![]() ![]() Heirloom has sold a share of its carbon removal credits to various companies, including Microsoft, Stripe and Shopify. “Direct air capture still carries all of the same concerns we have with carbon capture and without those safety measures in place, it’s going to have potentially really negative impacts on frontline communities.” “We’re very concerned,” said Katie Valenzuela, a policy advocate at the California Environmental Justice Alliance. For reference, the largest DAC facility in the world, created by Swiss startup Climeworks, removes 4,000 tons of CO2 a year, an amount less than 270 average Americans’ annual carbon footprints. ![]() They also worry state and federal leaders are taking a gamble on a technology that is largely untested and too expensive to operate. Though Heirloom’s has said it won’t use its technology to perpetuate the fossil fuel industry, many environmentalists and local communities remain opposed to the technology as a whole due to safety concerns over ruptured pipelines and mass asphyxiation from leaks. which is leading a DAC hub in Texas - has said sucking CO2 from the air is crucial to its strategy to keep producing oil. The practice, known as enhanced oil recovery, has long been scrutinized by environmentalists who fear it could prolong the lifespan of fossil fuels. That technology can help decarbonize heavy industry, but oil companies have deployed it to capture CO2 then inject it underground to help extract more fossil fuels. The facility’s technology differs from a more controversial method called carbon capture, which involves removing CO2 emitted at the smokestack. The Tracy plant will store CO2 in tanks, though Heirloom and other companies plan to inject it deep underground for future projects. Once saturated with the CO2, the material returns to the kiln, where the carbon is removed before the process repeats. Heirloom’s facility will use an electric-powered kiln to heat crushed limestone, transforming it into a calcium-based paste that’s spread onto stacked trays that act as carbon-absorbing sponges. Carbon capture and removal is “positioned to play an important role in decarbonizing the US economy,” according to BloombergNEF. The carbon market could reach $1 trillion by 2037 if rules prioritize high-quality removals, BNEF found in a separate analysis.ĭAC, which is still in its infancy, uses vacuum-like machines to pull CO2 out of the atmosphere and store it using a variety of methods. Research shows that gathering billions of tons of the greenhouse gas from the air each year by mid-century - in addition to rapid emissions reductions - will almost certainly be needed to limit global warming to 1.5C. Though the Tracy facility is not a recipient of those dollars, Heirloom is part of one of those projects and its technology will be deployed at a major hub in Louisiana the government expects will remove 1 million tons of CO2 a year by the end of the decade. Heirloom and other DAC companies can also receive tax credits from the Inflation Reduction Act. In August, the Department of Energy announced the first wave of projects that won some of the $3.5 billion in funding for developing DAC hubs around the US. The Biden administration is throwing its weight behind the technology, too. While Heirloom declined to disclose the price tag to build the California facility, the company aims to operate at a cost of $100 per ton of carbon removed by 2030 - a price point the young industry currently isn’t close to reaching. Heirloom raised $53 million in a 2022 Series A round from investors including Microsoft’s Climate Innovation Fund and Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures. are among the companies that have pledged hundreds of millions to buy carbon removal services, even as critics warn the industry will give oil producers an excuse to keep pumping crude. That’s a pittance compared with bigger plants poised to come online in Texas and Louisiana, but it’s enough to serve as a milestone for a technology that’s likely to spawn a significant business. ![]() ![]()
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