'We need gigaton-scale removal' - CEO of firm included in $1.2 bln US award for carbon capture

Record ID: 1737427

  • Title: 'We need gigaton-scale removal' - CEO of firm included in $1.2 bln US award for carbon capture
  • Date: 11th August 2023
  • Summary: UNKNOWN LOCATION (AUGUST 11, 2023) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) CEO OF HEIRLOOM CARBON TECHNOLOGIES, SHASHANK SAMALA, SAYING: “One of the main reasons I'm really excited about this partnership is that, you know, we can scale together to megaton scale and not really have to worry about, you know, technology sharing and IP sharing concerns with that. They're just so fundamentally different, our technology platforms, we have high-temperature processing, they have a low-temperature process.”
  • Embargoed: 25th August 2023 21:41
  • Keywords: Biden Administration CO2 Climate Change DAC DOE Department of Energy Heirloom OXY Shashank Samala carbon emissions
  • Location: VARIOUS
  • City: VARIOUS
  • Country: US
  • Topics: Environment,North America
  • Reuters ID: LVA006399911082023RP1
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) on Friday (August 11) announced that projects in Texas and Louisiana to remove more than 2 million metric tons of carbon emissions per year will get over $1 billion in federal grants, a key step in scaling up direct air capture (DAC) technology.
    The 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) subsidiary 1PointFive and partners Carbon Engineering Ltd and Worley.
    Heirloom CEO Shashank Samala told Reuters that the company, which uses limestone to pull carbon out of the atmosphere and then stores it in concrete, has increased its removal potential at an exponential pace and could one day reach a billion tons a year.
    The DOE has also launched several new initiatives aimed at bringing the cost of carbon capture 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.
    (Production: Ali Withers; Peter Henderson; Ashraf Fahim)
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
  • Copyright Notice: (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2023. Open For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
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