The Math on DAC Subsidies: $900B to $3T, and It's Worth It (With a Giant Asterisk)
Subsidies for direct air capture must exceed $200–330 per ton of CO2 and be sustained for decades. That’s not an activist estimate — it’s the central finding of the first rigorous uncertainty analysis of DACCS scaling, published by researchers at Politecnico di Milano and ETH Zurich. The total public bill? Between $900 billion and $3 trillion. Before you close this tab: the investment pays back by mid-century. But only if — and this “if” is load-bearing — we simultaneously cut emissions hard. ...