Scaling to Gigatons
Pathways to climate-significant deployment
Your Progress
Section 4 of 5The Gigatonne Challenge
Today: 10 kilotons/year globally. Climeworks' Orca (4 kt/yr), Carbon Engineering's pilot (1 kt/yr), smaller demos total ~10 kt/yr. 2050 Need: 10 gigatons/year (IPCC AR6, IEA NZE scenario). That's a 1,000,000x scale-up in 26 years—20% annual growth rate sustained. For comparison: Solar PV scaled 100,000x in 30 years (1990-2020); battery production scaled 10,000x in 15 years (2007-2022). DAC faces three bottlenecks: Manufacturing capacity. Current sorbent production: ~1 kt/year. Need: 500 kt/year by 2030 (IEA). Building new chemical plants takes 3-5 years. Steel, concrete, pumps, fans, compressors—each requires dedicated supply chains. Energy infrastructure. 10 Gt/yr DAC needs ~5 PWh/year (5,000 TWh)—10% of global electricity today. Must be low-carbon: 500 GW dedicated wind/solar (current US solar is 150 GW). Building at this pace = doubling global renewable deployment. Permitting and siting. Each 1 Mt/yr plant needs ~1,500 hectares (like 2,000 football fields). 10,000 plants globally by 2050. Each requires environmental review, CO₂ pipeline connections, grid access. US: 3-7 years per project. Need fast-track like defense mobilization. Three scenarios: (1) Conservative (10 Gt/2050): Slow policy, gradual tech improvement, supply chain delays. Misses climate targets. (2) Moderate (50 Gt/2050): Steady investment, streamlined permitting, manufacturing scales 100 kt/yr. IEA baseline. (3) Aggressive (500 Gt/2050): Wartime mobilization, unlimited capital, breakthrough tech (electrochemical). Manhattan Project scale.
Interactive Deployment Scenario Planner
Explore three deployment pathways and their infrastructure requirements
Deployment Trajectory
Infrastructure Needs by 2035
Risk Assessment
Moderate risk—requires sustained policy
vs Climate Target (10 Gt/yr by 2050)
💡 Key Insight
Scalability is about industrial mobilization, not just technology. The tech works—labs capture CO₂ reliably. The question is: Can we build 10,000+ plants fast enough? Requires: sorbent factories (like battery gigafactories), renewable energy build-out (like China's solar surge), workforce training (like WWII shipyard programs), streamlined permitting (like wartime production acts). DAC's future depends less on breakthrough science and more on industrial policy, capital allocation, and political will. The physics says yes—the question is whether civilization will mobilize.