CarbonCapture sees 5mt/yr DAC facility by 2030

California-based CarbonCapture says it is partnering with carbon storage developer Frontier Carbon Solutions in Project Bison in Wyoming targeting the direct air capture (DAC) of 5mn mt/yr of CO₂ by 2030.

The latest boost to the project was the passage in August of US president Joe Biden’s Infrastructure Reduction Act, which provides tax credits for the development of technology to reduce CO₂ emissions or remove it from the atmosphere, CarbonCapture said September 8.

“With the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, the proliferation of companies seeking high-quality carbon removal credits, and a disruptive low-cost technology, we now have the ingredients needed to scale DAC to megaton levels by the end of this decade,” CarbonCapture CEO Adrian Corless said. “We plan to have our first DAC modules fielded by the end of next year and to continue installing capacity as quickly as modules come off our production line.”

Wyoming was selected as the location for Project Bison based on the broad availability there of renewable and zero carbon energy and a favourable regulatory and operating environment for carbon storage. The first modules should be operational by late 2023, at which time the project would be the first in the US to use Class VI wells for the geologic sequestration of CO₂ and the first “massively scalable” DAC project in the US.

Canadian-based Carbon Engineering, working with Occidental Petroleum’s 1PointFive, is developing a deployment plan that would see 70 operational DAC facilities, each capturing 1mn mt/yr of CO₂, deployed around the world by 2035. The first plant is now under construction in Texas, where it will sequester captured CO₂ in Occidental’s enhanced oil recovery (EOR) operations when it is commissioned in 2024.

Project Bison will deploy CarbonCapture’s DAC modules on top of Frontier’s CO₂transportation and storage infrastructure in Wyoming. Advanced sales of carbon removal credits associated with the project have already begun, with news behemoth TIME and carbon market Cloverly among the early core channel partners.

“It’s our privilege to be an early partner of CarbonCapture,” said Simon Mulcahy, CEO of CO₂ and president of sustainability at TIME. “We’re committed to supporting high-quality climate impact solutions, including engineered carbon removal solutions, and we’re excited to bring our clients some of the first carbon removal credits coming out of Project Bison.”