Richard Newell, president and CEO of Resources for the Future (RFF), a nonpartisan research group, said the mechanics behind direct air capture are proven. “The question is, how expensive is it to do it at scale?” he said.
“It’s a relatively expensive way to reduce emissions,” Newell added. “If you can reduce the emissions before they go into the atmosphere, that tends to be much cheaper than removing them afterward.”
For industries particularly hard to decarbonize, such as aviation, offsets will be critical to reaching net-zero emissions, Newell said, while DiPerna said interest in offsets is positive.