Christoph Gebald (left) and Jan Wurzbacher, co-founders of Climeworks.
Photo courtesy Climeworks
The U.S. Department of Energy is investing up to $1.2 billion in groundbreaking technology aimed at mitigating global warming. This technology involves large-scale direct air capture (DAC) using giant vacuums that suck carbon out of the atmosphere. Currently, DAC projects have not been scaled up enough to make a significant impact, but the investment from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law aims to change that.
The funding will support the development of two DAC hub projects in Texas and Louisiana. These hubs are projected to remove more carbon per year than all current projects combined. The captured carbon can be either stored underground or utilized for various purposes, such as producing building materials, agricultural products, and even man-made diamonds.
While there are already 18 DAC projects globally, the ones funded by this initiative will be the first commercial-scale projects in the United States. Department of Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm emphasized the impact these hubs will have by remarking, “Once they’re up and running, these hubs are expected to remove more than 2 million metric tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere every year, which is like taking nearly half a million gas-powered cars off the road.”
In Texas, the hub is being led by Occidental Petroleum and its subsidiary 1PointFive. They have secured a lease for 106,000 acres south of Corpus Christi for CO2 removal and storage, with the potential to remove up to 30 million metric tons of CO2 per year through direct air capture once fully operational. Vicki Hollub, CEO of Occidental Petroleum, expressed gratitude for the support from the Biden administration and the Department of Energy, recognizing the opportunity to demonstrate the commercial viability of direct air capture.
The Louisiana hub, on the other hand, is managed by Battelle, utilizing technology from Climeworks and Heirloom. Climeworks, based in Zurich, Switzerland, currently operates the world’s largest DAC plant in Iceland, removing approximately 4,000 tons of CO2 annually. Andrew Fishbein, senior climate policy manager for Climeworks, emphasized the need for scaling up DAC technology to achieve significant climate impact, saying, “We have to scale up in the next 20 years at the same pace that the solar and wind industries have done in the past two decades, which they did with strategic and forward-looking policies. The DAC Hubs program is a vital investment for DAC to reach climate impact at scale.”
In addition to Climeworks, the Louisiana hub also involves Heirloom, a California-based startup that uses limestone to remove carbon from the air. Heirloom has received $54 million in backing from venture capital funds, including Breakthrough Energy and Microsoft.
Both DAC hubs will create around 5,000 jobs for local workers, including those transitioning from the fossil fuel industry. These hubs will be powered by clean energy sources.
Furthermore, the government is expected to provide funding for two more DAC hubs next year, with a total commitment of up to $3.5 billion for this carbon-reducing technology.
While the new DAC hubs are a crucial step, substantially more carbon removal will be necessary to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, the target set by the Paris Agreement. An estimated 10% to 20% of carbon emissions, amounting to billions of tons, will need to be removed annually by 2050.
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