Assessing the cost of DACS is an important step, and lower costs naturally provide a more robust business case. However, DACS requires a critical mass to reach the scale necessary to meet the cost constraints required to be self-sustaining. In this sense, DACS will need policy support. We analyse the available policy mechanisms, their purpose, and how they may affect the short and long-term cost. A summary of all the policies investigated is shown in the ESI Table , whilst the ones examined quantitively can be found in the ESI Table .