Direct Air Capture of CO2: A Key Technology for Ambitious Climate Change Mitigation

Abstract

Christian Breyer is Professor for Solar Economy at LUT University, Finland. His major expertise is research of technological and economic characteristics of renewable energy systems specializing for highly renewable energy systems, on a local but also global scale. Research includes integrated sector analyses with power, heat, transport, desalination, industry, NETs, CCU, and Power-to-X. He worked previously for Reiner Lemoine Institut, Berlin, and Q-Cells (now Hanwha Q Cells). He is a member of ETIP PV, IEA-PVPS, scientific committee of the EU PVSEC and IRES, chairman at the Energy Watch Group, and reviewer for the IPCC. Mahdi Fasihi, M.Sc., is Research Assistant at LUT University, Finland. His focus area is CO2 direct air capture and techno-economic assessment of renewable electricity-based Power-to-X fuels and chemicals production and global trading. Highly resolved energy system modeling is a key method for his potential assessments. He received his M.Sc. degree in Energy Technology at LUT University and B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering at Guilan University, Iran. Cyril Bajamundi, PhD, is Chief Technology Officer of Soletair Power Oy, a Finnish start-up company focused on CO2 direct air capture and Power-to-X fuel conversion. He had been a Senior Scientist with VTT Technical Research Center of Finland, working in direct air capture of CO2 to support power-to-gas and power-to-liquid technologies for energy storage. Previously, he worked as Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of the Philippines, where he received his M.Sc. in Chemical Engineering. Felix Creutzig leads a working group at the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change, Berlin, and is Chair of Sustainability Economics of Human Settlements at Technical University Berlin. Educated as a physicist, he holds a PhD in Computational Neuroscience. He coordinates the chapter on “demand, services, and social aspects of mitigation” in the 6th assessment report of the IPCC. Research interests include data science and machine learning approaches for designing low-carbon cities, and demand-side solutions for climate change mitigation.