SECAIRA: Field says methods of naturally capturing carbon are just as important for reaching the country's climate goals, and usually cheaper. They also have yet to prove their ability to work at the scale necessary to reach national carbon removal goals.įIELD: And this is definitely at the borderline between experimental scale and commercial scale. He says direct air capture technologies are often energy intensive and expensive. SECAIRA: That's Chris Field, the director of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. Heirloom's plant will only capture a tiny fraction of that.ĬHRIS FIELD: We're likely to need to do CO2 removal at the scale of billions of tons a year. SECAIRA: But the United States emits millions of tons of carbon annually. The blueprint that you have here, I think, is the blueprint to follow. And it's the first of what we hope is not just for you, but for other companies. JENNIFER GRANHOLM: I'm here because this is the first. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm attended the facility's opening in California. In August, the Biden administration promised $1.2 billion to companies, including Heirloom, that are building direct air capture facilities in Texas and Louisiana. SECAIRA: With this plant, Heirloom is the first in the United States to capture carbon, permanently store it, and sell carbon removal credits to customers like Microsoft. SCHOLTEN: This facility, when fully built out, will be capable of capturing up to 1,000 tons of CO2 per year. He says the carbon dioxide, which contributes to climate change, will later be extracted from the limestone and stored permanently in concrete. SECAIRA: Max Scholten is head of commercialization at Heirloom. SCHOLTEN: While that process takes months if not years if you do nothing to the process, we've now accelerated that down to just three days. This process happens naturally, but here it's sped up. Once the calcium oxide and carbon come together, they become limestone. It's a chemical compound that naturally bonds with the carbon dioxide drifting through the building. SECAIRA: Inside the facility, there are 40-foot tall stacks of trays holding hydrated calcium oxide. MAX SCHOLTEN: Please, just watch your step. MANOLA SECAIRA, BYLINE: There are different approaches to direct air capture, but the California facility opened by a company called Heirloom Carbon Technologies works like this. The federal government is investing in this technology to help address climate change, but climate experts say it has limits. The technology pulls pollution that causes global warming out of the air and stores it. The country's first commercial direct air capture facility opened in central California earlier this month.
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