Captain Drawdown’s daily logbook on every CDR story, paper, and expert voice — so you don’t have to read them all.
The critique, in the critic’s own words
“We might ultimately spend 10% to 20% of our resources on removals and 80%-90% on mitigation. I’d suggest 99% on mitigation / 1% on removals is reasonable today.” That is Zeke Hausfather (@zekehausfather.com on Bluesky). It is the sharpest current mainstream-climate critique of CDR spending. Not “CDR is a scam.” Something harder to dismiss: the eventual share is fine, the ratio right now is wrong.
Apply it to a specific place. Australia just handed Airhive and ACV A$10M (about US$7.2M) to build the country’s first DACCS hub (Carbon Herald). Small money in absolute terms. Symbolically large: federal dollars on engineered direct air capture with storage, in a coal-heavy grid, before the country has a permitted at-scale CO2 injection regime.
What the critic is reading correctly
Cheap mitigation is still delivering tonnes. Glen Peters (@glenpeters.bsky.social on Bluesky) shows transport and industry emissions falling via electrification in the datasets he tracks, with “the rest” being the stubborn part. In an economy where the grid still leans on coal, a marginal public dollar into rooftop solar, firming, or transmission almost certainly abates more CO2 today than the same dollar into a first-of-kind DAC hub with an unclear storage pathway. That is the Hausfather point made geographic: the opportunity cost of a removals dollar is higher in Australia in 2026 than it would be in a grid that is already 90% clean.
The community’s standard response, and where it’s weak
The usual CDR-side reply is “lead time.” Best version comes from the Negative Emissions Platform: “Europe cannot wait until 2031 to secure the carbon removals it will need from 2031. Projects take YEARS to develop.” True. But the reply is weak when it is used to defend any removals grant anywhere. Lead time justifies spending the 1% now. It does not justify spending it badly, or in places where the storage stack is not yet legal.
What the critique gets right
Three things. First, the ratio math. If total climate spend is finite, 10% on removals today starves mitigation of tonnes we could still cheaply avoid. Second, the geography. A DACCS grant in Iceland lands on top of clean geothermal power and a working injection permit. The same grant in a coal-grid jurisdiction without a Class-VI-equivalent regime is buying a slide deck, not tonnes. Third, the accountability frame. Hausfather is not asking CDR to disappear. He is asking it to justify the current share. That is a fair ask.
What the critique misses
Two things. One, DAC hubs are infrastructure, not tonnes. You do not build them the year you need the tonnes. If Australia waits until domestic residual emissions demand engineered removals at Mt scale, the permitting, port siting, and geology work has not been done. Two, small grants are how governments learn which pathways are real in their own geology. A$10M is not a mitigation-vs-removals trade in any serious budget sense. It is a scoping bet. Confusing scoping bets with deployment budgets is the same category error the 99/1 framing risks making in the other direction.
Synthesis
For CDR builders and funders, the Hausfather line is now the ceiling on how much public money you can credibly request. “Lead time” is your strongest counter, and it only works if the project actually reduces a lead-time bottleneck: permits, storage characterization, port and grid siting. Airhive and ACV in Australia should be judged on exactly that, not on early tonnes.
Two things worth watching. Whether the Airhive/ACV hub secures a domestic storage permit pathway inside 18 months. And whether any Australian federal review benchmarks the grant’s implied $/tCO2 against renewable deployment alternatives. That comparison is the Hausfather critique made operational.
If it is never made, the 99/1 crowd is right to keep asking. Residual emissions only. CDR does not license slower fossil phase-out anywhere, and least of all on a coal-heavy grid. For a primer on how the non-DAC side of the portfolio is developing, see What Is Enhanced Weathering?.
Citations
- Bluesky — @zekehausfather.com on Bluesky — Bluesky post
- Carbon Herald — A$10M (about US$7.2M) to build the country’s first DACCS hub
- Bluesky — @glenpeters.bsky.social on Bluesky — Bluesky post
- LinkedIn — Negative Emissions Platform — LinkedIn post