Two companies have just announced the first large-scale deployment of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) removal technology in the United States.
Key Details
- Los Angeles-based Carbon Capture Inc. and Texas-based Frontier Carbon Solutions announced on September 8 that Project Bison will be deployed in Wyoming starting in 2023.
- “Wyoming was selected as the project’s location due to the broad availability of renewable and zero carbon energy sources as well as the favorable regulatory and operating environment for carbon storage,” says Carbon Capture.
- The array will deploy dozens of shipping-container-sized direct air capture machines that scrub CO2 out of the air and store it.
- The project is designed to scale upward and is expected to start removing 12,000 tons of CO2 yearly by 2024, 200,000 tons by 2026, and 5 million tons by 2030—“roughly the emissions from 1 million gas-powered vehicles driven in a year,” says The Hill.
Why it’s important
The world economy has begun a massive shift toward net-zero emissions with the hopes of radically reducing humanity’s carbon footprint by 2050. In addition to investing in low-emissions technologies, removing CO2 from the atmosphere will help countries reach their climate targets.
“Carbon capture and storage is now viewed as a key tool in mitigating the climate crisis as the technology has made great strides over the last decade, but so far there are a limited number of demonstration projects globally that are relatively small. The largest plant currently operating in the world, the Orca plant in Iceland, currently captures about 4,000 tons of carbon per year,” says The Hill.
As we previously reported, on August 16, President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act, which set aside $369 billion in climate change investments. The act increased tax credits for carbon removal projects from $50 per ton to $180 per ton.
“With the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, the proliferation of companies seeking high-quality carbon removal credits, and a disruptive low-cost technology, we now have the ingredients needed to scale DAC to megaton levels by the end of this decade,” says Carbon Capture CEO Adrian Corless.
Notable quote
“To meet the goals established under the 2015 Paris Agreement, Adrian Corless, CEO of Carbon Capture, estimated that 10 billion tons of carbon dioxide will need to be removed from the atmosphere annually by 2050. Human activity is responsible for releasing about 40 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere each year,” says The Hill.
