Direct air capture technology has dropped below $200 per tonne of CO₂ for the first time — the benchmark economists have long set as the threshold for commercial viability at scale.
Direct air capture — the technology that sucks CO₂ directly from the atmosphere — has long been dismissed as too expensive to matter at scale. In 2020, the cost was around $600 per tonne. Last week, Swiss company Climeworks announced that its third-generation Mammoth facility in Iceland has achieved a verified cost of $186 per tonne — below the $200 threshold that energy economists have long identified as the tipping point for large-scale deployment.
The $200 figure has been cited in climate economics literature since the 2010s as the approximate price at which direct air capture becomes cost-competitive with other forms of carbon offsetting for hard-to-abate sectors. Below this level, industries facing carbon taxes in the $150–250 range — which the EU carbon market is approaching — find it rational to pay for air capture rather than either paying the tax or making costly operational changes. The crossing of this threshold therefore represents not just a technical milestone but a commercial one.
Climate scientists are careful to contextualise the achievement. Direct air capture alone cannot solve climate change — the scale required to remove meaningful amounts of atmospheric CO₂ would require thousands of facilities and enormous amounts of clean energy. The current Mammoth III facility captures around 36,000 tonnes per year. Global emissions are 37 billion tonnes. Capture is a complement to emissions reduction, not a replacement for it. But the $186 figure does change the calculation meaningfully for corporate net-zero commitments.
"This is not a solution. It is a tool we didn't have before. And having more tools matters."
— Climate economist, Oxford University, 2026