Renewables More Cost Effective Than Direct Or Indirect Carbon Capture

Carbon capture — oh, how rapturously its advocates sing its praises. Just build carbon capture facilities and — Shazam! — humans can use all the coal, oil, and methane they want forever and a day! The glaciers will refreeze, ocean levels will recede, drought stricken areas will flourish, and we can all get back to life the way it was 100 years ago. “What a beautiful world this will be; what a glorious time to be free,” Donald Fagen might say. It’s a kind of magic realism that is very appealing — and wrong.

Mark Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University, and his colleagues, have a different perspective. In a research paper published February 9, 2025, in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, he writes:

“Air pollution, global warming, and energy insecurity are three major problems facing the world. This study first examines whether 149 countries can transition 100% of their business-as-usual (BAU) all-sector energy to electricity and heat obtained from 100% wind-water-solar (WWS) sources to solve these problems. WWS eliminates energy-related air pollution deaths and CO2-equivalent emissions while reducing end-use energy needs by ∼54.4%, annual energy costs by ∼59.6%, and annual social (energy plus health plus climate) costs by ∼91.8% among nations, giving energy and social cost payback times of 5.9 and 0.78 years, respectively.

“Conversely, ‘all-of-the-above’ policies promoting carbon capture (CC) and/or synthetic (as opposed to natural) direct air carbon capture (SDACC) to reduce or offset CO2 emissions trigger, with full penetration of CC/SDACC across 149 countries, $60–80 trillion/y in social cost, or 9.1–12.1 times the WWS social cost and only 1.1–25.6% lower social cost than BAU. Even when all CO2 is stored, CC and SDACC increase air pollution, CO2-equivalent emissions (due to capture inefficiencies and not capturing non-CO2 greenhouse gases), energy needs, and equipment costs relative to WWS. Sensitivity tests reinforce this finding. Although full penetration is extreme, any CC/SDACC level increases social cost and emissions substantially versus WWS. Thus, policies promoting CC and SDACC should be abandoned.” (Emphasis added.)

“If you spend $1 on carbon capture instead of on wind, water, and solar, you are increasing CO2, air pollution, energy requirements, energy costs, pipelines, and total social costs,” Jacobson said. This holds true even if zero-emission energy systems power the technology deployed to extract carbon dioxide. “It’s always an opportunity cost to use clean, renewable energy for direct air capture instead of replacing a fossil fuel CO2 source, just like it’s an opportunity cost to use it for AI or bitcoin mining. You’re preventing renewables from replacing fossil fuel sources because you’re creating more demand for those renewables,” he said.

Carbon Capture And Its Costs

Jacobson and his co-authors compared the annual energy costs, emissions, public health impacts, and social costs associated with implementing either of two extremes across all sectors in 149 countries over the next 25 years. One extreme would see a complete switch to using heat and electricity generated by wind, solar, geothermal, and hydropower for all energy needs, as well as some advances in energy efficiency; decreases in energy demand through improved public transit, increased cycling, and telecommuting; and commercialization of hydrogen fuel cells for long-distance air travel and shipping. For the purposes of this study, the researchers assumed hydrogen would be produced using water and electricity from renewable sources, not with fossil fuels, which is the way most hydrogen is made today.

The other extreme would see countries maintain their current reliance on fossil fuels with some renewables, nuclear, and biomass while improving energy efficiency by the same amount as in the all-renewable case. In this second case, all 149 countries would also add equipment to capture carbon dioxide from industrial flues and use technology known as synthetic direct air carbon capture to pull CO2 from ambient air. Comparing these two “unrealistically extreme cases” distills the climate, health, and social costs associated with investing money in carbon capture and direct air capture that might otherwise go toward electrification and wind, water, and solar power. Neither case considers the potential costs or benefits of efforts to enhance carbon sequestration in natural carbon sinks like wetlands, forests, soil, and oceans.

The researchers found that if the 149 countries studied were able to successfully eliminate fossil fuels and biomass combustion through renewables and efficiency gains, by 2050 they could reduce their end-use energy needs by more than 54%. Annual energy costs would decline by nearly 60%. Hundreds of millions of illnesses and 5 million deaths per year related to air pollution from energy — whether from wood-burning cook stoves and kerosene lamps, or from methane-fired generating stations — would be avoided. “When you add wind turbines to replace a coal plant, you’re eliminating not only the CO₂ but also the pollution from the coal,” said Jacobson, who is also a senior fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford.

Widespread electrification reduces energy demand in part because electric heat pumps and vehicles are more efficient than gas heaters and appliances, conventional air conditioners, and internal combustion engines, Jacobson said. Other energy savings come from eliminating energy needed to extract, transport, and refine oil, gas, coal, and uranium. “You can have the most efficient way of removing CO₂ from the air, but that does not change the efficiency of combustion. You’re keeping that inefficient energy infrastructure the same,” said Jacobson. “It’s much cheaper and more efficient just to replace the fossil source with electricity or heat provided by a renewable source.”

Common Sense And The Climate

Jacobson is focusing on some commonly understood principles. If you are in one place, you cannot be in another. A dollar spent on A is a dollar that cannot be spent on B. The time we spend doing one thing makes it impossible to spend that time doing something else. Climate policies that promote expansion of renewables as well as carbon capture and direct air capture to deal with emissions from fossil fuels and biomass “do not distinguish between good and poor solutions,” and any policy promoting carbon capture and direct air capture “should be abandoned,” the authors write in the study. “The only way to eliminate all air pollutant and climate warming gases and particles from energy is to eliminate combustion.” (Emphasis added.)

On Bluesky, Jacobson posted, “Carbon capture and synthetic direct air carbon capture both increase CO2, so claims by the @ipcc.bsky.social and others that we ‘need’ CC/SDACC are misleading and false because they fail to explain CC/SDACC have no ability to reduce net CO2, and they increase social cost. It is simply not true that either carbon capture or synthetic (not natural) direct air capture reduces CO2 when the whole system, not just the capture equipment, is considered. Time to act wiser on climate and abandon policies promoting, on climate grounds, CC and DAC.”

Framing The Debate

Recently, we published the thoughts of Mike Hulme, a professor of human geography at the University of Cambridge, who says using terms like 1.5°C is not helping to move the climate debate forward because they are just an abstraction. He suggests re-framing the debate in terms that matter to people — things like the health benefits of decarbonization and the lower cost of renewables compared to business as usual. Jacobson is saying much the same thing with his focus on health and money. In the final analysis, money is mostly what gets people’s attention, so it is good to frame the conversation around economics. The upshot is that it is silly to fund new nuclear power plants that take 20 years to build and cost four times as much as was originally budgeted to complete. Renewables can be up and running in a fraction of the time and at a fraction of the cost. When it comes to health impacts, most people are in favor of living a long, disease-free life.

Many years ago, I was trying to quit smoking. I was living proof of the truth of Mark Twain’s quip, “Quitting smoking is easy. I’ve done it a thousand times.” I went to a clinic that promised to break people of the filthy habit using a variety of emotional triggers. One asked us to calculate how much we had spent in our lifetimes on cigarettes. For me, the answer was about $12,000, and I thought to myself, “That’s not a lot, considering how much pleasure I have gotten from smoking.” Another asked us to calculate how many puffs of tobacco smoke we had inhaled. The answer for me was in the millions. A tiny light bulb lit up in my head and I heard myself say, “Oh, this is not good.” That was the turning point. Within two weeks, I was free of my addiction to the filthy weed.

Various things affect people differently, so it is important to have as many levers as possible when attempting to convince friends, family, and our elected officials to do the right thing for the environment. Money and health are two biggies that can motivate us to support a move away from fossil fuels. If we do that, there will be no need for carbon capture of any type and the money saved can be put to better use so we all can enjoy a sustainable environment today and for many tomorrows to come.