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The
agency released a formal notice saying it would fund the $3.5
billion program created by the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastucture Law
that would create four regional direct air capture hubs to spur
the widespread deployment of the technology and carbon dioxide
transport and storage infrastructure.
The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a
report last month that said the world will need “carbon dioxide
removal” technologies - ranging from planting trees that soak up
carbon to grow, to costly technologies to suck carbon dioxide
directly from the air to meet global goals to curb climate
change.
“The UN's latest climate report made clear that removing legacy
carbon pollution from the air through direct air capture and
safely storing it is an essential weapon in our fight against
the climate crisis,” said Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm.
Carbon removal technology has gained major attention and
investment in recent months. There are three major direct air
capture projects under development that have emerged in North
America and Europe but they are only sucking up small amounts of
CO2 from the air currently.
Earlier this year, technology firms Google, Shopify, Meta, and
Stripe launched a $1 billion fund that will buy carbon removal
credits over the next decade as a way to incentivize rapid
deployment of the technology.
Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk last year offered inventors
$100 million in prize money to develop new carbon removal
technologies.
The DOE said that by midcentury, carbon removal will need to be
deployed at the gigaton scale, meaning it would need to be able
to sequester the equivalent of emissions from approximately 250
million vehicles driven in one year.
(Reporting by Valerie Volcovici)
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