This month, the U.S. government announced up to $1.2 billion for America's first two direct air capture (DAC) Hubs in Texas and Louisiana as well as 19 additional projects that aim at deploying future DAC Hub facilities.
As part of this Notification of Selection, three out of three DAC Hub applications that Climeworks participates in were selected by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)!
The first one, Project Cypress in Louisiana, is designed with a pathway toward megaton capacity by 2030, making it one of the first DAC projects of this scale in the United States. The project belongs to topic area 3 (build) of the DOE's Regional DAC Hubs Program. The two other projects, Prairie Compass DAC Hub in North Dakota and California DAC Hub in California, are among the five projects to engage in a front-end engineering design (FEED) study (topic area 2 - design).
This year, Climeworks participated in three applications as part of the U.S. DOE's DAC Hubs program – I am very pleased and honored that all three were selected by the DOE! The fact that the DOE, empowered by the White House and Congress to invest billions of dollars, has selected the projects involving Climeworks is an important recognition of our decade-long experience in DAC technology and our ability to bring to life high-quality carbon removal. I want to thank all project partners and all Climeworkers for their contributions and dedication to the task at hand and the overall journey. I am looking forward to the next steps with everyone involved, to bring high-quality, high-integrity carbon removal via DAC to the U.S.
Jan Wurzbacher, co-founder and co-CEO of Climeworks
About the DAC Hubs
Here's a summary of the three DAC Hub proposals that Climeworks is part of:
- Project Cypress (Calcasieu Parish, LA): The project team of Battelle, Climeworks and Heirloom aims to capture more than 1 million metric tons of existing CO₂ from the atmosphere each year and store it permanently deep underground. This hub intends to rely on Gulf Coast Sequestration for geologic storage of captured atmospheric CO₂. The project is estimated to create approximately 2,300 jobs, with a goal to hire workers formerly employed by the fossil fuel industry for 10% of the overall workforce. Project Cypress will implement a robust two-way communication program with local communities and stakeholders to solicit input into the project while also generating new employment opportunities and advancing diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility principles. The project has a website that can be visited here. The press release announcing the DOE's Notification of Selection is accessible here.
- California Direct Air Capture Hub: Electric Power Research Institute, Inc. (Washington, D.C.)—along with partners California Resources Corporation, Avnos, Climeworks, SoCalGas, Kern Community College District, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, University of Michigan, and California State University – Bakersfield—intends to design and plan the initial deployment and future development of CalHub, a regional DAC hub comprising both a planned storage site and pipeline transport of CO₂. The project will study low-to-zero carbon-emitting sources of energy. The press release announcing the DOE's Notification of Selection is accessible here.
- Prairie Compass DAC Hub: University of North Dakota Energy & Environmental Research Center (EERC) (Grand Forks, North Dakota) plans to demonstrate commercial-scale DAC technology from Climeworks and permitted CO₂ storage facilities in North Dakota at megaton scale to catalyze and guide the socially responsible development of commercial DAC plus storage facilities on the northern Great Plains. Climeworks will play a core role as part of Prairie Compass Hub, which includes a fully permitted CO₂ storage site as the hub’s anchor storage option, other storage sites, and CO₂ transportation under development to support hub expansion.
Background
The U.S. is an important, strategic market for Climeworks because of its favorable political and commercial environment and its potential for the company's project development efforts. To accelerate its U.S. growth, Climeworks decided to participate in three applications for public funding as part of the U.S. DOE's Regional DAC Hubs program: in Louisiana, California and North Dakota.
Under this program, a total of $3.5bn of funding is available. In a first funding opportunity announcement (FOA) published in December 2022, the DOE makes up to $1.2bn out of the total $3.5bn available to eligible projects in different categories (that differ according to maturity/size of project and funding available):
- TA-1: Feasibility (14 projects were selected – Climeworks did not apply with any project under this category)
- TA-2: Design (5 projects were selected – Climeworks applied with 2 projects under this category, both were selected)
- TA-3: Build (2 projects were selected – Climeworks applied with 1 project under this category, which was selected)
In March 2023, Climeworks and its project partners submitted applications for one TA-3 project in Louisiana (Project Cypress) and for two TA-2 projects in California (California DAC Hub) and North Dakota (Prairie Compass DAC Hub) under this first FOA - all three of which were now selected by the DOE.