:format(webp))
Jun 5 2025
Jun 5 2025
CO₂ is a crucial resource for society and a building block of life itself. From nature to industry, numerous ecosystems rely on CO₂ to function. However, the world faces the urgent need of permanently removing billions of tons of CO₂ from the atmosphere. How we source, manage, and dispose of carbon determines whether it contributes to the climate problem or helps solve it.
CO₂ naturally moves between the atmosphere, land, oceans, and living organisms. Human activities have disrupted this natural cycle by emitting massive volumes of CO₂ to the air and overwhelming the planet's natural carbon sinks, such as forests, oceans, and soil. Here's how different CO₂ sources impact the carbon cycle:
Fossil CO₂: Formed over millions of years from ancient organic matter, fossil CO₂ is extracted from deep underground in the form of oil and gas. When burned as fossil fuels, this carbon is released into the atmosphere, directly increasing atmospheric concentrations.
Biogenic CO₂: This CO₂ originates from biological sources like plants or fermentation. While it can be considered climate-neutral if the carbon is reused in a closed loop, it will increase emissions if not properly managed.
Oceanic CO₂: Oceans play a vital role in the global carbon cycle, absorbing about 25% of human-caused CO₂ emissions annually. While this absorption helps reduce CO₂ concentrations in the atmosphere, it comes at a cost: ocean acidification, which harms marine life. Furthermore, warming ocean temperatures reduce the ocean's ability to absorb CO₂, lessening its effectiveness as a carbon sink.
Atmospheric CO₂: Current atmospheric CO₂ levels exceed 420 parts per million (ppm), primarily due to historical fossil CO₂ emissions. This is significantly higher than the pre-industrial level of 280 ppm and well above the 350-400 ppm range that climate scientists consider necessary to stabilize the climate.
The natural CO₂ cycle is fundamentally disrupted by the extraction and release of ancient fossil CO₂. This introduces vast amounts of new carbon into the cycle that were not there before, overwhelming natural absorption processes. While the ocean attempts to buffer this excess, its capacity is compromised by acidification and warming, creating a dangerous feedback loop where less CO₂ is absorbed, accelerating the rise in atmospheric concentrations.
Restoring balance to the carbon cycle requires a shift in how we emit, use, store and actively remove carbon. This is what we call the CO₂ transition, and it's built on three core principles:
Refrain from emitting new CO₂: The CO₂ transition begins with decarbonization: replacing fossil-based energy and carbon-intensive materials with renewable energy and low-carbon solutions. Where emissions are hard to abate and unavoidable, we must capture and permanently store that CO₂ to prevent it from entering the atmosphere.
Recirculate CO₂ from ambient air: Replace fossil CO₂ for industrial production processes with circular, ambient CO₂.. This includes using it as a feedstock for synthetic fuels in hard-to-abate sectors like aviation, and for applications like greenhouses and beverage carbonation.
Remove historical CO₂ emissions: Even if we stopped emitting CO₂ today, there is already too much CO₂ in the atmosphere from past emissions. We need to actively remove these historical CO₂ emissions from our ambient air.
The first step in restoring the carbon cycle is to stop adding new carbon to the atmosphere. This involves cutting emissions wherever possible by switching to renewable energy, electrifying processes and phasing out fossil fuels all together. However, some emissions are hard to abate and unavoidable. In these cases, CO₂ must be captured at the source and permanently stored. Emitters must move from short-term CO₂ use, which leads to postponed emissions (CCU) to permanent storage, which leads to neutralized emissions (CCS). This results in preventing new CO₂ emissions from entering the atmosphere.
This shift is already happening, with projects like Porthos in the Netherlands and Northern Lights in Norway being excellent examples of CCU moving towards CCS. However, many industries that need CO₂ still rely on fossil CO₂ sourced as a by-product from processes like ammonia or ethanol production. The CCU to CCS conversion of fossil-based industrial CO₂ leads to tighter supply, rising costs, and growing uncertainty for CO₂ users. To enable the CO₂ transition, we need a better alternative to using fossil CO₂ in industrial processes. This leads us to the second principle.
Hard-to-abate sectors like aviation, shipping, and steel depend on carbon-based fuels. Creating synthetic, renewable fuels, or e-fuels, from ambient, circular CO₂ offers one of the few viable ways to decarbonize these industries by producing circular hydrocarbons that avoid fossil emissions. We're seeing significant investment in e-fuels, but their true promise for decarbonization is only realized when the CO₂ is sourced from ambient air, not from fossil sources.
At the same time, many sectors, such as beverage carbonation and horticulture, rely on CO₂ for daily operations, but much of that carbon still comes from fossil sources. Globally, industries like food, beverage, and water treatment spend over $10 billion annually on CO₂, most of which is still fossil-based.
Switching to air-captured, circular CO₂ avoids lifecycle emissions and helps companies meet their climate goals without introducing new fossil carbon into the atmosphere. This shift aligns with national climate plans under the Paris Agreement, which increasingly prioritize carbon circularity, removal and low-carbon alternatives as part of countries' Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), and with corporate net-zero strategies that emphasize Scope 3 emissions reduction and material substitution.
Even if we halted all emissions today, we would still need to remove billions of tons of CO₂ already in the air. The 2024 State of Carbon Dioxide Removal report estimates that between 7 and 9 billion tons of CO₂ must be removed annually by 2050 to stay within the 1.5°C target. Both the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recognize that engineered carbon removal methods, like Direct Air Capture, must scale rapidly alongside nature-based solutions to close this gap.
The IPCC states that carbon dioxide removal is "unavoidable" for achieving net-zero CO₂ (IPCC AR6 SPM.D.1.1). Similarly, the IEA notes that DAC will play "an important and growing role in net-zero pathways," particularly in sectors where emissions are difficult to eliminate (IEA, Direct Air Capture, 2022).
While biogenic and oceanic sources offer alternatives for carbon dioxide removal, they have limitations:
Biogenic solutions: While biogenic solutions offer promise, their limitations stem from factors like land-use competition, scalability challenges, verification issues, and lower permanence due to the potential for re-release of carbon. This makes them a lower quality removal option (IPCC AR6 WGIII - Chapter 12).
Oceanic CO₂ removal: This nascent technology is not yet proven and requires transportation of CO₂ before it can be stored. It also has high energy requirements, complex monitoring, and uncertain ecological effects (IPCC AR6 WGIII - Chapter 12).
Capturing CO₂ directly from the air allows us to reduce the concentration of carbon already in the atmosphere, helping to restore balance in the carbon cycle and meet net-zero climate goals.
When paired with permanent storage, DAC is recognized by the IPCC and IEA as a high-quality, verifiable method of carbon removal leading to negative emissions, suitable for both compliance frameworks and voluntary carbon markets. Captured CO₂ can be:
Injected into geological formations.
Stored in depleted oil or gas reservoirs.
Mineralized using natural or industrial materials.
Incorporated into durable goods like concrete for long-term storage.
DAC supports grid flexibility by utilizing excess solar or wind energy during periods when production exceeds demand. This makes DAC a complementary asset to the clean energy transition, putting surplus electricity to good use, instead of curtailing that energy or being impacted by negative electricity prices.
DAC-sourced, circular CO₂ can also be used to produce renewable fuels, maximize crop yield, carbonate drinks and many other applications that require CO₂. This enables industries to reduce their reliance on fossil carbon and close the loop on carbon emissions.
DAC also strengthens climate reporting. As expectations rise for transparent carbon accounting and product-level disclosures, switching from fossil CO₂ to air-captured alternatives helps companies demonstrate avoidance or real reductions in lifecycle emissions and meet regulatory compliance.
Skytree is committed to advancing DAC technology to play its crucial role in achieving a net-zero future. Our focus includes:
Continuous Innovation: Investing in research and development to enhance process capture materials efficiency.
Strategic Partnerships: Collaborating across industries, universities and research institutes to scale deployments and integrate flexible DAC into various applications.
Fast and Modular Deployment: Our modular DAC machines adapt to local energy sources, climates, and site infrastructures, whether for a single greenhouse or a full-scale DAC park.
Easy Scalability: New technology enhancements can be retrofitted to installed machines directly onsite, keeping performance high and downtime low as our DAC technology evolves.
Levelized Cost of Carbon Capture: Mass manufacturing, sophisticated DAC system design, smart energy integration, field upgrades and sorbent innovation help drive down the levelized cost of CO₂.
From carbon removal to circularity, the CO₂ transition begins here. Talk to our team about how DAC technology can help avoid or reduce emissions, stabilize CO₂ supply, and unlock climate-aligned growth.
For a deeper dive into DAC's critical role in the CO₂ transition, read our perspective on navigating the path to effective carbon removal.