As public debate around Direct Air Capture (DAC) intensifies, a familiar pattern is emerging: high expectations, technical growing pains, and vocal skepticism. But DAC is not a fringe idea. It is a scientifically grounded solution that most major climate models agree will be essential to meeting global climate goals. Even with rapid emissions cuts, we will need to remove billions of tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to reach net zero and stabilize the climate.
There is no one-size-fits-all approach to DAC. The field includes a diversity of methods, from liquid solvents and solid sorbents to mineralization, electrochemical processes, and modular systems integrated with renewables or industrial hubs. This diversity increases the odds of success and allows different technologies to match local conditions, energy resources, and use cases.
To see the growing footprint of DAC technologies around the world, explore our interactive deployment map.
We’ve seen this story before.
Throughout history, transformative technologies have faced early outsized expectations, predictable underperformance, and then over time, remarkable success. From solar panels and wind turbines to electric vehicles and even heavier-than-air flight, the arc of innovation bends toward breakthrough. But it rarely moves in a straight line.
Here’s why we believe DAC deserves the same long view.
Solar, Wind, and EVs: The Growing Pains Before the Breakthrough
🔆 Solar Power
In the 1970s, solar energy was heralded as the future. But costs were sky-high, over $100 per watt, and progress was slow. The White House famously installed panels in 1979… and removed them by 1986. For decades, solar languished on the sidelines. Today, solar is one of the cheapest and fastest-growing power sources in the world, with costs down nearly 90 percent over the last decade.
🌬️ Wind Energy
The 1980s “wind rush” in California was followed by a bust. Early turbines were unreliable and expensive, and critics wrote off wind as fringe. Yet consistent R&D led to bigger, better, and cheaper machines. Today, wind supplies over 10 percent of global electricity and more than 40 percent in countries like Denmark.
🔋 Electric Vehicles
EVs were hyped in the 1990s and dismissed just as quickly. GM crushed its own EV1 program. Skeptics pointed to battery costs and range anxiety. Two decades later, EVs are mainstream, performance-leading, and rapidly scaling globally. Over 17 million EVs were sold last year alone.
These are not cautionary tales. They are reassurance. Each of these sectors stumbled early, only to overdeliver spectacularly later.
Technologies Once Deemed “Impossible” Until They Weren’t
✈️ Heavier-Than-Air Flight
In 1903, The New York Times predicted flight could take “from one to ten million years.” Sixty-nine days later, the Wright brothers flew.
🚀 Space Travel
In 1920, that same paper ridiculed Robert Goddard for suggesting a rocket could work in a vacuum. In 1969, they published a retraction just as Apollo 11 was landing on the moon.
☢️ Nuclear Power
In 1933, Nobel physicist Ernest Rutherford said extracting energy from atoms was “moonshine.” Twelve years later, the first nuclear reactor went live. Nuclear now supplies 10 percent of global electricity.
History is full of “impossibilities” overturned by ingenuity, persistence, and time. The barrier is rarely physics. It is progress.
So Where Does That Leave Direct Air Capture?
Today, DAC is still early. It is costly. It is limited in scale. That is exactly what critics once said, and rightly so, about solar, wind, and EVs. And it is what they once said, wrongly, about flight, space, and atomic energy.
Pulling CO₂ directly from the air is technically hard. But it is not impossible. And as with every climate technology we rely on today, costs will fall as investment, deployment, and learning curves kick in. It’s already happening.
If we give DAC the same room to grow that we gave renewables and mobility tech, it can deliver enormous value, especially as the world seeks high-integrity carbon removal options in the decades to come.
The Takeaway
Not every idea that stumbles early is a failure. Sometimes, it is just the first chapter of a long story.
At the Direct Air Capture Coalition, we take inspiration from the arc of past innovation and apply it to the climate technologies of tomorrow. Let us not forget that nearly everything that defines modern life today was once considered impossible, impractical, or a pipe dream.
Direct Air Capture may be at the hard part of the curve. But if history is any guide, it may also be on the cusp of transformation.
