The U.S. Department of Energy has announced today that it has chosen two initiatives for funding, one from Occidental’s carbon capture platform 1PointFive and the other from carbon removal technology firm Climeworks. These projects are set to receive grants of up to $1.2 billion in order to develop facilities that can directly capture and store large quantities of CO2 from the atmosphere.
These grants represent the largest-ever investment in engineered carbon removal efforts. Direct Air Capture (DAC) technology, which the International Energy Agency (IEA) has identified as a crucial method for carbon removal in the transition towards a net-zero energy system, involves extracting CO2 directly from the air. This CO2 can then be utilized as a raw material or permanently stored when coupled with appropriate storage techniques.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) highlighted in a recent climate change mitigation study that scenarios aiming to limit global warming to 1.5°C will require significant carbon dioxide removal measures, potentially reaching billions of tons annually over the next few decades. DAC has the potential to play a substantial role in achieving these goals.
While many solutions for capturing and storing CO2 are still in the early stages and limited in scale, including DAC, the selected projects have the potential to significantly expand global DAC capacity. These projects combined could remove over 2 million metric tons of CO2 emissions every year. Each project’s capacity far exceeds that of the current largest DAC facility in operation, surpassing it by more than 250 times, according to the DOE.
The Department of Energy has stated that supporting the development of these projects will not only contribute to addressing the global climate crisis but also provide valuable insights for future investments from both the public and private sectors, essentially kickstarting a new industry crucial for tackling the issue.
The projects that have been chosen include the Project Cypress DAC Hub in Louisiana, a collaboration between Climeworks, Battelle (a nonprofit scientific research and development organization), and DAC technology company Heirloom. The second project is the South Texas DAC Hub by 1PointFive, currently in the early stages of design and engineering with partners Carbon Engineering and Worley.
This selection now allows the projects to enter into award negotiations with the DOE’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED). The funding provided will support various aspects of the DAC hubs’ development, including planning, design, obtaining environmental permits, and procuring long-lead equipment.
