto involve impacted communities in decision-making.³ As communities are uniquely able to assess the relative risks and benefits of siting a DAC plant in their area, developers should proactively engage with communities as early as possible in the project time line to identify suitable sites and the technical and nontechnical aspects of the DAC configuration that meet communities’ needs.

DAC plants could be sited far from communities to avoid direct impacts on people or closer to reduce commuting time for workers, distance and cost to transport materials used at the facility, and transport-related emissions. Optimal distance from a community will differ by project and would need to consider trade-offs related to commute distance, land disturbance for road construction, and costs and distance to transport capture media and other materials that are used on an ongoing basis.

There may be additional ways to reduce or change impacts through DAC configuration and choice of energy resource, capture media, and other materials needs: research is ongoing to optimize processes and materials use. For example, Climeworks estimates that the GHG impact of construction materials will decrease by more than half from today’s 4,000 tonne carbon dioxide/year (tCO₂/year) plant to a future 100,000 tCO₂/year version, on a per tonne removed basis (Terlouw et al. 2021). Other improvements like extending sorbent lifetimes will also help reduce environmental impact. Low-carbon concrete and/or steel could also be used to reduce embodied emissions. All these choices carry trade-offs, depend on many factors (Figure 5), and will need to be determined on a project-by-project basis to reflect local circumstances and community needs.

Beyond the siting and energy impacts, DAC scale-up will increase materials demand, impacting communities where materials like steel, cement, and chemicals are produced. While project developers can prioritize materials with lower carbon intensity and environmental impact, reducing the climate and environmental impacts of materials and industrial production will require broader action from governments and regulators.

Figure 5 | Interconnected Factors Involved in Determining Impacts of DAC Plants

Note: NG = Natural gas.

Source: Authors’ analysis.

Responsibly Scaling DAC

The process that determines DAC siting will, in part, decide who is impacted, positively or negatively. Opinions diverge on whether next-generation technologies like DAC will provide meaningful benefits for communities (White House 2021a; Batres et al. 2021), but the early DAC projects assessments for social and environmental impacts and benefits to communities will be essential to determining whether DAC will gain a “social license to operate” (Gunningham et al. 2004).

Since any climate intervention involving new infrastructure will have both positive and negative impacts, decision-makers and other stakeholders must understand the balance of those impacts and associated trade-offs. For example, although solar PV has drawbacks related to mining and disposal that need to be mitigated and managed, it is broadly accepted as a critical technology for decarbonization with net benefits.⁹ For DAC to be responsibly deployed at scale, thorough life-cycle analysis of its environmental and social impacts is needed on a project-by-project basis (Batres et al. 2021), along with identification of ways to minimize negative impacts.

Historically, building new infrastructure has not considered impacts holistically—for example, externalities of energy technologies such as water use and damage to culturally important sites have received less attention than air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions (Gies 2017). DAC’s nascency presents an opportunity to better understand and communicate potential impacts and cobenefits and prioritize inclusive decision-making.

We recognize that this approach can require effort, consideration, resources, and time, even as threats from climate change grow more urgent. However, it can lay the foundation for long-term success by establishing a shared understanding of project goals and parameters that allows for more efficient execution and helps avoid project delays due to community concern—a common result of late-stage community engagement.

Equitably Distributing Benefits

One critical aspect that will determine the equity and long-term viability of DAC scale-up is the assurance of benefits to communities where DAC plants and infrastructure are sited. There is an opportunity for DAC scale-up to not only remove CO₂ from the air but to offer benefits to communities and workers. Benefits could include high-paying jobs and training, local investment in CO₂ utilization, or potential financial benefits to owners of pore space where captured CO₂ is sequestered. DAC will likely be able to provide additional benefits to communities, but more research is needed to assess the types and magnitude of these benefits as more DAC plants are built and communities negotiate desired project benefits.

An assessment by the Rhodium Group (Larsen et al. 2020) estimates that 3,428 jobs (full-time, part-time, and seasonal) would be generated from building and operating a megaton-scale DAC plant. More than 3,000 of these are associated with plant investment, including equipment manufacturing, construction, engineering, and steel and cement manufacturing. The remainder are in plant operations, of which 278 are expected to be on-site for operations and maintenance. For context, there are 380 manufacturing jobs per establishment in the U.S. automobile industry, and an average of 46 and 28 jobs per generation facility in U.S. fossil fuel and geothermal electric power generation, respectively (BLS 2021). DAC operations jobs would be expected to last the lifetime of the plant, which is generally assumed to be 20 years (Fasihi et al. 2019), with high annual salaries expected, between $50,000 and $140,000, varying by industry (Larsen et al. 2020). If DAC plants are built continuously, jobs associated with plant investment could also be stable over time.

Residents of communities where DAC plants are sited could be employed in operations and maintenance and construction jobs, provided they receive skills training to fill these positions. Additional jobs would be created if captured CO₂ is stored or used locally. Other jobs, such as engineering, will probably not be on-site.

For DAC-related employment to benefit communities, jobs should pay at least family-sustaining wages, provide benefits such as health care and retirement, a safe and supportive work environment, and opportunities for career advancement and skill-building (Brett and Woelfel 2016).¹⁰ Once DAC reaches a large enough scale to offer widespread and long-term employment, job training programs with guaranteed employment could help ensure that local workers have the skills necessary to benefit from DAC-related job creation (Urban Sustainability Directors Network 2021). The construction and operation of DAC plants could engage workers from existing unions, offering the opportunity for collective bargaining.

A potential benefit could also come from pore space royalties, or payments to landowners where CO₂ is geologically stored. While there are ongoing legal debates about pore space ownership and rights are inconsistently applied in the United States, communities above or within a certain proximity of pore space or a monitored CO₂ plume could receive benefits. There is precedent for this in the oil and gas sector, where land and mineral rights are leased to oil and gas companies that pay royalties as high as 25 percent of their revenues (Gentile 2015). However, royalties to large landowners could inequitably exclude marginalized communities from benefiting, and inconsistent or unclear pore space rights cannot ensure smaller landowners are protected. Thus federal, state, and local governments should establish a framework that can assess who has rights to pore space, who might be affected by CO₂ injection, and how to equitably disburse benefits to affected parties (Johnson 2020).

A summary of environmental and social impacts of DAC is provided in Table 5.

Equitable DAC scale-up will require federal and subnational governments and project developers to enact and adhere to good practices. The following recommendations are based on our analysis and focus on environmental and social impacts of DAC, rather than DAC scale-up overall.

Procedural Recommendations

Early DAC projects will be critical for building understanding of and trust in the technology and laying the groundwork for equitable community participation. While public engagement may not ensure acceptance of DAC, local stakeholders need to be engaged in siting decisions and planning processes to increase likelihood of buy-in and to secure locally desirable outcomes (Moser and Pike 2015).

Engaging communities early in planning decisions related to DAC can improve information flow and integration of diverse perspectives and ensure that communities receive project benefits. Community engagement and effective communication can also prevent perception of opaque, bureaucratic, or unilateral decision-making (Katsonis 2019). Robust documentation of engagement processes and outcomes will also help to address the current lack of research on potential social impacts of DAC (Forbes et al. 2009; Groundwork USA 2021). Procedural steps and legal agreements that enshrine community benefits in project planning should become standard practice in DAC development, including the following:

• Social Impact Assessment (SIA): SIA is a process that assesses the intended and unintended social impacts of development. Conducting SIAs alongside environmental impact assessment prior to energy or infrastructure development projects ensures that project developers are considering options to mitigate adverse social impact from a project’s outset.
• Community Benefits Agreement (CBA): CBAs are negotiated legal agreements between coalitions of community groups and project developers that guarantee community benefits in exchange for a community’s agreement not to oppose the project. Benefits secured through CBAs can include local hiring and procurement agreements, reduction of environmental impacts during construction and operation, and other benefits tailored to unique community needs.
• Project Labor Agreement (PLA) and Community Workforce Agreement (CWA): A PLA is a negotiated agreement between construction companies or contractors and unions, agreeing to terms for the project. Projects with PLAs require contractors to use union labor and include no-strike agreements in exchange for dispute resolution agreements. CWAs are provisions within PLAs that require the contractor to hire a negotiated percentage of local, low-income, or other marginalized workers, collaborate with local organizations to provide job training programs, and agree to job quality specifications.

Federal Policy Recommendations

Federal action can play an outsized role in accelerating responsible deployment of DAC, and federally mandated practices can set the standard for future DAC development. Congress has already recognized the importance of funding DAC: appropriations for DAC research development and demonstration (RD&D) are increasing year-on-year, and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) includes $3.5 billion for four megaton-scale DAC hubs. The Department of Energy has also recently launched Carbon Negative Shot, to decrease the cost of all forms of carbon removal to below $100/tCO₂. With these monumental investments in DAC, the federal government can ensure that public engagement, equity, and environmental justice are central to the development of all projects that receive federal funding. The Obama administration’s 2009 Executive Order 13502 set precedent for this by encouraging agencies to use project labor agreements for large construction projects (Carlock et al. 2021). More recently, the Biden administration’s 2021 Executive Order 14008 identified environmental justice and equity as key components of climate action across the federal government. The executive order directs agencies to create strategies for addressing environmental injustices, increase enforcement of environmental violations that disproportionately affect marginalized communities, and improve environmental monitoring and transparent reporting in frontline communities.

The following recommendations would build on existing federal momentum to enable responsible and equitable development and deployment of DAC. Other investments and initiatives will be needed to scale DAC, but these recommendations address federal action that could reduce the environmental impact of DAC and secure community benefits. The federal government could require that all DAC projects receiving federal funds do as follows:

• Complete social and environmental assessments to identify siting locations that are socially and environmentally acceptable.
• Engage in robust community engagement processes using skilled facilitators to ensure that all stakeholders, including marginalized community members, can choose to provide input on project development.
• Encourage the use of legal agreements such as CBAs, PLAs, and CWAs, to ensure communities and workers can negotiate benefits they expect to receive.
• Where possible, require that local labor and locally sourced, low-carbon material be used for construction and plant operation.
• Where possible, require that DAC plants be powered by low- or zero-carbon energy sources and discourage the construction of new natural gas infrastructure.
• Establish job training programs in communities adjacent to DAC plants and establish standards to ensure high-quality employment.

Federal agencies, including the Department of Energy, U.S. Geological Survey, and the Environmental Protection Agency can conduct RD&D to improve the technology and decrease the cost of DAC components as well as investigate methods to minimize and manage community and environmental impacts of DAC. Interagency research could prioritize the following:

• Conduct thorough life-cycle assessments of DAC plants and supporting supply chain, transport, and storage infrastructure, to account for different geographies, energy sources, and DAC plant configurations. Research could also investigate potential impacts on human health and identify ways to decrease human and environmental impacts.
• Evaluate existing regulatory frameworks to assess applicability to DAC plants and associated CO₂ transportation and sequestration. Where necessary, clarify the regulatory frameworks that will apply to DAC development.
• Improve techniques for manufacturing DAC components, including sorbents and solvents, in cost-effective and environmentally friendly ways.
• Identify methods of powering DAC plants that maximize energy efficiency and minimize negative environmental, community, and climate impacts.
• Identify factors that should be used to determine optimal siting for DAC plants, including practical constraints and local community considerations.
• Conduct social science research and polling to assess public perceptions of DAC and to better tailor communication and outreach.
• Establish a DAC demonstration grants program that requires DAC projects to conduct community education and outreach and encourages creation of CBAs with communities where appropriate (Kosar et al. 2021).

Subnational Recommendations

State and local land use policies are already changing to make planning and siting of industrial projects more equitable. Widespread use of these policies can help address historical patterns of inequitable land use and unequal distributions of impacts and benefits and help create conditions to enable an equitable DAC scale-up.

Zoning and Planning: Local planning and policies can help counteract historical patterns of land use that concentrate locally unwanted land uses near and in communities that are low-income, Indigenous, or composed predominantly of people of color (Baptista 2019). Planning can also help address zoning driven by “NIMBYism (not-in-my-backyard-ism)” or an acceptance of the need for infrastructure, but opposition to building the infrastructure near the opponent’s home or community. Zoning influenced by NIMBYism can concentrate industrially zoned land and the resulting facilities in communities that have less political power to inform siting decisions and negotiate benefits. State, county, or city environmental justice initiatives can assemble advisory panels that provide input on planning and zoning decisions to ensure that health and economic impacts on marginalized communities are considered in planning decisions, and infrastructure that serves a public good, such as DAC, is distributed equitably.

Construction Permitting Processes: Cities, states, and counties can develop ordinances requiring new DAC facilities, infrastructure, and CO₂sequestration sites to complete environmental and environmental justice review processes to be eligible to receive building permits. Newark, New Jersey, set a precedent in passing an ordinance that requires developers seeking permits to disclose possible environmental impacts (Clean Water Action 2016). Related ordinances could similarly require community engagement and consultation prior to permits being granted.

Private Sector Recommendations: DAC project developers can prioritize procurement of lower-emission versions of materials like cement and steel, where possible, and can prioritize environmental impacts when selecting sorbents and solvents and their suppliers. DAC developers can also prioritize environmental impact, along with cost and efficiency, for in-house RD&D.

Because it has the potential to permanently remove carbon, DAC could provide verifiable carbon removals for emissions that are hard to abate in the near term (Joppa et al. 2021). If DAC projects provide carbon credits, credit certification programs could help to verify that DAC projects producing credits are developed in an environmentally and socially responsible way.

Leading voluntary carbon credit–verification programs already include thorough reviews of credit-producing projects to certify that credits are permanent and that projects do not harm communities or result in environmental degradation. While governmental oversight and regulation must be primarily responsible for enforcing the mitigation of environmental impact, verification programs may be able to help ensure that DAC projects follow good practices for community engagement and environmental impact mitigation beyond regulatory standards. DAC projects producing carbon credits should undergo review to verify that they have taken all possible actions to minimize negative environmental and community impact, and to ensure that benefits accrue to local communities. Project reviews conducted by carbon crediting programs could include the following criteria:

• DAC developers should be required to provide transparent and regular reports on life-cycle environmental impacts of building and operating plants.
• Developers should conduct community outreach and engagement processes consistent with the procedural recommendations above.
• DAC plants should provide high-quality, long-term employment for their workers.

Analysis of commercially ready DAC systems indicates that on-site impacts are expected to be similar to those of industrial facilities of a comparable size, but with much lower GHGs and other air pollutant emissions. Solvent DAC plants would release some aerosolized chemical solvent but at much lower levels than is regulated; DAC plants powered with natural gas would also produce small amounts of CO₂ and nitrogen oxides (NOx) emissions, much lower than conventional natural gas plants. Most emissions related to DAC would happen off-site, related to production of materials needed to build and run the plant. DAC at a 0.5 GtCO₂/year scale is expected to have only incremental impacts on production of materials like cement and steel but would have substantial energy requirements and require scale-up of sorbent production. Because these impacts differ by project and will change as the technology improves, environmental and social impact assessments will be needed on a project-by-project basis.

This analysis offers a starting place to inform decision-makers in advancing an equitable and responsible scale-up of DAC to meet the expected carbon removal need. The federal government, states, and municipalities, and the private sector will need to collaboratively identify suitable locations for DAC and configurations that are best for each location, along with enacting policies that integrate equity considerations into DAC development. To enable an equitable DAC scale-up, stakeholders should play an early and central role in decision-making guiding DAC development to maximize benefits and minimize harm to communities hosting DAC plants. Early investments in community engagement and equitable policies and programs require time and resources, but are vital for the long-term success and equity of the DAC industry. DAC has the potential to become either an important technology to address climate change or a technology that does not gain widespread use due to lack of public acceptance. Careful development of DAC with environmental and social safeguards will enable effective and responsible DAC scale-up.

Capture media: Capture media are chemicals that can selectively bind to carbon dioxide gas in ambient air. Capture media can be liquid solvents or solid sorbents.

Carbon capture and use/storage (CCUS): CCUS captures emissions at the source to prevent them from entering the atmosphere (e.g., by capturing CO₂from a cement plant’s smokestack). Carbon capture is a form of mitigation.

Carbon removal: Approaches that pull carbon dioxide that has already been emitted out of the atmosphere. Natural carbon removal includes tree planting and agricultural approaches that add more carbon to the soil, and technological carbon removal includes engineered approaches like direct air capture that captures CO₂ via chemical reactions.

Community Benefit Agreement (CBA): A contractual agreement between a community and project developer that legally ensures community benefits in exchange for community support of a project.

Contactor: The contactor is the unit in a DAC plant that brings ambient air in contact with a solvent or sorbent.

Criteria air pollutants: The EPA sets National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for six common air pollutants in the United States, required by the Clean Air Act: ground-level ozone, particulate matter, carbon monoxide, lead, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen dioxide.

Direct air capture (DAC): DAC pulls ambient air over a capture medium (e.g., solvent or sorbent) that chemically reacts with CO₂, removing it from the air. The captured carbon dioxide can then be stored underground or used in products.

Distributive impacts considerations: Considerations related to the distribution of negative and positive impacts that different DAC stakeholders experience, particularly in communities where DAC plants are sited.

Environmental justice: Environmental justice is the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income, with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies. This goal will be achieved when everyone enjoys,“[t]he same degree of protection from environmental and health hazards, and equal access to the decision-making process to have a healthy environment in which to live, learn, and work” (U.S. EPA 2021a).

Geologic storage: End-use option for captured CO₂ that involves injection into deep rock formations that trap and sequester it permanently. Carbon dioxide may also be injected into certain types of rock, where it reacts to form carbonates and is permanently stored in solid form.

Gt: Gigaton, or one billion tonnes. One Gt of CO₂ equivalent is roughly equivalent to emissions from the annual energy used in 120 million homes (U.S. EPA 2015).

High-/low-quality heat: The relative ease with which energy converts into mechanical energy; low-quality heat does not as easily convert to work because it is less concentrated and organized. Many sources of industrial waste heat are low quality and can serve the energy requirement for sorbent plants, whereas solvent plants require high-quality heat. Low- and high-quality heat are typically associated with low and high temperatures, respectively, but differ from temperature.

Mitigation: Mitigation activities avoid or reduce emissions going into the atmosphere (e.g., by replacing a coal power plant with wind turbines). Mitigation is distinct from carbon removal, which removes previously emitted CO₂.

Mt: Megaton, or one million tonnes; 1 Mt of CO₂ equivalent is roughly equivalent to emissions from the annual energy used in 120,000 homes (U.S. EPA 2015).

Oxygen-fired kiln (oxyfuel combustion): Natural gas can be combusted in a high-oxygen environment rather than air, which makes postcombustion capture of CO₂ easier since flue gas is predominantly water and CO₂.

Procedural considerations: These considerations enable stakeholders to participate and be involved in decision-making in a fair way around environmental matters (Clayton 2000), such as DAC plants. Such considerations will be particularly necessary in communities where DAC plants are sited.

Tonne: Metric ton.

Althor, G., and B. Witt. 2020. “A Quantitative Systematic Review of Distributive Environmental Justice Literature: A Rich History and the Need for an Enterprising Future.” Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences 10 (1): 91–103. doi:10.1007/s13412-019-00582-9.

Baker, S., J. Stolaroff, G. Peridas, S. Pang, H. Goldstein, F. Lucci, and W. Li. 2020. “Getting to Neutral: Options for Negative Carbon Emissions in California.” https://www-gs.llnl.gov/content/assets/docs/energy/Getting_to_Neutral.pdf.

Baptista, A.I. 2019. “Local Policies for Environmental Justice: A National Scan.” Natural Resources Defense Council. https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/local-policies-environmental-justice-national-scan-tishman-201902.pdf.

Baruch-Mordo, S., J.M. Kiesecker, C.M. Kennedy, J.R. Oakleaf, and J.J. Opperman. 2019. “From Paris to Practice: Sustainable Implementation of Renewable Energy Goals.” Environmental Research Letters 14 (2): 024013. doi:10.1088/1748-9326/aaf6e0.

Batres, M., F.M. Wang, H. Buck, R. Kapila, U. Kosar, R. Licker, D. Nagabhushan, E. Rekhelman, and V. Suarez. 2021. “Environmental and Climate Justice and Technological Carbon Removal.” The Electricity Journal 34 (7): 107002. doi:10.1016/j.tej.2021.107002.

Bergen, M. 2020. “How Wind Turbines Are Providing a Safety Net for Rural Farmers,” October. https://www.wri.org/insights/how-wind-turbines-are-providing-safety-net-rural-farmers.

Beuttler, C., L. Charles, and J. Wurzbacher. 2019. “The Role of Direct Air Capture in Mitigation of Anthropogenic Greenhouse Gas Emissions.” Frontiers in Climate 1. doi:10.3389/fclim.2019.00010.

Blondes, M.S., M.D. Merrill, S.T. Anderson, and C.A. DeVera. 2019. “Carbon Dioxide Mineralization Feasibility in the United States.” USGS Numbered Series 2018–5079. Scientific Investigations Report. Reston, VA: U.S. Geological Survey. http://pubs.er.usgs.gov/publication/sir20185079.

BLS. 2021. “Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages.” https://data.bls.gov/cew/apps/data_views/data_views.htm#tab=Tables.

Brett, D., and T. Woelfel. 2016. “Moving Beyond Job Creation: Defining and Measuring the Creation of Quality Jobs,” 40.

Breugelmans, O., C. Ameling, M. Marra, P. Fischer, J. van de Kassteele, J. Lijzen, A. Oosterlee, et al. 2013. “Lung Cancer Risk and Past Exposure to Emissions from a Large Steel Plant.” Journal of Environmental and Public Health 2013 (November): e684035. doi:10.1155/2013/684035.

Buck, H.J. 2016. “Rapid Scale-up of Negative Emissions Technologies: Social Barriers and Social Implications.” Climatic Change 139 (2): 155–67. doi:10.1007/s10584-016-1770-6.

Carbon Engineering. 2020. “Pale Blue Dot Energy and Carbon Engineering Create Partnership to Deploy Direct Air Capture in the UK.” https://carbonengineering.com/news-updates/pale-blue-dot-energy-and-carbon-engineering-partnership/.

Carbon Engineering. 2021. “Engineering Begins on UK’s First Large-Scale Facility That Captures Carbon Dioxide Out of the Atmosphere.” https://carbonengineering.com/news-updates/uks-first-large-scale-dac-facility/.

Carlock, G., J. Neuberger, L. Calle, and E. Said. 2021. “Addressing Energy Equity in the United States: Policy Considerations for Federal Investment,” November. https://www.wri.org/research/energy-equity-united-states-federal-investment.

CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention). 2019a. “CDC-NIOSH Pocket Guide to Chemical Hazards—Potassium Hydroxide.” https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npg/npgd0523.html.

CDC. 2019b. “CDC NIOSH Pocket Guide to Chemical Hazards—Potassium Hydroxide.” October 30, 2019. https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npg/npgd0523.html.

CDC. 2019c. “CDC - NIOSH Pocket Guide to Chemical Hazards—Sodium Hydroxide.” October 30. https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/npg/npgd0565.html.

Clayton, S. 2000. “Models of Justice in the Environmental Debate,” 16.

Clean Water Action. 2016. “Newark Makes History with First-in-the-Nation Environmental Justice Ordinance.” Clean Water Action. July 15. https://www.cleanwateraction.org/features/newark-makes-history-first-nation-environmental-justice-ordinance.

ClimateWatch. 2021. “Data Explorer / Climate Watch.” https://www.climatewatchdata.org/.

Cook-Patton, S.C., S.M. Leavitt, D. Gibbs, N.L. Harris, K. Lister, K.J. Anderson-Teixeira, R.D. Briggs, et al. 2020. “Mapping Carbon Accumulation Potential from Global Natural Forest Regrowth.” Nature 585 (7826): 545–50. doi:10.1038/s41586-020-2686-x.

Deutz, S., and A. Bardow. 2021. “Life-Cycle Assessment of an Industrial Direct Air Capture Process Based on Temperature–Vacuum Swing Adsorption.” Nature Energy. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-020-00771-9.

Devine-Wright, P. 2011. “Public Engagement with Large-Scale Renewable Energy Technologies: Breaking the Cycle of NIMBYism.” WIREs Climate Change 2 (1): 19–26. doi:10.1002/wcc.89.

European Environment Agency. 2011. “Air Pollution Impacts from Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS)—European Environment Agency.” Technical report. https://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/carbon-capture-and-storage.

Fargione, J., D.L. Haase, O.T. Burney, O.A. Kildisheva, G. Edge, S.C. Cook-Patton, T. Chapman, et al. 2021. “Challenges to the Reforestation Pipeline in the United States.” Frontiers in Forests and Global Change 4. doi: 10.3389/ffgc.2021.629198.

Fasihi, M., O. Efimova, and C. Breyer. 2019. “Techno-Economic Assessment of CO₂ Direct Air Capture Plants.” Journal of Cleaner Production 224 (July): 957–80. doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2019.03.086.

Ferrell, S.L., and L. Sanders. 2013. “Natural Gas Issues and Policy Options.” Plone Site. https://aese.psu.edu/nardep/publications/special-initiatives-on-high-priority-topics/natural-gas-issues-and-policy-options.

Forbes, S.M., F. Almendra, and M.S. Ziegler. 2009. “CCS and Community Engagement.” http://pdf.wri.org/ccs_and_community_engagement.pdf.

Fu, J., Y. Liu, and F. Sun. 2021. “Identifying and Regulating the Environmental Risks in the Development and Utilization of Natural Gas as a Low-Carbon Energy Source.” Frontiers in Energy Research 9: 28. doi:10.3389/fenrg.2021.638105.

Fuhrman, J., H. McJeon, S. Doney, W. Shobe, and A. Clarens. 2019. “From Zero to Hero? Why Integrated Assessment Modeling of Negative Emissions Technologies Is Hard and How We Can Do Better.” Frontiers in Climate, December. doi:https://doi.org/10.3389/fclim.2019.00011.

Gentile, N. 2015. “Federal Oil and Gas Royalty Reform.” Center for American Progress. https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/green/reports/2015/06/19/115580/federal-oil-and-gas-royalty-and-revenue-reform/.

Gerbens-Leenes, P.W., A.Y. Hoekstra, and R. Bosman. 2018. “The Blue and Grey Water Footprint of Construction Materials: Steel, Cement and Glass.” Water Resources and Industry 19 (June): 1–12. doi:10.1016/j.wri.2017.11.002.

Gies, E. 2017. “The Real Cost of Energy.” Nature 551 (7682):S145–47. doi:10.1038/d41586-017-07510-3.

Global Newswire. 2021. “Outlook on the Caustic Potash Global Market to 2026—by Form, Grade, End-Use and Region.” https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2021/05/05/2223210/28124/en/Outlook-on-the-Caustic-Potash-Global-Market-to-2026-by-Form-Grade-End-use-and-Region.html.

Groundwork USA. 2021. “Best Practices for Meaningful Community Engagement: Tips for Engaging Historically Underrepresented Populations in Visioning and Planning.” https://groundworkusa.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/GWUSA_Best-Practices-for-Meaningful-Community-Engagement-Tip-Sheet.pdf.

Gunningham, N., R.A. Kagan, and D. Thornton. 2004. “Social License and Environmental Protection: Why Businesses Go Beyond Compliance.” Law & Social Inquiry 29 (2): 307–41. doi:10.1111/j.1747-4469.2004.tb00338.x.

Hanna, R., A. Abdulla, Y. Xu, and D.G. Victor. 2021. “Emergency Deployment of Direct Air Capture as a Response to the Climate Crisis.” Nature Communications 12 (1): 368. doi:10.1038/s41467-020-20437-0.

Hays, K. 2021. “Factbox: US Export PVC Prices Hit Fresh All-Time High on Ida Fallout.” September 10. https://www.spglobal.com/platts/en/market-insights/latest-news/petrochemicals/091021-factbox-us-export-pvc-prices-hit-fresh-all-time-high-on-ida-fallout.

Holmes, G. 2021. “Personal Communication—Environmental Impacts of DAC.”

Holmes, G., and D.W. Keith. 2012. “An Air–Liquid Contactor for Large-Scale Capture of CO₂ from Air.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences 370 (1974): 4380–4403. doi:10.1098/rsta.2012.0137.

IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change). 2018. Global Warming of 1.5°C. An IPCC Special Report on the Impacts of Global Warming of 1.5°C above Pre-industrial Levels and Related Global Greenhouse Gas Emission Pathways, in the Context of Strengthening the Global Response to the Threat of Climate Change, Sustainable Development, and Efforts to Eradicate Poverty. Edited by V. Masson-Delmotte, P. Zhai, H.-O. Pörtner, D. Roberts, J. Skea, P.R. Shukla, A. Pirani, et al. Geneva: World Meteorological Organization. https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/.

Johansson, L., S. Zahirovic, and R.D. Müller. 2018. “The Interplay between the Eruption and Weathering of Large Igneous Provinces and the Deep-Time Carbon Cycle.” Geophysical Research Letters 45 (11): 5380–89. doi:10.1029/2017GL076691.

Johnson, S. 2020. “Can Oil and Carbon Mix? Using the ‘Amount Realized’ Analysis from Frey v. Amoco Pr . Amoco Production Co. for Royalty Payments on Carbon Dioxide Sequestration.” LSU Journal of Energy Law and Resources. https://digitalcommons.law.lsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1196&context=jelr.

Johnston, J., and L. Cushing. 2020. “Chemical Exposures, Health, and Environmental Justice in Communities Living on the Fenceline of Industry.” Current Environmental Health Reports 7 (1): 48–57. doi:10.1007/s40572-020-00263-8.

Joppa, L., A. Luers, E. Willmott, S.J. Friedmann, S.P. Hamburg, and R. Broze. 2021. “Microsoft’s Million-Tonne CO₂—Removal Purchase—Lessons for Net Zero.” Nature 597 (7878): 629–32. doi:10.1038/d41586-021-02606-3.

Kaplan, T., C. Buckley, and B. Plumer. 2021. “U.S. Bans Imports of Some Chinese Solar Materials Tied to Forced Labor.” The New York Times, June 24 sec. Business. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/24/business/economy/china-forced-labor-solar.html.

Katsonis, M. 2019. “Designing Effective Public Engagement: The Case Study of Future Melbourne 2026.” Policy Design and Practice 2 (2): 215–28. doi:10.1080/25741292.2019.1621032.

Keith, D.W., G. Holmes, D.S. Angelo, and K. Heidel. 2018. “A Process for Capturing CO₂ from the Atmosphere.” Joule 2 (8). 1573–94. doi:10.1016/j.joule.2018.05.006.

Kosar, U., V. Suarez, G. Amador, M. Glicksman, C. Holness, R. Jacobson, L.D. Simonelli, and T. Steeves. 2021. “Removing Forward: Centering Equity and Justice in a Carbon-Removing Future.” Carbon180, 62.

Larsen, J., W. Herndon, and G. Hiltbrand. 2020. “The Employment Opportunities Associated with Scale-Up of Direct Air Capture (DAC) Technology in the US,” 28.

Levenda, A.M., I. Behrsin, and F. Disano. 2021. “Renewable Energy for Whom? A Global Systematic Review of the Environmental Justice Implications of Renewable Energy Technologies.” Energy Research and Social Science 71 (January): 101837. doi:10.1016/j.erss.2020.101837.

Livermore Lab Foundation. 2021. Carbon Capture and Sequestration in California: Regional Insights and Community Attitudes—March 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTuUxRUZTuk.

Lowe, M. 2012. Subsidence in Sedimentary Basins Due to Groundwater Withdrawal for Geothermal Energy Development. Utah Geological Survey. doi:10.34191/OFR-601.

Macknick, J., R. Newmark, G. Heath, and K.C. Hallett. 2011. “Review of Operational Water Consumption and Withdrawal Factors for Electricity Generating Technologies.” NREL/TP-6A20-50900, 1009674. doi:10.2172/1009674.

Madhu, K., S. Pauliuk, S. Dhathri, and F. Creutzig. 2021. “Understanding Environmental Trade-offs and Resource Demand of Direct Air Capture Technologies through Comparative Life-Cycle Assessment.” Nature Energy, October, 1–10. doi:10.1038/s41560-021-00922-6.

McDonnell, T. 2020. “Can Farmland Fix Solar Power’s Real Estate Problem?” Quartz. 2020. https://qz.com/1913868/why-agricultural-land-is-better-than-rooftops-for-solar-panels/.

McQueen, N., M.J. Desmond, R.H. Socolow, P. Psarras, and J. Wilcox. 2021. “Natural Gas vs. Electricity for Solvent-Based Direct Air Capture.” Frontiers in Climate, January. doi:10.3389/fclim.2020.618644.

McQueen, N., K.V. Gomes, C. McCormick, K. Blumanthal, M. Pisciotta, and J. Wilcox. 2021. “A Review of Direct Air Capture (DAC): Scaling Up Commercial Technologies and Innovating for the Future.” https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2516-1083/abf1ce/pdf.

McQueen, N., P. Psarras, H. Pilorgé, S. Liguori, J. He, M. Yuan, C.M. Woodall, et al. 2020. “Cost Analysis of Direct Air Capture and Sequestration Coupled to Low-Carbon Thermal Energy in the United States.” Environmental Science & Technology 54 (12): 7542–51. doi:10.1021/acs.est.0c00476.

Merrill, D. 2021. “U.S. Needs a Lot More Land to Go Green by 2050.” Bloomberg.com, 2021. https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2021-energy-land-use-economy/.

Mohai, P., D. Pellow, and J.T. Roberts. 2009. “Environmental Justice.” Annual Review of Environment and Resources 34 (1): 405–30. doi:10.1146/annurev-environ-082508-094348.

Moser, S.C., and C. Pike. 2015. “Community Engagement on Adaptation: Meeting a Growing Capacity Need.” Urban Climate, Building Capacity for Climate Change Adaptation in Urban Areas, 14 (December): 111–15. doi:10.1016/j.uclim.2015.06.006.

Mulligan, J., A. Rudee, K. Lebling, K. Levin, J. Anderson, and B. Christensen. 2020. “CarbonShot: Federal Policy Options for Carbon Removal in the United States.” https://www.wri.org/publication/carbonshot-federal-policy-options-for-carbon-removal-in-the-united-states.

NASEM (The National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine). 2019. Negative Emissions Technologies and Reliable Sequestration: A Research Agenda. doi:10.17226/25259.

NETL (National Energy Technology Laboratory). n.d. “Oxy-combustion.” Accessed September 21, 2021. https://netl.doe.gov/node/7477.

NREL (National Renewable Energy Laboratory). n.d. “Geothermal Prospector.” https://maps.nrel.gov/geothermal-prospector/?aL=KM9nbd%255Bv%255D%3Dt&bL=clight&cE=0&lR=0&mC=40.21244%2C-91.625976&tour=splash&zL=4. Accessed October 12, 2021.

OEHHA (Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment). 2020. “CalEnviroScreen.” Text. https://oehha.ca.gov/calenviroscreen.

Pellow, D.N. 2016. “Environmental Justice and Rural Studies: A Critical Conversation and Invitation to Collaboration.” Journal of Rural Studies 47 (October): 381–86. doi:10.1016/j.jrurstud.2016.06.018.

Pfister, S., P. Bayer, A. Koehler, and S. Hellweg. 2011. “Environmental Impacts of Water Use in Global Crop Production: Hotspots and Trade-offs with Land Use.” Environmental Science and Technology 45 (13): 5761–68. American Chemical Society: 5761–68. doi:10.1021/es1041755.

Raffetti, E., M. Treccani, and F. Donato. 2019. “Cement Plant Emissions and Health Effects in the General Population: A Systematic Review.” Chemosphere 218 (March): 211–22. doi:10.1016/j.chemosphere.2018.11.088.

Repmann, M., O. Schelske, D. Colijn, and P. Samendra. 2021. “Swiss-Re-Institute-Expertise-Publication-Insurance-Rationale-for-Carbon-Removal-Solutions.Pdf.” https://www.swissre.com/dam/jcr:31e39033-0ca6-418e-a540-d61b8e7d7b31/swiss-re-institute-expertise-publication-insurance-%20rationale-for-carbon-removal-solutions.pdf.

Seddon, N., A. Chausson, P. Berry, C.A.J. Girardin, A. Smith, and B. Turner. 2020. “Understanding the Value and Limits of Nature-Based Solutions to Climate Change and Other Global Challenges.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 375. doi:10.1098/rstb.2019.0120.

Sektiawan, A., G.A. Prasetyo, D.P. Adli, and E. Yuantoro. 2016. “Subsidence: Causes, Effects, and Mitigations in Geothermal Field.” IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science 42 (September). IOP Publishing: 012022. doi:10.1088/1755-1315/42/1/012022.

Shellenberger, M. 2018. “If Solar Panels Are So Clean, Why Do They Produce So Much Toxic Waste?” Forbes, May 23. https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/05/23/if-solar-panels-are-so-clean-why-do-they-produce-so-much-toxic-waste/.

Stevens, L., B. Anderson, C. Cowan, K. Colton, and D. Johnson. 2017. “The Footprint of Energy: Land Use of U.S. Electricity Production.” https://docs.wind-watch.org/US-footprints-Strata-2017.pdf.

Tawalbeh, M., A. Al-Othman, F. Kafiah, E. Abdelsalam, F. Almomani, and M. Alkasrawi. 2021. “Environmental Impacts of Solar Photovoltaic Systems: A Critical Review of Recent Progress and Future Outlook.” Science of the Total Environment, March. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.143528.

Terlouw, T., K. Treyer, C. Bauer, and M. Mazzotti. 2021. “Life Cycle Assessment of Direct Air Carbon Capture and Storage with Low-Carbon Energy Sources.” Environmental Science and Technology 55 (16): 11397–411. doi:10.1021/acs.est.1c03263.

UCS (Union of Concerned Scientists). 2013a. “Environmental Impacts of Solar Power.” https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/environmental-impacts-solar-power.

UCS. 2013b. “Environmental Impacts of Wind Power.” https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/environmental-impacts-wind-power.

UCS. 2013c. “Water-Smart Power.” July 3 https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/water-smart-power.

Urban Sustainability Directors Network. 2021. “Urban Sustainability Directors Network.” https://www.usdn.org/projects/workforce-and-economic-inclusion.html#/.

U.S. Department of State. 2021. “The Long-Term Strategy of the United States, Pathways to Net-Zero Greenhouse Gas Emissions by 2050.” https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/resource/US-LongTermStrategy-2021.pdf.

U.S. DOE (U.S. Department of Energy). 2006. “Advanced Chloralkali Technology.” 2006. https://www1.eere.energy.gov/manufacturing/industries_technologies/imf/pdfs/1797_advanced_chlor-alkali.pdf.

U.S. DOE. 2012. “Protocol for Addressing Induced Seismicity Associated with Enhanced Geothermal Systems.” https://www.energy.gov/eere/geothermal/downloads/protocol-addressing-induced-seismicity-associated-enhanced-geothermal-0.

U.S. DOE. 2021. “Creating Equity in Energy for People of Color.” https://www.energy.gov/articles/creating-equity-energy-people-color.

U.S. DOE. n.d. “Geothermal Power Plants—Minimizing Land Use and Impact.” https://www.energy.gov/eere/geothermal/geothermal-power-plants-minimizing-land-use-and-impact.

U.S. EIA (U.S. Energy Information Administration). 2020. “Geothermal Energy and the Environment.” https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/geothermal/geothermal-energy-and-the-environment.php.

U.S. EIA. 2021. “Annual Energy Outlook 2021.” https://www.eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/.

Emanuel, R.E., M.A. Caretta, L. Rivers III, and P. Vasudevan. 2021. “Natural Gas Gathering and Transmission Pipelines and Social Vulnerability in the United States.” GeoHealth 5 (6): e2021GH000442. doi:10.1029/2021GH000442.

U.S. EPA (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency). 2015. “Greenhouse Gas Equivalencies Calculator.” Data and Tools. August 28, 2015. https://www.epa.gov/energy/greenhouse-gas-equivalencies-calculator.

U.S. EPA. 2020. “EJSCREEN: Environmental Justice Screening and Mapping Tool.” Collections and Lists. https://www.epa.gov/ejscreen.

U.S. EPA. 2021a. “Environmental Justice.” Collections and Lists. https://www.epa.gov/environmentaljustice.

U.S. EPA. 2021b. “Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks: 1990–2019.” Reports and Assessments. February 3. https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/inventory-us-greenhouse-gas-emissions-and-sinks-1990-2019.

U.S. EPA. 2014. “Creating Equitable, Healthy, and Sustainable Communities.” Reports and Assessments. January 7. https://www.epa.gov/smartgrowth/creating-equitable-healthy-and-sustainable-communities.

USGS (United States Geological Survey). 2013. “National Assessment of Geologic Carbon Dioxide Storage Resources.” https://pubs.usgs.gov/ds/774/.

USGS. 2021a. “Cement.” https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2021/mcs2021-cement.pdf.

USGS. 2021b. “Iron and Steel.” https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2020/mcs2020-iron-steel.pdf.

U.S. Senate. 2021. “HR 3684.” https://www.epw.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/e/a/ea1eb2e4-56bd-45f1-a260-9d6ee951bc96/F8A7C77D69BE09151F210EB4DFE872CD.edw21a09.pdf.

Uzor, L. 2021. “Personal Communication Environmental Impacts of DAC.”

Uzor, L. 2022. Call with Climeworks.

Walker, G. 2009. “Beyond Distribution and Proximity: Exploring the Multiple Spatialities of Environmental Justice.” Antipode 41 (4): 614–36. doi:https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8330.2009.00691.x.

White House. 2021a. “White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council Justice40 Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool and Executive Order 12898 Revisions.” https://www.eenews.net/assets/2021/05/17/document_ew_01.pdf.

White House. 2021b. “FACT SHEET: The American Jobs Plan.” March 31. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/03/31/fact-sheet-the-american-jobs-plan/.

WHO (World Health Organization). 1999. “Guidelines for Community Noise.” https://www.who.int/docstore/peh/noise/Comnoise-1.pdf.

Williams, C., M. Reed, R. Mariner, J. DeAngelo, and P. Galanis. 2008. “USGS Fact Sheet 2008–3082: Assessment of Moderate- and High-Temperature Geothermal Resources of the United States.” https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2008/3082/.

World Bank. 2017. The Growing Role of Minerals and Metals for a Low Carbon Future. Washington, DC: World Bank. doi:10.1596/28312.

Xu, Y., J. Li, Q. Tan, A.L. Peters, and C. Yang. 2018. “Global Status of Recycling Waste Solar Panels: A Review.” Waste Management 75 (May): 450–58. doi:10.1016/j.wasman.2018.01.036.

Zhang, Y., R. Gautam, S. Pandey, M. Omara, J.D. Maasakkers, P. Sadavarte, D. Lyon, et al. 2020. “Quantifying Methane Emissions from the Largest Oil-Producing Basin in the United States from Space.” Science Advances 6 (17): eaaz5120. doi:10.1126/sciadv.aaz5120.

1. 1Beuttler et al. (2019) reports energy needs for capturing 1 MtCO₂ are expected to be 2,000 kilowatt-hours (kWh) in the long term, or 230 megawatts (MW). In the near term, we assume this value is closer to 2,400 kWh, or 270 MW.
2. 2This comparison is only intended to contextualize scale using current, relatable numbers and is not a projection of future market share.
3. 3Community engagement resources include Forbes et al. 2009; Groundwork USA 2021; and Katsonis 2019.
4. 4OSHA specifies the maximum noise level for workplace fans is 85 decibels (dB) at 5 feet (ft) distance. Given sound drop off, the plant would need to be 500 ft from a residential neighborhood for sound to drop to 45 dB, which is considered maximum for nighttime noise level (WHO 1999).
5. 5Beuttler et al. (2019) reports energy needs for capturing 1 tCO₂ are expected to be 2,000 kWh in the long term, or 230 MW for 1 MtCO₂/yr. In the near term, we assume this value is closer to 2,400 kWh/tCO₂, or 270 MW for 1 MtCO₂/yr.
6. 6This comparison is only intended to contextualize scale using current, relatable numbers and is not a projection of the future market share.
7. 7Other energy sources could potentially help power DAC, including nuclear, hydropower, waste heat, and hydrogen.
8. 8With this strategy, DAC would not directly compete with decarbonizing the grid and could make use of surplus renewable electricity. After midcentury, these natural gas plants would reach the end of their life, and the deployment experience from using them would help reduce the cost of DAC. Energy sources for DAC could then be reevaluated and ideally shift to nonfossil resources. This would create a systems approach that leverages stranded natural gas assets, scales up renewables, and supports scaling up DAC over the next three decades.
9. 9Of note, the U.S. banned imports of products made with silicon from Xinjiang, China, where there is “reasonable” indication of use of forced labor (Kaplan et al. 2021).
10. 10A family-sustaining wage is defined by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Living Wage Calculator as a wage that is higher than $22/hour.

The authors are grateful to numerous individuals who provided valuable input, feedback, and support to this work. We thank our external reviewers who have shared their expertise and insights: Adam Baylin-Stern, Holly Buck, Kel Coulson, Nicholas Eisenberger, Ruth Garcia, David Hawkins, Geoff Holmes, Ugbaad Kosar, Elise Lepine, Colin McCormick, Ben Rubin, Maxime Tronier, Simone Stewart, Louis Uzor, Frances Wang, and Caleb Woodall.

Thanks also goes to WRI colleagues for their thoughtful review, comments, insights, and guidance: Christina Deconcini, Karl Hausker, Jillian Neuberger, Carla Walker, and Debbie Weyl. We would especially like to thank Dan Lashof and Angela Anderson for their review and guidance.

While the contributions from reviewers are greatly appreciated, the views presented in this paper reflect those of the authors alone.

We also wish to thank Romain Warnault, Emily Matthews, Shazia Amin, Renee Pineda, Shannon Collins, and Rosie Ettenheim for editing, design, and production, and Carrie Dellesky for communications support.

This project was made possible through the generous funding from the Linden Trust for Conservation.

Katie Lebling is an associate in the U.S. Climate program at WRI. Her work focuses on technological carbon removal and industrial decarbonization in the United States.

Contact: katie.lebling@wri.org

Haley Leslie-Bole is an associate in the U.S. Climate program at WRI. Her work focuses on leveraging state and federal policy to increase the capacity of natural and working lands to sequester carbon. She also works to ensure that equity and community engagement are central to the carbon removal scale-up.

Contact: haley.leslie-bole@wri.org

Elizabeth Bridgwater is a research analyst in the U.S. Climate program at WRI. Her work focuses on carbon dioxide removal and U.S. subnational climate action.

Contact: elizabeth.bridgwater@wri.org

Zachary Byrum is an associate in the U.S. Climate program at WRI. His work focuses on policy options to scale up technological carbon removal solutions and industrial decarbonization in the United States.

Contact: zachary.byrum@wri.org

Peter Psarras is a research assistant professor in chemical and biomolecular engineering and energy policy at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and Weitzman School of Design at the University of Pennsylvania.

Contact: psarras@seas.upen.edu

World Resources Institute is a global research organization that turns big ideas into action at the nexus of environment, economic opportunity, and human well-being.

Our Challenge

Natural resources are at the foundation of economic opportunity and human wellbeing. But today, we are depleting Earth’s resources at rates that are not sustainable, endangering economies and people’s lives. People depend on clean water, fertile land, healthy forests, and a stable climate. Livable cities and clean energy are essential for a sustainable planet. We must address these urgent, global challenges this decade.

Our Vision

We envision an equitable and prosperous planet driven by the wise management of natural resources. We aspire to create a world where the actions of government, business, and communities combine to eliminate poverty and sustain the natural environment for all people.

Our Approach

COUNT IT

We start with data. We conduct independent research and draw on the latest technology to develop new insights and recommendations. Our rigorous analysis identifies risks, unveils opportunities, and informs smart strategies. We focus our efforts on influential and emerging economies where the future of sustainability will be determined.

CHANGE IT

We use our research to influence government policies, business strategies, and civil society action. We test projects with communities, companies, and government agencies to build a strong evidence base. Then, we work with partners to deliver change on the ground that alleviates poverty and strengthens society. We hold ourselves accountable to ensure our outcomes will be bold and enduring.

SCALE IT

We don’t think small. Once tested, we work with partners to adopt and expand our efforts regionally and globally. We engage with decision-makers to carry out our ideas and elevate our impact. We measure success through government and business actions that improve people’s lives and sustain a healthy environment.