The road to achieving the long-term Paris targets: energy transition and the role of direct air capture

This paper quantifies the energy transition and economic consequences of the long-term targets from the Paris agreement, with a particular focus on the targets of limiting global warming by the end of the century to 2 and 1.5 °C using direct air capture (DAC). It evaluates the potential role of DAC and its impact on policy costs and energy consumption, while finding that limiting global temperature to 1.5 °C is only possible when using DAC. The paper’s results show that the DAC technology can play an important role in realizing deep decarbonization goals and in the reduction of regional and global mitigation costs with stringent targets. Furthermore, DAC acts a substitute to Bio-Energy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) in the stringent scenarios.