Direct air CO₂ capture and storage (DACCS) is a technology in an emerging portfolio for carbon dioxide removal (CDR), understood to play a critical role in stabilising our climate by offsetting residual carbon emissions and ensuring net-negative greenhouse gas emissions post reaching net-zero. Carbon dioxide removal is anticipated to gain further importance due to lacking progress on climate reduction efforts. Meanwhile, CDR, including DACCS, is transitioning from a merely scientific effort to implementation, requiring policy and decision making based on a comprehensive understanding of the scientific body of knowledge. This calls for a source of information synthesising the body of knowledge on CDR, which we set out to author and publish as a series of systematic review papers on CDR. This first review focuses on DACCS. Given the need for practical implementation, this review reports not only on DACCS technology and state of development, but also on the state-of-the-art in technoeconomic and environmental performance, policy, equity & justice, public perceptions, and monitoring, reporting, and verification, closing with the foreseen role for DACCS in future decarbonisation scenarios. The synthesis shows that direct air carbon capture and storage can only scale and overcome current challenges, such as its high cost, via targeted and long-term government support, including subsidies, similar to the support renewable energy received in past decades.