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Natural and engineered carbon dioxide removal have become regular features of climate models which limit warming to 1.5°C or even 2°C above pre-industrial levels. This gives rise to an assumption that solutions, for example direct air capture (DAC)—involving the direct removal of carbon dioxide from ambient air—can be commercialised and deployed at the necessary speed and scale to have a material impact, in the order of gigatonnes, by mid-century. Modular, solid-sorbent DAC on a gigatonne scale will require the mass mobilisation of supply chains to manufacture millions of modular DAC units−20 million of the present state of the art 50 tonne/year modules to deliver 1 gigatonne per year, as well as the large-scale production of novel chemical sorbents. To achieve a climate relevant DAC industry will demand innovative procurement models, for example carbon purchase agreements (CPAs), and dedicated DAC manufacturing facilities or dactories. In addition, insight is offered through the work of DAC start-up Carbon Infinity into the industry supply-chain position, adopting lessons from computing, and energy technologies. In particular, we look at approaches to drive demand and scale-up DAC module production, and opportunities presented in the development of an integrated DAC manufacturing industry.

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An ever-dwindling carbon budget, resulting in temperature rise of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels projected between 2030-2035, has generated a necessity to explore climate mitigation technologies such as direct air capture (DAC). DAC typically involves the use of materials and energy to capture CO2 directly from the atmosphere. However, DAC technologies remain a long way from the necessary level of development and scale needed to move the needle on carbon removal and mitigating against climate change. This study conducts a country-level analysis using an expert elicitation and an information entropy method, with a weighted group of variables identified from existing literature as necessary to develop and deploy low-temperature, electrochemical and high-temperature DAC technologies. Here we show that: 1) adopting the expert survey variable weighting, USA, Canada, China and Australia are best positioned to deploy the various DAC technologies; 2) the information entropy approach offers a broadly similar result with traditionally developed nations being best positioned, in addition to land rich countries, to deploy DAC technologies; 3) a comparatively developed policy and financing environment, as well as low carbon energy supply would raise a country’s DAC capacity; 4) developing countries such as China have significant potential to deploy DAC, owing to a well-rounded position across variables. These results produce wide-ranging policy implications for efforts to deploy climate mitigation technologies through the development of a multilateral, coordinated mitigation and carbon dioxide removal deployment strategy.