Magnus Bach, Atoco’s VP of Business Development, Featured in Carbon Capture Journal
In this editorial, published in the March/April 2026 issue of the Carbon Capture Journal, Magnus Bach unfolds how nano-engineered reticular materials can unlock affordable and scalable carbon capture.
How novel nanomaterials make CCUS affordable and scalable
Across the CCUS value chain, the most stubborn bottleneck is still the very first link: separating CO₂ from a mixed gas stream. If we don’t fix this problem, CCUS will not play any significant role in decarbonizing our energy system and industries at large.
By Magnus Bach, VP of Business Development at Atoco.
Capture & Utilisation
The capture phase is estimated to account for roughly 45–65% of the total levelized cost of CCUS, and in DAC it can represent 80–90% of total costs or more. In low-concentration PCC environments like aluminum production or power generation, this translates into capture costs of about $180–$300 per ton, which is simply not economically feasible.
The reality is that today’s carbon capture technologies remain well above the cost thresholds required for widespread adoption. High energy demands, complex operations, water use, material degradation, and poor scalability all hinder progress towards large-scale deployment. Especially for DAC and low-concentration PCC environments, we need to rethink the core technologies we are relying upon.
Rather than building on incumbent technologies, we need to introduce a transformative technology to fix the carbon capture problem, thereby enabling a wider adoption of CCUS. The good news is that Nobel Prize-winning science is making exactly that possible.
Materials with Transformative Potential
“It won’t be something big, but actually something pretty small that can transform our planet … If the problem is in the air around us, so is the answer.”