thought Trump might be a blocker to DAC but maybe not. Trump...

thought Trump might be a blocker to DAC but maybe not.
Trump can’t cool Republicans’ ardor for this climate tech
By BLANCA BEGERT

06/24/2024 09:01 PM EDT
With help from Alex Nieves, Wes Venteicher and Camille von Kaenel


CarbonCapture Inc. demonstrated a test module that could capture 500 tons of carbon a year. | Blanca Begert/POLITICO
DREAMS OF DAC: Former President Donald Trump may want to overturn President Joe Biden’s signature climate laws, but one climate technology has the potential to throw up a roadblock.
A Wyoming Republican was on hand last week at the unveiling of a direct air capture demonstration unit in Long Beach alongside California Air Resources Board officials, making the case for carbon-sucking climate tech.
“It keeps the industries that we love and know alive,” said state Rep. J.T. Larson, who represents the southwest region of Wyoming where Los Angeles startup CarbonCapture Inc. hopes to inject 5 million tons of carbon extracted from the air annually by 2030. “People are more willing to purchase our coal or natural gas if there’s carbon sequestration initiatives that are in place for those different types of power”
Direct air capture is still a nascent field, with only one commercial-scale plant operating in the U.S. (Heirloom Carbon Technology’s small plant in Tracy, which opened in November). But Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law are poised to pour billions into it, both in the form of tax credits as well as grants from the Department of Energy. Two large-scale DOE funded hubs on the Gulf Coast are scheduled to come online in the next three years.
CarbonCapture plans to monetize Project Bison, as the Wyoming installation is called, by selling its emissions reductions to climate-minded tech companies and other businesses. The company also has plans to build a manufacturing facility in Arizona next year to mass-produce the carbon-sucking units, alongside a commercial-scale plant which will be eligible for IRA tax credits. And they’ve partnered with Aera Energy in Kern County on a feasibility study to capture and sequester carbon under its oil fields.
All that will take time: Project Bison, which was set to come online in 2023, is running behind schedule. But company executives aren’t worried about running into Trump 2.0, despite the former president’s rants against both laws and some of their prime industry beneficiaries.
“Where we see who’s really leaning into the space and who’s really looking to build carbon management businesses, it’s largely energy companies, and it’s largely projects that are focused in red states,” said CarbonCapture CEO Adrian Corless. “I think that reality is making this particular carbon management piece of legislation — not untouchable, but I think very stable.”
The technology still has some political and policy hoops to jump through within California, with environmental groups on the left objecting to the potential for it to distract from actual reductions in industrial emissions and the conventional pollutants that accompany them. A bill by state Sen. Josh Becker to set carbon-removal targets was scheduled for a hearing in the Assembly Natural Resources Committee today but got delayed to next week.
CARB Executive Officer Steve Cliff pointed to the fact that the state’s 2045 plan to get to carbon neutrality envisions a role for direct air capture. “Technologies such as this are really critical to achieving our climate objectives,” he said.
Larson, for his part, didn’t mention climate change explicitly. He focused more on the economics: The project might buy energy from local utilities or sell credits to Wyoming power plants looking to sell into markets like California’s.
Bridging the gap was newly appointed CarbonCapture board member and former FERC Chair Neil Chatterjee, who noted that Trump had signed legislation supporting direct air capture.
“I’m a Republican from Kentucky who worked for [Senate Minority Leader] Mitch McConnell and was appointed chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission by Donald Trump,” he said. “But I made very clear, from the moment that I had a platform of my own, that I believed that climate change was real. That man had a significant impact. That we urgently needed to mitigate emissions.” — BB