U.S. Department of Energy said today it is awarding $1.2 billion in federal grants to projects in Texas and Louisiana to directly remove carbon dioxide from the air. Each is scheduled to remove more than one million metric tons of carbon emissions per year. DOE selected projects proposed by Occidental Petroleum subsidiary 1PointFive and partners Carbon Engineering and Worley in Kleberg County (South Texas DAC) and Project Cypress in Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana, by Climeworks Corp., Battelle and Heirloom Carbon Technologies.
DOE said DAC, when employed at scale, can help the U.S. meet its goal of neutralizing greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
Vicki Hollub, president and CEO, told Reuters Friday the project has the potential to remove up to 30 million metric tons of CO2 per year when fully operational and “validates our readiness, technical maturity and our ability to use Oxy’s expertise in large projects.” And Jennifer Granholm, U.S. energy secretary, told Associated Press, “If we deploy this at scale, this technology can help us make serious headway toward our net zero emissions goals while we are still focused on deploying more clean energy at the same time.”