The 2025 Economic Report of the President submitted to the US Congress cites research from the Energy Policy Research Group based at Cambridge Judge Business School on cost and scalability of carbon capture and storage.

White House report cites study on carbon removal technologies

15 January 2025

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The 2025 Economic Report of the President submitted to the US Congress cites research from the Energy Policy Research Group based at Cambridge Judge Business School on cost and scalability of carbon capture and storage.

A study from the Energy Policy Research Group (EPRG) at Cambridge Judge Business School that evaluates emerging carbon dioxide removal technologies was cited in The 2025 Economic Report of the President submitted by the White House to the US Congress.

The study, published in May 2024 in the journal Frontiers in Climate, looks at the cost and scalability of new techniques such as direct air capture with carbon dioxide storage (known as DACCS, or DACS) and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS).

The study was co-authored by Manon Abegg of ETH Zurich and the EPRG, Zeynep Clulow, Research Associate at the EPRG, Lucrezia Nava of Baruch College, City University of New York and the EPRG, and David Reiner, Professor of Technology Policy at Cambridge Judge and Assistant Director of the EPRG.

The study notes that efforts to assess and evaluate the costs of these techniques have often been “impeded by varying assessments of the climate impact and potential contributions of these technologies”, so the study analyses expert opinions on these technologies to model cost and deployment scales for 2030, 2040 and 2050.

Zeynep Clulow.
Dr Zeynep Clulow
David Reiner.
Professor David Reiner

A wide range of costs for negative emission technologies

The 459-page Economic Report of the President, made public on 10 January, is the fourth and last such report of the outgoing Administration of US President Joe Biden. The Report has a chapter that focuses on US investment policies on clean energy.

“R&D (research and development) is expected to reduce the costs of DACS,” says the Report.

“For example, a survey of technical experts found an expected decrease from the 2020 cost of DACS of over 50% by 2050,” the Report says, citing the EPRG study. “Achieving such cost reductions will require government policy to address externalities related to R&D spillovers and learning-by-doing.”

The Report also cites the EPRG study in another section, in discussing the potential for negative emission technologies (NETs) to contribute to achieving net zero by 2050. “Due in part to the early stage of development and significant technology uncertainties, a wide range of costs for technological NETs have been reported,” said the Report.

Report looks at policies designed to meet the President’s economic goals

The Report by Biden, who leaves office on 20 January, “provides careful analyses of how the Administration has implemented public policy to achieve the President’s economic goals”, says an introduction to the Report.

“Many of these policy details rarely make headlines either on traditional or social media. But, as this volume shows, well-designed policies can help struggling families and address consequential market failures, just as failing to make such interventions can stall or reverse progress.”