US $1.2 billion gamble on carbon-absorbing vacuums – DW – 12/08/2023

the we The Energy Department said on Friday it would invest up to $1.2 billion (€1.1 billion) in two direct air capture (DAC) facilities — in Texas and Louisiana — to It absorbs carbon from the air.

Each site will have carbon sequestration voids that can eliminate up to 1 million tons of carbon dioxide per year. This equals the annual emissions of 445,000 gas-powered vehicles.

“Reducing our carbon emissions “It alone will not reverse the growing impacts of climate change,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said.

“We also need to remove the carbon dioxide we’ve already put into the atmosphere.”

What is DAC technology?

Live air capture DAC, also known as carbon dioxide removal (CDR), uses chemical reactions to remove carbon dioxide from the air.

The carbon dioxide can then be stored underground or used in concrete products or jet fuel.

The technology of live air capture machines is relatively untested, and currently, only a few are in operation worldwide.

But the technology must quickly become much cheaper for it to be deployed on the scale needed to impact the planet.

“If we deploy this at scale, this technology can help us make serious progress toward our zero-emissions goals while still focusing on deploying, deploying, and deploying more clean energy at the same time,” Granholm said.

the United nations The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) considers direct absorption of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as one of the necessary ways to combat climate change. Global Warming.

Who are the contractors?

The Cypress project in Louisiana is run by the American non-profit company Battelle. It will team up with another US company, Heirloom Carbon Technology, and Swiss company Climeworks, which already operates a DAC plant in Iceland.

“It depends on many factors, but I would like to have the first families in 2025/2026,” Jan Wurzbacher, director and founder of Climeworks, told Reuters.

“Just two years ago, we were in a petri dish where we were removing grams of carbon dioxide from the air,” said Shashank Samala, CEO of Heirloom.

“If we continue at this pace of exponential growth every year, I think achieving 1 billion tons annually is definitely, definitely achievable.”

The Texas project will be led by Occidental of America and other partners, including Carbon Engineering. It could be developed to eliminate up to 30 million tons of carbon dioxide annually, according to a statement from Occidental.

dh/lo (AFP, Reuters)