I truly hope this is true, but when I think about the creation of some technology that lets us do this, I'm left with a roadblock I can't get around: Who is going to pay for this, when we can't even get the US to agree to cost-saving commitments to reduce CO2 output?
If we get to a grid that's ~100% renewable, we'll likely have oversized it a massive amount, like 50%-200% more energy could be produced than is needed at the time of productions, to deal with seasonal and weather variability. Let's call all that energy free, because it has zero marginal cost and would be curtailed otherwise. Who pays for the capital on the equipment to pull out CO2 from the atmosphere, and the disposal of the resulting tons of carbon?
1) People, who don't want to be affected by global warming. Right now nobody is affected enough to pay and it is too costly (estimates are $500/metric ton, while emission per capita is around 20 tonnes/year).
2) Captured carbon can be sold commercially for use in plastics industry, at some point it will be cheaper, than oil/gas extraction.
3) Carbon emission trading already exists, some companies even doing it voluntary, like Google. Direct air capture can piggy-back that system.
If we get to a grid that's ~100% renewable, we'll likely have oversized it a massive amount, like 50%-200% more energy could be produced than is needed at the time of productions, to deal with seasonal and weather variability. Let's call all that energy free, because it has zero marginal cost and would be curtailed otherwise. Who pays for the capital on the equipment to pull out CO2 from the atmosphere, and the disposal of the resulting tons of carbon?