Can Vacuums Slow Global Warming? Administration Bets $1.2 Billion on It.

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August 11, 2023

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by Evan Harper (Washington Post) Texas and Louisiana will become a global testing ground for giant machines that suck carbon from the air -- The Biden administration is betting big on giant carbon-sucking vacuums as a climate solution, announcing that it will help jump-start two mammoth projects in Texas and Louisiana that will be a global testing ground for the new technology.

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The Texas project, led by the Occidental Petroleum Corp., also known as Oxy, already ranks as one of the world’s largest experiments in “direct air capture.”

It will share $1.2 billion in Energy Department funding with a Louisiana project and be designated the nation’s first “hubs” for developing and testing the machinery, administration officials announced Friday morning.

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The technology, though, remains relatively untested. There are only a handful of direct air capture machines running worldwide at present, and the amount of emissions that they capture is negligible. A U.N. panel rattled the fledgling carbon removal industry in May with a report that warned the vacuums “are technologically and economically unproven, especially at scale, and pose unknown environmental and social risks.”

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As temperatures rise and prospects for hitting climate action targets diminish, a consensus has emerged at organizations like the International Energy Agency that technology to suck emissions from the air will be an important component to curbing warming.

The Biden administration plans to award a total of $3.5 billion to direct air capture hubs across the country. There are at least 11 projects vying for the cash infusion.

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Occidental announced last year that it plans to use the carbon vacuums to develop “net-zero oil,” a “fuel option that does not contribute to additional atmospheric CO2,” according to the company. Such ambitions concern environmental groups, which worry direct air capture and other carbon removal projects will be used by oil companies to prolong the extraction and use of fossil fuels. The carbon dioxide that the direct air capture machines will suck from the atmosphere can itself be used in oil drilling. Through a process called enhanced oil recovery, the compressed carbon dioxide is pumped underground to push oil to the surface.

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Administration officials said the particular projects they are funding will not be used for enhanced oil recovery.

The Louisiana hub, called Project Cypress, is led by Battelle, the major technology contractor. Among the company’s partners is Climeworks, which operates one of the world’s largest direct air capture plants, located in Iceland. But that plant, which captures only 4,000 tons of carbon dioxide annually, would be dwarfed by Project Cypress. READ MORE

Biden-Harris Administration Announces Up To $1.2 Billion For Nation’s First Direct Air Capture Demonstrations in Texas and Louisiana (U.S. Department of Energy)

Direct Air Capture of CO2: The Most Dangerous Idea in the World (BioVeritas/Biofuels Digest)

Rowing in a Lake of Peanut Butter: Reader reaction and hard data on Direct Air Capture (Biofuels Digest)

Advanced Biorefineries, Direct Air Capture: ABLC Connect (Biofuels Digest; included recorded presentation (starts at 28:00))

Energy Department announces largest-ever investment in ‘carbon removal’ (Associated Press)

U.S. to Fund a $1.2 Billion Effort to Vacuum Greenhouse Gases From the Sky -- Many scientists are skeptical of the technology, and environmentalists have criticized the approach. (New York Times)

Biden administration to invest $1.2 billion in projects to suck carbon out of the air (CNN)

US awards $1.2 billion to Oxy, Climeworks-led carbon air capture hubs (Reuters)

U.S. Energy Department announces $1.2 billion to build two carbon dioxide removal sites in Texas, Louisiana (UPI/Yahoo!)

Energy Department Announces Largest-Ever Investment in Carbon Removal (Time Magazine)

DOE awards $1B for 2 carbon removal projects on Gulf Coast (E&E News Climatewire)

Carbon Direct and Microsoft release 2023 edition of the Criteria for High-Quality Carbon Dioxide Removal (Carbon Direct)

Oil companies want to remove carbon from the air — using taxpayer dollars (E&E News Climatewire)

Biden Administration announces $1.2B for DAC demonstrations (Carbon Capture Magazine)

Stop Giving Big Oil a Carbon Fig Leaf (Project Drawdown)

1PointFive Selected for U.S. Department of Energy Grant to Develop South Texas Direct Air Capture Hub (Occidental)

Biden Administration announces $1.2B for DAC demonstrations (Carbon Capture Magazine)

Occidental to acquire Carbon Engineering (Occidental/Carbon Capture Magazine)

‘False promise’: DOE’s carbon removal plans rankle community advocates (E&E News Climatewire)

An Oil Giant Quietly Ditched the World’s Biggest Carbon Capture Plant: Occidental Petroleum is leading the global charge to vastly expand the use of technologies that suck up carbon dioxide. The failure of company’s biggest-ever bet shows the challenges ahead. (Bloomberg)

Excerpt from U.S. Department of Energy: DAC is a process that separates CO2 from the air, helping to reduce legacy CO2 in the atmosphere. The separated CO2 can then be safely and permanently stored deep underground or converted into useful carbon-containing products like concrete that prevent its release back into the atmosphere. Widespread deployment of DAC and other innovative technologies that capture emissions are key to combatting the climate crisis and reinforcing America’s global competitiveness in the zero-carbon economy of the future. DOE estimates that reaching President Biden’s ambitious plan for a net-zero emissions economy will require that between 400 million and 1.8 billion metric tons of CO2 be removed from the atmosphere and captured from emissions sources annually by 2050. The two DAC Hubs selected for award negotiations today will help further demonstrate the ability to capture and store atmospheric CO2 at scale.

Selected projects include:

Project Cypress (Calcasieu Parish, LA): Battelle, in coordination with Climeworks Corporation and Heirloom Carbon Technologies, Inc., aims to capture more than 1 million metric tons of existing CO2 from the atmosphere each year and store it permanently deep underground. This hub intends to rely on Gulf Coast Sequestration for offtake and geologic storage of captured atmospheric CO2. The project is estimated to create approximately 2,300 jobs, with a goal to hire workers formerly employed by the fossil fuel industry for 10% of the overall workforce. Project Cypress will implement a robust two-way communication program with local communities and stakeholders to solicit input into the project while also generating new employment opportunities and advancing diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility principles.
South Texas DAC Hub (Kleberg County, TX): 1PointFive, a subsidiary of Occidental, and its partners, Carbon Engineering Ltd. and Worley, seek to develop and demonstrate a DAC facility designed to remove up to 1 million metric tons of CO2 annually with an associated saline geologic CO2 storage site. The project is estimated to create approximately 2,500 jobs in construction, operations, and maintenance with existing agreements for local hiring. The selectees will also establish a Citizen Advisory Board to ensure meaningful community engagement.

DOE is dedicated to ensuring that the selected Regional DAC Hubs projects deliver community benefits and avoid harm in those communities while also advancing the development of carbon capture, transport, and storage systems. The Hubs are expected to ensure meaningful community and labor engagement and contribute to the President’s Justice40 Initiative, which set a goal that 40% of the overall benefits of certain federal investments, such as climate and clean energy, go to disadvantaged communities that have been marginalized and overburdened by pollution and underinvestment. DOE, in coordination with the selected project teams, is planning to co-host in-person community briefings to engage with local stakeholders in Texas and Louisiana in September. Learn more about the two Regional DAC Hubs projects selected for award negotiations here.

Potential Future DAC Hub Studies
To assess the viability of future DAC Hub demonstrations, DOE also announced 19 additional projects selected for award negotiations that will support earlier stages of project development, including feasibility assessments and front-end engineering and design (FEED) studies. Fourteen projects will enable early-stage efforts to explore the feasibility of a potential DAC Hub location, ownership structure, and business model. Five projects will perform FEED studies that establish and define technical requirements focused on project scope, schedule, and costs to reduce risk during later project phases. Learn more about these 19 projects selected for award negotiations here.

DOE intends to issue additional funding opportunity announcement in the coming years to fully implement the Regional DAC Hubs mandate from Congress. Selection for award negotiations is not a commitment by DOE to issue an award or provide funding. Before funding is issued, DOE and the applicants will undergo a negotiation process, and DOE may cancel negotiations and rescind the selection for any reason during that time.

Carbon Negative Shot Pilots
DOE also announced its intent to publish a series of funding opportunities for projects and prizes focused on supporting the development and commercialization of a suite of carbon dioxide removal technologies. These efforts will collectively support the Carbon Negative Shot, part of DOE's larger Energy Earthshots Initiative and the U.S. government’s first major effort to help spur innovation and position U.S. enterprises as leaders in research, manufacturing, and deployment in the carbon dioxide removal industry. The Earthshot sets a goal to remove CO2 from the atmosphere and store it at meaningful scales for less than $100 per net metric ton of CO2-equivalent within the decade. Read the full NOI.

The DOE Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED), in collaboration with the DOE Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (FECM), manages the Regional DAC Hubs Program and will provide project management oversight for the DAC Hubs projects selected to demonstrate the capture, processing, delivery, and storage or end-use of captured carbon as well as community benefit plans and environmental safety. READ MORE

Excerpt from CNN: Though it’s not yet clear what the hubs will ultimately do with the carbon once its extracted, Department of Energy officials said neither hub will use captured CO2 for enhanced oil recovery – a method where carbon is injected into the ground to release more oil.

Stashwick (Sasha Stashwick, policy director at Carbon180) said it’s important this is followed, and that Carbon180 has been advocating for carbon to be safely and permanently stored underground or used in building materials like cement.

“We think it’s really critical for public acceptance,” Stashwick said. “This is really the debut of the direct air capture industry in the US. It’s going to be many people’s first introduction to technological air removal.”

Another issue is how hubs are powered to ensure carbon removal isn’t adding more emissions to the atmosphere. Representatives from Battelle, the owner of the Louisiana project, said they would be powering the hub with clean energy bought from the local utility, but have plans to power facilities with renewable energy in the future. READ MORE

Excerpt from New York Times: In a TED Talk last month, former Vice President Al Gore gave a blistering critique of direct air capture technology, calling its use a “moral hazard” that would enable fossil fuel producers to continue to pollute.

“It’s useful to give them an excuse for not ever stopping oil,” he said. “That gives them a license to continue producing more and more oil and gas.”

Mr. Gore noted that the current cost of direct air capture technology was extraordinarily high and that the process required so much energy that it would make more sense to prevent carbon emissions in the first place rather than try to clean them up after the fact. Oil and gas companies say that the costs will fall and that the processes will improve in the coming years.

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To help new technologies get off the ground, the government is offering tax credits worth $180 for every ton of carbon pollution that is captured and stored by pumping it underground or into rocks, for example. Occidental and Battelle, in addition to being funded by the government, would be eligible for the tax credits. READ MORE

Excerpt from Carbon Direct: Unfortunately, the voluntary carbon market has a quality and quantity problem that has weakened credibility and limited much-needed growth of carbon removal. While over 1 billion carbon credits have been registered to date, only 3% of those credits are from pure carbon removal projects. And only a fraction of that 3% meet our criteria for high quality. One of the biggest contributors to low-quality projects is a lack of common framework for determining best-in-class removal. Without it, developers and buyers continue to proliferate ineffective projects, or abandon carbon removal altogether. READ MORE

Excerpt from E&E News Climatewire: But the Department of Energy’s first two candidates for its $3.5 billion direct air capture program have conducted an opaque early outreach process in the disadvantaged Louisiana and Texas communities where the projects would be built. Some residents and advocates say they feel shut out of a process that was intended to protect them.

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But environmental justice groups in those areas say the announcement came as a surprise. They say DOE and the two companies did scant outreach before the projects were selected and worry the window for the public to have its say has already effectively closed.

“I think they’re working backwards,” said Elida Castillo, program director of Latino activist group Chispa Texas. Castillo is based in Corpus Christi, not far from the proposed Texas DAC site. “They’ve selected this location, and now the community engagement begins.”

Direct air capture and carbon capture are crucial parts of President Joe Biden’s plan to slash the country’s planet-warming pollution and reach net-zero emissions by 2050. But the administration’s efforts to quickly deploy the technologies have created tension with environmental justice groups, which say such projects would prolong the life of the fossil fuel industries that have blighted low-income minority communities for decades.

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“It’s no longer good enough to have a public hearing or a community meeting and say, ‘Here’s our plans, this is the project’ and then start the project,” he (Brad Crabtree, who heads DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management) said. “That doesn’t work anymore. Companies and governments need to go in before project designs are even finalized, before engineering studies are completed, before there are even permit applications, and engage with communities to find out what their interests and concerns are.”

DOE hosted an energy justice “roadshow” with stops along the Gulf Coast early this summer to tout a range of programs funded by recent climate and infrastructure legislation. Carbon removal was among them.

But many advocates based in Louisiana and Texas say the next thing they heard was the department’s Aug. 11 announcement that it would move forward with the Occidental and Battelle projects. DOE, they say, has been slow to provide project information to would-be host communities, let alone opportunities for input.

“As a community, we are already last on the list,” said Roishetta Ozane, an environmental justice advocate based in Louisiana’s majority-Black North Lake Charles neighborhood. “Everybody knows about this project, it was funded and everything. And now they want to come to the community when it should have been the other way around.”

“They’ve only engaged with our police, City Council, mayor, you know, the governor. They have not engaged with community members as of yet,” she added.

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But some environmental justice advocates say DOE hasn’t lived up to its own stated ideals on community engagement, with Occidental’s South Texas DAC Hub and Battelle’s Project Cypress doing little of the outreach that is supposed to be tied to federal funding.

DOE has refused to make the projects’ community benefit plans public until negotiations with Occidental and Battelle conclude in January — at which point the plans will be final, along with the rest of the project details included in the DAC hubs’ contracts with DOE.

“There’s this false promise that came from DOE that these new investments will come with all of these community benefits, but we don’t know what those community benefits are,” said Jennifer Hadayia, executive director of Air Alliance Houston. “We haven’t seen them. It’s hard to see them. They’re not making them public.”

DOE tapped outside reviewers to vet the community benefit plans, including environmental justice advocates and critics of industrial carbon management. But their names and comments have not been released. Reviewers that E&E News spoke to said they were required to sign nondisclosure agreements.

In an email to E&E News, DOE said department personnel and the project developers “will continue to reach out to community members to ensure robust and meaningful participation.”

But the agency declined to answer questions on why the community benefit plans were not made public or who in the affected communities had access to them.

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Heirloom — one of the companies involved with Project Cypress in Louisiana — did hold Zoom calls with environmental justice advocates.

Shamell Lavigne of Rise St. James told E&E News she participated in Zoom calls with Heirloom representatives about direct air capture in May, but the discussion didn’t include details about Project Cypress or its community benefit plan. The environmental justice group, which is based in an area three hours’ drive from the proposed site, is a member of a nonprofit coalition that campaigns against industrial carbon management.

DOE stressed that negotiations with the selected projects are still in progress.

“If projects are awarded, DOE and the awardee will have frequent, meaningful engagement with the impacted local community and impacted workers throughout the lifecycle of the project,” the department said in an email. READ MORE