Capture fails and creates more fossil fuel use.
Katie Lebling 22, Associate in WRI's Climate Program, Master's degree in Energy, Resources, and the Environment, 5-2-2022, “6 Things to Know About Direct Air Capture,” https://www.wri.org/insights/direct-air-capture-resource-considerations-and-costs-carbon-removal, oj [EOR = enhanced oil recovery]
While organizations like the IPCC indicate the need for significant amounts of carbon removal to meet our climate goals, care must be taken to ensure that ramping up DAC does not distract from essential attention and investment in other mitigation measures, especially to reduce fossil fuel use. Scientists indicate we will need both faster emissions reduction and carbon removal, and the amount of carbon removal needed is inversely proportional to how deeply we are able to cut emissions.
Strong policy and private sector guardrails are needed to ensure countries and companies do not over-rely on carbon removal at the expense of emissions reductions. For example, the Science Based Target initiative’s recent net-zero guidance requires companies to meet their climate targets by reducing more than 90% of their own emissions and using carbon removal to compensate for only the remaining 5-10% that they cannot directly mitigate.
With DAC, some are concerned about the connection to fossil fuel production through EOR (as mentioned before), which uses captured CO2 to produce more oil from depleted wells. While EOR permanently sequesters the injected CO2, it also produces oil, which produces more emissions. Fossil fuel company investments in DAC with EOR can thus be seen as a way to continue producing fossil fuels and slowing the energy transition.