on Friday. It did so endorsing a specific strategy: that grouping like-minded companies and researchers in hubs is the most effective way to scale the nascent technology.
The DAC hubs are a bet that bringing companies together in central locations can supercharge innovation, both in terms of improving the machines that capture carbon from thin air and how the industry engages with a public that will come face to face with the emerging technology for the first time. The group overseeing the Louisiana hub has contracted with Gulf Coast Sequestration, a local company that will stash the CO2 captured by Climeworks and Heirloom’s technology. Doing so will pair up a novel constellation of companies and researchers to test new ways of capturing and storing carbon that may otherwise have not worked together. That could help the industry as a whole mature.
A 2021 Government Accountability Office report found, for example, that the DOE invested US$1.1 billion in carbon capture projects – that is, technology to grab CO2 at the smokestack – with what it called “varying levels of success”. That includes US$300 million in funding for projects that were never built.
Scientists view carbon removal’s main role once scaled up as twofold: remediating historic emissions and also tackling problems that cannot be addressed through other means, such as electrifying cars or installing renewable energy. A misstep – whether a failure to deliver promised jobs or promised carbon removal – would make the pathway to scaling DAC rapidly much harder. If the large hubs do not find innovative ways to engage with the public or otherwise stumble, the results could hurt the industry’s long-term prospects.