Granholm wants gigaton-scale carbon capture

WASHINGTON — Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm set a target Friday for the United States to establish a gigaton-scale network of air capture facilities to pull carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere.

She made an “all hands on deck call for innovation” to bring the cost of the technology down to $100 per ton of carbon dioxide, a fraction of what the technology costs now.

“By slashing the costs and accelerating the deployment of carbon dioxide removal — a crucial clean energy technology — we can take massive amounts of carbon pollution directly from the air and combat the climate crisis,” Granholm said in a statement.

Scientists have warned world leaders that if greenhouse gas emissions don’t fall rapidl, the planet faces a rise in temperatures likely to lead to cataclysmic sea level rise and shifts in global weather patterns.

In 2015, governments pledged at a climate summit in Paris to reduce emissions, but those pledges have fallen short of what is necessary. Progress toward those goals have been slow, with emissions continuing to rise.

Using giant machines to pull carbon from the atmosphere, once considered in the realm of science fiction, has gained increasing attention in recent years. Houston-based Occidential Petroleum is developing a direct air capture facility in the oil fields of West Texas capable of removing up to 1 million tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere a year, with construction expected to begin next year.

“We believe direct air capture is going to be a game-changing technology to meet U.S. and global climate goals,” Occidental CEO Vicki Hollub said in a statement Friday. “The DOE has been an important accelerator for early funding of nascent technologies for addressing energy and climate needs, and these investments have resulted in commercial technologies that are widely deployed.”

Granholm called for direct air capture at a scale that would exceed the annual emissions of all the vehicles in the United States, excluding trucks, along with creation of a “robust” system of storing and monitoring the carbon dioxide underground. But for now, there is little economic incentive to proceed.

In the United States, for example, the cost of the technology far exceeds the value of the tax credit for capturing and storing the carbon dioxide underground. The hope within the Biden administration is that by pumping money into research and development they can bring costs down that companies can profit from removing carbon from the atmosphere.

“With our carbon negative shot, we can help remove the greenhouse gases already warming our planet and affecting our health—positioning America as a net-zero leader and creating good-paying jobs for a transitioning clean energy workforce,” Granholm said.