by Charles Cadieu, Spiritus CEO and co-founder
News outlets last week warned that the One Big Beautiful Bill had gutted federal clean‑energy support, but a closer reading shows the opposite for carbon removal: the law preserves and clarifies the performance‑based 45Q credit. Direct‑air‑capture (DAC) facilities that store CO₂ underground can still earn $180 per metric ton. There are even improvements to 45Q. The former $130 for DAC CO2 that is utilized in use cases such as fuels and enhanced‑oil recovery is now raised to $180. Therefore, Washington will continue to support DAC while also creating a headwind for other climate technologies.
Even with continued and improved federal support for DAC, costs must fall sharply for DAC to become an enduring pillar of societal decarbonization. It is commonly viewed that a market price of $100 per ton will lead to enduring support of DAC as a major decarbonization pathway. Today, several next‑generation DAC developers are already quoting costs of about $500 per ton for their first commercial volumes and mapping credible routes to $250 per ton by 2030; figures that include compression, transport, and geologic storage. DAC approaches with costs well above $300 will not be able to meet the $100 price target and struggle to move beyond pilot scale. Costs must fall or projects stall; that tension drives progress.
If an engineer removes the blower that forces air through a contactor, then both a capital line‑item and a persistent power bill vanish. If a chemist swaps a high‑temperature sorbent for one that regenerates on low‑grade waste heat, then the energy ledger shrinks again. Continuous simplification is what allows the capture step itself, distinct from storage, to drift toward double‑digit dollars per ton.
Clean‑tech history is crowded with machines optimized for incentives rather than physics. Each extra pump, bespoke pressure vessel, or exotic catalyst looks impressive in a grant application but drags down procurement, operations, and finance when the basic economics fail to compete with market alternatives. If these innovations fail to compete against alternatives, they will never reach escape velocity. Solar is the climate tech poster child for this transition from niche solution to pervasive infrastructure that competes outright on a commodity price.
Relevant: Senate Largely Preserves 45Q Credit But Inflation Concerns Emerge
Longstanding climate investor, Vinod Khosla, captured the principle in one line: enduring climate policy is spelled p-r-i-c-e. The new budget accelerates that logic. Because 45Q has endured and support for decarbonization alternatives is fading, capital will flow toward DAC.
Case in point: DAC now undercuts synthetic e-fuels produced from green hydrogen. The bill trimmed the Section 45V clean-hydrogen incentive, leaving projected e-kerosene costs near $1000 per ton of avoided CO₂, roughly four times the $250 per ton trajectory DAC can reach by 2030. When one pathway is nearly 75 percent cheaper, price decides the winner.
Relevant: New AlliedOffsets Report Finds Strong CDR Momentum In The First Half Of 2025
Success will arrive with quiet milestones. A breakthrough reaches maturity not when executives cut a ribbon, but when bankers provide low-interest project financing. When a decarbonized plant is no longer flagged as “green,” but as an economic driver, the transition is complete. Companies that reach this point will scale and export this advantage to the world; those still waiting for appropriations will export nothing but lobbying for subsidies.
The age of climate exceptionalism is closing. The new doctrine is blunt: compete on delivered cost or concede the field. Entrepreneurs and engineers who lean into that reality will find markets larger than any appropriation can create. Those who do not will soon discover that carbon is not the only thing headed for permanent storage
