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The U.S. Department of Energy announced on Friday that projects in Texas and Louisiana will receive over $1 billion in federal subsidies to save more than 2 million metric tons of carbon emissions annually. This is an important step in scaling up direct air capture (DAC) technology.
Project Cypress, operated by Battelle, Climeworks Corporation, and Heirloom Carbon Technologies, and the South Texas DAC Hub, put out by Occidental Petroleum’s (Oxy) subsidiary 1PointFive and partners Carbon Engineering Ltd. and Worley, were chosen by the Department of Energy (DOE).
The organization has introduced a number of fresh projects with the goal of reducing the price of the technology to under $100 per net metric ton of CO2-equivalent by the end of this decade.
Together with money for 14 feasibility studies, five engineering and design studies, and a $35 million government program for purchasing carbon removal credits, this also includes funding for earlier-stage hub projects.
Carbon removal has come under the spotlight as a result of worsening climate change and insufficient measures to reduce emissions. According to U.N. scientists, billions of tons of carbon must be removed from the atmosphere each year to comply with a global agreement to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
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Carbon Removal Advances
The U.S. can achieve its objective of neutralizing greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 if DAC is widely implemented, according to the DOE.
The awards are the first given by the Energy Department, which received $3.5 billion from Congress to invest in regional DAC centres as a result of the passing of the bipartisan infrastructure package. The payments will need to be negotiated before being paid out.
To remove CO2 from the atmosphere, DAC uses chemical processes. After that, the CO2 is either buried for storage or used to create goods like concrete or jet fuel.
Construction on Climeworks’ hub, which will be erected in stages and have a final capacity of 1 million tons per year by 2030, has already begun.
Although the majority of environmentalists agree that carbon removal is necessary to meet the international community’s climate goals, they are worried that businesses might use carbon removal projects as an excuse for fossil fuel companies to continue production, particularly in low-income and minority communities.
The announcement comes just over three months before the COP28 climate summit, when the United Arab Emirates, the summit’s host nation, is anticipated to place a special emphasis on the function of carbon removal technologies.
Occidental and ADNOC, its national oil firm, made the decision this month to evaluate the possibility for DAC investments both domestically and internationally.
According to Erin Burns, director of the company providing carbon removal assistance, the United States is positioning itself as a leader in this technology.
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Source: Reuters
