If you’re thinking, “Direct Air… what?”, picture an industrial-scale vacuum cleaner that sucks in air and filters out the CO₂. From there, the captured CO₂ gets pumped deep underground into rock formations, where it stays put for the long term.

Despite having spent quite some years working in climate tech, I knew very little about carbon capture. It sat in my mental bucket of “cool tech but decades away”. Then, I had the chance to spend 3 hours with the team at Sirona in Brussels, Belgium.

They walked me through their lab and manufacturing site where I got a glimpse of their technology, the way they execute, the trade-offs, the bottlenecks and the opportunities. And while I still have plenty to learn, I left thinking this could become a real and impactful solution, one that could scale with unit economics that make sense if the execution is approached in the right way.

Before going into why and how, it’s worth asking the question: why is part of the world sceptical of carbon capture in the first place?

Why Much Of The World Is Sceptical Of Direct Air Capture

A big part of the scepticism comes from the industry’s history. For years, carbon capture was presented as something that could scale rapidly and cheaply. Promises raced ahead of what was technically or economically feasible. The lead time to do this work was consistently underestimated. In reality, and after years of development, the picture looked like this:

• Early implementations were tiny, often capturing only tens of tonnes per year.

• Costs regularly exceeded 1,500 dollars per tonne of CO₂ removed, while carbon markets priced CO₂ below 100 dollars per tonne and initiatives like frontier climate sat between 200 and 500 dollars per tonne to accelerate the industry.

• Most early pilots have been expensive pilots that lacked modularity and had no clear path to scale. By the time a pilot was built, the technology was usually outdated.

To make things worse, some large oil companies adopted the idea of carbon capture not as a genuine climate solution but as a method to extract more oil through processes like CO₂-enhanced oil recovery. Their idea was to, rather than reducing reliance on fossil fuels, use the technology as a means to pump even more oil - which understandably drew criticism and ridicule.

In short, to many people carbon capture feels like science fact that is still far from economic reality, and too often used instead to justify burning more fossil fuels.

Why Carbon Removal Matters

Credible climate pathways like those from IPCC, reach a simple conclusion: we need to do two things at once.

1. Cut emissions dramatically

2. Remove CO₂ from the atmosphere

Today we emit about 40 giga tonnes of CO₂ per year. Even in the most ambitious plans to reduce emissions, the world is still estimated to have 3.8 to 10 giga tonnes of residual emissions from sectors that can’t technologically achieve carbon neutrality.

This is why carbon removal matters. Technologies like Direct Air Capture are consistently highlighted as a tool that can (or has to) help address the residual slice, although it will need to scale at an extraordinary pace to make a meaningful dent.

Zooming in on Australia, there are already quite a few natural and engineered carbon sinks*. In my previous piece on why the Energy Transition Matters for Australia, I referenced the Business Council of Australia which argued that even maintaining our existing carbon sinks will be extremely difficult. As such, they highlighted the need for additional carbon removal from the atmosphere for Australia to meet its climate targets.

Carbon sinks are natural or artificial reservoirs that absorb more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than they release. Major natural sinks include forests, oceans, and soil, while artificial sinks can include man-made technologies that capture and store carbon

What is necessary for Direct Air Capture to Work

For DAC to actually work, a few things need to line up at the same time.

• It needs a lot of clean energy. Powering CO₂ removal with fossil electricity defeats the purpose, so DAC systems must be located exactly where cheap renewables are readily available.

• Geological storage close by: captured CO₂ needs somewhere to go. This requires large, well-understood geological storage. This storage also needs to be close to the DAC facility, since transporting CO₂ adds cost and emissions that reduce overall efficiency.

• Cost must fall dramatically: DAC only becomes meaningful at scale once it drops below a few hundred dollars per tonne and eventually approaches one hundred.

• Long-term demand signals: Stable policy, reliable carbon markets and multi-year corporate offtake agreements that make investment and scale possible.

• Supply chains at scale: Sorbent materials, fans, heat exchangers, steel and other components, without creating new environmental problems.

• (Debated) modularity: Different approaches exist, but my view is that modular systems have clear advantages over one-off megaprojects. Modular units can be replicated quickly, enable a faster rate of learning and integrate new technologies while scaling that allows efficiency to go up and cost to fall constantly.

If these ingredients come together, DAC could start to shift from interesting prototype to something that could make a meaningful dent.

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Sirona’s focus on modularity and rate of learning

When I walked into Sirona, the first thing that surprised me was not the technology itself. It was the way the team worked. In both the lab and the manufacturing area, engineers were running fast, scrappy experiments to answer big questions. The level of focus and urgency felt very familiar from my time at Vow.

Sirona is a team of around twenty-five people, operating with something close to Tesla- or SpaceX-style execution: disciplined engineering, rapid iteration and a culture where the rate of learning matters more than perfection. Nothing about it felt academic or hand-wavy. It felt like the early days of a hardware company built on tight feedback loops, constantly testing, adjusting and finding ways to scale capacity while pushing costs down.

At seed stage, with less than €6M euros raised, the team has not just built a pilot. They have gone further and brought a commercial plant online and are now on track to become only the second DAC company in the world to deliver certified CO₂ removal credits. They are doing this with a fraction of the funding and in a fraction of the time compared with the leading DAC player, which has raised more than $1B and spent well over a decade getting to achieve certified CO₂ removal credits.

None of this means DAC will scale automatically with this approach. In fact, the world will need dozens of companies to succeed for this to make a meaningful dent in the atmosphere. But Sirona is showing a path that looks faster, more modular, and more execution-driven than anything I expected walking into. And that, more than the technology itself, is what convinced me this might actually work.

Australia is world-leading in installing Distributed Energy Resources (think batteries, solar, EVs, etc), yet only a fraction of it is connected by smart software. As a result, we miss out on a multi billion dollar opportunity of savings for households, businesses and the wider energy system.

🔋 How Big is Australia’s renewable capacity?

If you add together all “DERs” like rooftop solar, home batteries, EV chargers, flexible loads, hot water systems and commercial storage, you end up with more than 40 gigawatts of small-scale capacity sitting in homes and businesses today. EY expects this to grow to >120 gigawatts by 2050, dwarfing most other sources of electricity capacity in Australia.

While I’m oversimplifying, it’s worth noting that today’s available DER capacity, is already larger than the 5-min peak demand record on the Australian grid.

The surprise highlighted by those I spoke with is this: Only about 5 percent of Distributed Energy Resource Capacity is connected or orchestrated in a way the grid can actually use. The other 95 percent is effectively ‘invisible’ and not used in any smart way to get more value out of the grid.

🌅 Why this matters

For anyone not deep in energy Twitter: Australia has some of the most volatile energy prices in the world because we have so much solar. When the sun is out, we often have more energy than we can use. When it sets, the grid suddenly needs to fire up expensive coal and gas plants to meet demand.

Connecting more DERs, especially batteries, helps smooth this out. Charge them when solar is abundant, use them to support the grid in the evening. Less reliance on traditional generators. Lower emissions. Cheaper bills.

🔌 Why we haven’t connected much of our DER capacity

There are a few reasons why only a small share of DERs are connected today.

Some are easy to understand. For example, a huge amount of flexible capacity sits inside EV batteries. Consumers are not always ready for their car to power the grid at night, and some cool ‘vehicle-2-grid’ pilots (like these) need more time before they can scale.

Other reasons that came up during my conversations include:

• Start-ups and small businesses are not allowed to trade their energy in wholesale markets yet (therefore it can be more economically beneficial for them not to connect DERs to the grid)

• The market design does not encourage more competition or new entrants

• Policy programs fund VPP pilots, but there is little support to help them scale

The big takeaway is that many bottlenecks are not about hardware or infrastructure. They can be solved by smarter software, improved regulations and helping consumers understand (and benefit from) the value of connecting.

💰 The Multi Billion Dollar Kicker

One natural question is: what is the actual economic opportunity of getting this right? What would be the value if smarter software, clearer rules and better consumer participation unlock more of the DER we already have?

I tried a simple back-of-the-envelope calculation. (Remember: I’m just a guy with a spreadsheet and too much curiosity, not someone with 20 years in energy modelling, so treat this as a rough guestimate rather than a peer-reviewed analysis).

Let’s start with a few assumptions

• Australia has around 40 GW of distributed energy resources (expected to 3X in the next 25 years)

• We manage to connect and orchestrate 30 percent of it using software, without needing major infrastructure upgrades (this feels conservative to me)

• That would give us roughly 12 GW ( = 40GW * 30%) of flexible capacity that could respond during peak periods, even if only for minutes to hours.

So what is that worth?

There are many ways to put a value on 12 GW of peak response. You could look at 1) avoided coal and gas capacity or 2) more familiar ways of value creation through Virtual Power Plants (the more familiar definition of the software + DER marriage) like wholesale and FCAS revenue, portfolio balancing, congestion relief.

For simplicity, let’s focus on the first one because it captures both the economic and climate impact.

Using open-cycle gas turbines (OCGTs) as a proxy, which cost roughly A$1000 to A$1300 per kilowatt, replacing 12 GW of peaking capacity would be worth around A$12 to A$16 billion in avoided future build.

Is this actually a reasonable estimate?

After chatting with the very helpful folks at the Tech Council Australia and a few independent energy experts, I learned I wasn’t the first person to try to put a value on DER. As some examples:

• NERA Economics estimates $8 to $18 billion in savings from DERs.

• Baringa Partners estimates $11 billion in network efficiency gains from better DER integration.

My scrappy little back-of-the-envelope calculation ended up landing surprisingly close to what the real pro’s came up with. No one was more shocked than me.

💬 In Summary

We’re sitting on a huge opportunity hiding in plain sight

We don’t need breakthrough hardware. We just need a few practical steps:

1. Smarter and more ambitious software to coordinate the DER we already have

2. Regulations that let start-ups actually compete and participate in markets

3. Clear incentives and offerings enabling and encouraging more consumers to connect their EVs and batteries to the grid (like these)

More on some of these in a future article

Before going deeper into fixing these bottlenecks, I wanted to take one step back. What are we actually trying to achieve here. Why does the transition matter so much for Australia. And what is at stake if we get this wrong or move too slowly; both from a climate and economic perspective.

To answer that, I turned to the Business Council of Australia’s report Australia 2035: Maximising Our Potential. It is a surprisingly clear and data grounded view of where Australia stands today, what the world is doing around us and what the next ten years need to look like. This piece is a short summary of the parts that matter most.

🌎 Global Climate change has started

The report opens with a context setter: greenhouse gas concentrations keep rising, global temperatures are sitting well above pre industrial times and Australia has already warmed by 1.51 degrees since 1910. Extreme heat days are more common, storms are more intense and sea level rise is starting to reshape our coastlines.

Australia’s main emissions come from Electricity Demand

BCA’s visual below breaks down Australia’s emissions by sector, and the picture is very clear. Electricity and energy is the single largest source of emissions in the country. Industry and resources follow, with transport, agriculture, buildings and land making up smaller but still meaningful parts of the puzzle.

The report also highlights another important point: Australia’s land sector is operating at an historically high level of carbon removal. Simply keeping today’s carbon sink in place will require effort. Most of the task will need to come from steep emissions reductions across electricity, industry and resources, and (while not discussed in the report) potential additional carbon removal innovation.

🌦️ Australia has made progress to reduce its emissions, but the hard part is coming

By 2024,

• Australia has reduced emissions by 28 percent since 2005.

• Emissions intensity of the economy is down 56 percent.

• On a per capita basis, emissions are down 46 percent.

These are meaningful achievements, especially given population and GDP growth. But they also highlight a point the report makes clearly. The next stage is harder and steeper. The rate of change required between now and 2035 is much faster than the rate of change behind us.

⚡️ Why Australia cannot wait

From the report, I would take away four key themes that explain why the timing matters.

1. Global markets are moving faster than we are

Supply chains are shifting toward low carbon production. Countries are setting clear net zero pathways. If Australia does not keep pace, we risk losing competitiveness across export industries that are central to our economy.

2. Domestic demand for clean energy keeps rising

Electrification of households, transport and industry is accelerating. Australia’s decentralised system means we are both exposed and uniquely positioned. If we do not coordinate this shift well, we will feel it in reliability and cost.

3. Infrastructure and approvals take time we no longer have

Even when technology exists, building at scale takes years. Transmission lines, renewable zones, storage, port upgrades and workforce pipelines all require long lead times. Delay now means a more expensive and more rushed transition later.

4. A disorderly transition costs more

The report makes this point clearly. If ambition runs ahead of practical enablers like approvals, workforce and supply chains, Australia risks a disorderly transition. That usually means higher prices, weaker social licence and slower overall progress.

The opportunity is significant

Despite the challenges, the report is quite optimistic about what Australia could unlock:

We have some of the best renewable resources in the world. We have critical minerals that the world needs. We have strong research capability. And we sit next to the fastest growing energy markets in Asia. With the right choices, the transition becomes an opportunity to build new (green) export industries, grow regional economies and stabilise energy costs.

🎯 What it will take

The report outlines that the fundamentals matter:

• Faster and more predictable planning and approvals

• A scaled workforce with the skills needed for the transition

• Better infrastructure coordination across transmission, generation and storage

• Clear policy settings that give investors confidence

• Stronger supply chains

• Community engagement that builds social licence

None of these are new ideas, but the speed and scale required over the next decade are on a different level.

Bringing it back to the bigger picture

Across my conversations with people in the sector and the data in this report, one theme keeps coming back. The energy transition is not a climate side project. It is a strategic economic decision about Australia’s next twenty years. It influences our exports, our competitiveness, our reliability, our cost of living and the resilience of our communities.

I wanted to ground this series in the why. Because without the why, everything else feels tactical. Once the bigger picture is clear, the bottlenecks and opportunities become easier to understand.

Everyone agrees the Energy Transition can go faster.
No one thinks the main barriers are technology or money.

*I’ve had the chance to speak with brilliant people from AGL, Brighte, New Energy Nexus, Origin, Ausgrid, GoPowerEV, Tech Council Australia, Akaysha, Deloitte, Lumea and many independent experts. This piece is my attempt at connecting the dots across those conversations.

Coming from a world of tech and start-ups, I naively assumed the bottlenecks would be largely technological or economic. Wouldn’t it be easy if we could just conclude that with a bit of extra capital, a few fields more fields of solar, and some backyards filled with batteries, we could just accelerate the whole thing just that bit faster. If only it were that straightforward.

That experts I spoke with told me a different story. After eight weeks of conversations…

…four early hypotheses emerged

#1 The 'Information Asymmetry' Hypothesis

There’s a gap between what’s technically possible and what policymakers, regulators, and consumers know and understand.

As one example: only a fraction (~5%) of consumer and distributed energy resource* capacity is connected in a smart way; meaning the other 95% can’t yet support the grid or lower prices. Policymakers, regulators and consumers do not always realise how much value this leaves on the table (spoiler: billions).

*Consumer Energy Resources (CER) or Distributed Energy Resources (DER) includes Solar, EVs, Batteries and so forth. Respectively those owned by consumers, or all in market.

Innovators and start-ups are held back by

1. consumer’s hesitation due to lack of trust or understanding

2. rules that limit how early-stage companies can participate in energy trading

3. incentives that encourage (some) companies to keep control of their DERs off the grid.

#2 The 'Incentive Misalignment' Hypothesis

Companies aren’t always rewarded for accelerating innovation. Instead, grid stability (keeping the lights on), market share and monopoly rents tend to drive decisions, even when this slows the shift to renewables. 

As one example: the risk-return logic for existing players rewards asset expansion over digital optimisation. Building new infrastructure often earns better returns and protects reputation more than making the existing grid smarter. As a result, things don’t go as fast as they could.

#3 The 'Projects Over Products' Hypothesis

The innovation players are designed to fund and complete projects, not to turn them into products that scale.

Several agencies play a crucial role in funding early-stage innovation. But their structures reward safe project completion over scaled adoption. Once a pilot is “done” and checked off the list, no one’s clearly responsible for turning it into something that scales or that others can build on. The result is a patchwork of demos that look great in reports but don’t turn into scaled solutions.

#4 The 'Billions Left On The Table' Hypothesis

Software alone could unlock billions of value using the technology and infrastructure that already exists. 

With roughly >40 GW of distributed energy capacity sitting across rooftops, batteries, and EVs, but only about 5–10% of it is orchestrated in a way the grid can actually use. If even 30% were connected intelligently, it could replace around A$12–16 billion worth of traditional peaking capacity. All through software and coordination; not additional new concrete, steel, or turbines.

The Next Chapter

Each emerging hypothesis seems to touch on a different piece of the same puzzle: what we know, how we’re rewarded, how we build, and where the value goes.

When I started these conversations about the energy transition, I expected to hear themes like technology bottlenecks; missing infrastructure, need for capital or breakthrough inventions. Instead, what emerged were invisible systems: information gaps, incentive loops, and process habits that quietly slow things down.

As a one-man team, I haven’t validated each of these perfectly (so feel free to challenge or add context 👇), but they seem like good clues of where to dig deeper to understand what might actually accelerate the transition.

So next up, we’ll dive a little deeper into each of these: where the biggest bottlenecks really sit, and what might help us move faster.

Over the past few months, I’ve been diving deeper into Australia’s energy transition; trying to understand whether it could move faster, and what’s actually standing in its way.

It’s worth stating the obvious: energy is incredibly complex. No single person (least of all me) grasps all its moving parts. It’s a web of hardware + software technologies, regulations, incentives, market forces, and human behaviours interacting with each other and plenty of smart people researching this space (including ARENA, the Clean Energy Council, BCA, TCA, CSIRO and many more - each sharing their insights from their own angles).

To learn quickly myself, I’ve put on my “product hat” and started interviewing dozens of experts across energy retailers, grid operators, startups, and investors - trusting that common themes would emerg. And I think they did (For instance, did you know that the software opportunity alone might be worth more than >$15B?).

So, based on those conversations (and a bit of documentation), I’ll be writing a few articles exploring some of…

• the bottlenecks slowing progress

• the opportunities emerging

• the potential actions we could take to accelerate things

Surely it won’t be exhaustive, not even close. But it might offer a few simple perspectives and lenses through which to look at the system of the energy transition (at least for me).

Stay tuned…

I’m curious about how technology impacts our planet; particularly in energy, biotech, and other deeply interconnected domains. Specifically I’d like to explore Invisible Systems*; the hidden mechanisms that determine how quickly (or slowly) progress actually happens.

I’ve spent most of my (early) career in product, technology and commercialisation roles - from hardware and software at Google, to energy at Brighte and Biotech at Vow, while advising to a handful of others in these spaces. I also taught Data Analytics and Behavioural Economics at UNSW.

Writing publicly is new to me and I’ll be learning as I go. This is a polite way of saying I’ll surely be contradicting myself in future posts, while getting a few things wrong along the way. ;-) Still, I hope I can create a useful lens (at least for myself) to better understand systems shaping our future, and provide some thoughts on what we could change to accelerate progress.

To understand the idea of Invisible Systems: take for example the energy transition. Conversations I’ve had with people across utilities, startups, grid operators and elsewhere suggest the energy transition’s biggest bottlenecks aren’t technological. They stem from information asymmetry, misaligned incentives and institutional inertia. The tech is there, it’s the system around it that’s lagging (More on this soon in a later article)