(Finance) – As part of President Joe Biden’s Investing in America agenda, the Department of Energy of the United States (DOE) has announced up to $1.2 billion to promote the development of two Direct Air Capture (DAC) systemsi.e. the mechanical removal of CO2 from the atmosphere, on a commercial scale in Texas and Louisiana. These projects, the first of this scale in the United States, are expected to be the first in a nationwide network of large-scale carbon removal sites to address carbon dioxide pollution.
Together, these projects should remove more than 2 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the atmosphere each yearan amount equivalent to the annual emissions of approximately 445,000 gasoline-powered cars, and create 4,800 jobs in Texas and Louisiana.
The “Project Cypress” in Louisiana sees the involvement of Battelle shares, Climeworks Corporation and Heirloom Carbon Technologies, while the “South Texas DAC Hub” sees the involvement of 1PointFive (controlled by western), Carbon Engineering and Worley.
A note from the DOE explains today’s announcement the world’s largest investment in engineered carbon removal in history and each hub will eventually remove more than 250 times more carbon dioxide than the largest DAC plant currently in operation.
“Reducing our carbon emissions alone will not reverse the growing impacts of climate change; we also need to remove the CO2 we’ve already put into the atmospherewhich nearly all climate models make clear is essential to achieving a net-zero global economy by 2050,” said the US Energy Secretary, Jennifer Granholm.
(Photo: Photo by Jason Blackeye on Unsplash )