Scale-up is too slow.
Minx ‘18 (*Jan Christoph Minx is head of the applied sustainability science working group at the Mercator Research Institute and professor for climate change and public policy at the University of Leeds. **Gregory Nemet is an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; 5-31-2018; “The inconvenient truth about carbon capture”; Washington Post; https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/theworldpost/wp/2018/05/31/carbon-capture/)
A breakthrough invention in science often stimulates exuberant assumptions that shortcuts in the process of technology adoption are available. But they rarely are. The research community on carbon dioxide removal may be proceeding down a path of wishful thinking that the brilliance of the ideas behind this research will inherently create adopters and users. A revealing point is that in many studies and news articles, these technologies will be “deployed.” Only rarely do we read about people “adopting” them. This top-down orientation, using military language, is bound to run into problems, especially at the massive scales involved.
Consider the experience of arguably the most dynamic low-carbon innovation so far, solar photovoltaic panels. It took 60 years after the first commercial use, the Vanguard-1 satellite in 1957, to get to the current state where solar beats coal and gas on cost in sunny places. By the 2030s, more than 10 percent of global energy supply is expected to come from solar. The first commercial direct CO2 air capture system came online last year. If air capture is to follow a similar timeline to solar, it will be low cost in 2077 and attain widespread adoption by 2100. That is far too late.