The Department of Energy (DOE) selected Project Cypress in Louisiana, run by Battelle, Climeworks Corporation and Heirloom Carbon Technologies; and the South Texas DAC Hub in Kleberg County, Texas, proposed by Occidental Petroleum's (Oxy) (OXY.N) subsidiary 1PointFive and partners Carbon Engineering Ltd and Worley.
The agency also launched several new initiatives aimed at bringing the cost of the technology down to less than $100 per net metric ton of CO2-equivalent within this decade. That includes a $35 million government procurement program for carbon removal credits, and funding for 14 feasibility studies and five engineering and design studies for earlier-stage hub projects.
Worsening climate change and inadequate efforts to cut emissions have thrust carbon removal into the spotlight. U.N. scientists estimate billions of tons of carbon must be sucked out of the atmosphere annually to keep in line with a global goal to cap global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius.
DAC, when deployed at scale, can help the U.S. meet its goal of neutralizing greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, according to the DOE.
But the young technology needs to become much cheaper quickly to roll out at the scale needed to affect the planet.
"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, deploying, deploying more clean energy at the same time," Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm told reporters.
