The US government has committed $1.2 billion for the establishment of massive machines designed to extract carbon dioxide pollution directly from the atmosphere. The US Department of Energy revealed its plan to invest up to $1.2 billion (€1.1 billion) in two Direct Air Capture (DAC) facilities, situated in Texas and Louisiana, with the purpose of extracting carbon from the air.

Each facility is set to house carbon-capturing apparatus capable of removing as much as one million tons of carbon dioxide annually. This is equivalent to the annual emissions produced by around 445,000 gasoline-powered cars. Jennifer Granholm, the Energy Secretary, emphasized that merely curbing carbon emissions would not be sufficient to counteract the escalating impacts of climate change. She stressed the importance of also extracting the CO2 that has already been released into the atmosphere.

The technology employed, known as Direct Air Capture (DAC) or Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR), employs chemical reactions to extract CO2 from the air. The captured carbon dioxide can be stored underground or utilized in applications like concrete or aviation fuel. Presently, the technology for direct air capture devices remains relatively untested, and only a handful are operational worldwide. However, for it to be viable on a global scale, it needs to rapidly become more cost-effective.

Granholm highlighted the potential impact of deploying this technology at scale, stating that it could substantially contribute to achieving net-zero emissions targets while simultaneously advancing clean energy initiatives. The United Nations' International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recognizes direct carbon dioxide capture from the atmosphere as one of the essential methods for combatting global warming.

The two projects have been assigned to different contractors. Project Cypress in Louisiana is managed by the US non-profit organization Battelle, partnering with American company Heirloom Carbon Technology and Swiss firm Climeworks, which already operates a DAC facility in Iceland. Jan Wurzbacher, Climeworks' director and founder, expressed optimism about the timeline, aiming for the initial capture to commence by 2025 or 2026. Heirloom CEO Shashank Samala noted the remarkable progress achieved, going from extracting grams of CO2 in a lab to a pace of exponential growth, with the ambitious goal of capturing a billion tons annually.

The Texas project, led by American company Occidental in collaboration with partners including Carbon Engineering, has the potential to eliminate up to 30 million tons of CO2 annually, according to a statement from Occidental.