Decarbon Debrief: Is Carbon Capture Ready To Be a Climate Solution?

Start-ups and corporations seek out carbon capture opportunities.

Apr 23, 2023

🚨 The Lead

The top story of the week.

Earth Day was this past week and there was a lot of discussion around the role and impact of different climate solutions.

Carbon capture plays a versatile role in the solution mix due to deployment at energy and industrial facilities as a point source solution, new direct air capture facilities, and bioenergy with carbon capture plants. Policy tailwinds have encouraged new companies and start-ups to begin evaluating capture, utilization, and sequestration options.

Now, additional rumors and plans are taking shape to create new regulations for carbon capture at power plants.

The Environmental Protection Agency as soon as this week is expected to unveil standards for new and existing power plants, which belch roughly a quarter of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, two sources said. The rules will replace former President Donald Trump's American Clean Energy rule and former President Barack Obama's Clean Power Plan, both of which were invalidated by courts.
More than a year in the making, the standards should be based on a plant's potential to reduce emissions through carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology, according to clean air law experts and industry representatives in talks with the EPA. Source: Reuters

Todd’s Take:

The future belongs to innovation. In less than eight years, the world has to cut global emissions in half as part of the race to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. And yet, energy demand continues to grow in a world of increasing urbanization, according to the world economic forum report.

Geologic storage is known technology that has a low risk profile that can be deployed, scaled, and made operational today.

All forms of carbon capture play a vital role to get CO2 utilization (product CO2) and geologic sequestration to Gigaton scale. Both play pivotal roles in each of Princeton’s Net Zero America scenarios.

US Energy and Industrial Emissions Scenarios

Source: Princeton’s Net Zero America

✨ This Week in Decarbonization

Highlights from the week’s most popular stories in industrial decarbonization.

🎙 Business Opportunities in North America CCUS, a Carbon Capture Journal Webinar

🏆 Mainspring Energy Wins BloombergNEF Pioneers Award 2023 for Accelerating the Deployment of Clean Hydrogen

🚛 Walmart Teams up With Cummins and Chevron to Debut First 15-liter Renewable Natural Gas Engine on the Road in North America

💰 Climate Tech Leader nZero Raises $16M in Series A Funding Amid Global Call for More Accurate Sustainability Reporting

✅ Svante & Pilot Announce Collaboration to Offer Full-Service Carbon Capture & Storage Solutions to Industrial Emitters

🌊 Ebb Carbon Raises $20 million Series A, the largest investment in ocean-based carbon removal technology to date

🚫 Caterpillar and NMG Strengthen their Zero-Exhaust Emission Collaboration Through Definitive Agreements for Sourcing the Matawinie Mine's Fleet and Infrastructure

☁️ Capture This CO2

A single carbon capture or hydrogen project in industrial decarbonization.

Permian DAC 1 - the world’s largest planned DAC facility

🏭 Operator: 1PointFive, Oxy

📌 Location: Permian

⛽ Industry: Direct Air Capture

🦺 Project Status: Early Development

🌱 Project Type: Commercial

♻️ CO2 Capture Amount: 1 million tons per year

The Permian DAC 1 facility is located in Ector County Texas in West Texas. 1PointFive is developing the world’s largest facility along with Carbon Engineering and Worley. The project has already hit minor delays to due to supply chain availability; however, the facility expects to be operational by 2025. The captured CO2 will be injected into enhanced oil recovery projects to produce what Oxy is calling “net zero oil”.