The United States announced on Friday that it would invest $1.2 billion in two projects to capture CO2 directly from the atmosphere, “biggest investment” ever achieved in this technology, which aims to fight against global warming but remains decried by some experts.
“Reducing our emissions alone will not reverse the growing consequences of climate change; we also need to remove the CO2 that we have already emitted into the atmosphere”said Jennifer Granholm, US Secretary of Energy, in a statement.
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The two projects, located in Texas and Louisiana, are the first on this scale in the United States. They each aim to eliminate one million tonnes of CO2 per year – in total the equivalent of the annual emissions of 445,000 cars.
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More than 130 projects are in development
The capacity of each project will be 250 times more CO2 than the largest capture site currently in operation, the US Department said. The Swiss company Climeworks, a leader in the sector, currently operates a plant in Iceland with an annual capacity to capture 4,000 tonnes of CO2 from the air. Climeworks will participate in the project in Louisiana, which will store captured CO2 underground.
According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), there are currently 27 atmospheric carbon capture sites worldwide, but their scale is small. More than 130 projects are in development, according to the IEA.
These investments by Joe Biden’s government are being made as part of a major infrastructure law passed in 2021. The Department of Energy had previously announced that it wanted to invest in four projects in total, for an amount of 3.5 billion dollars. dollars.
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Necessary method
Capturing carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere is one of the methods now considered necessary by the UN’s International Panel of Climate Experts (IPCC) to combat global warming.
But this technology also has its critics, who worry that it is a pretext to continue emitting greenhouse gases, rather than to switch to clean energy more quickly.
These direct airborne capture (DAC) techniques – also called carbon dioxide removal (EDC) – focus on the CO2 already emitted into the atmosphere. They differ from carbon capture and storage systems (CCS) at source, at factory chimneys for example, which prevent additional emissions from entering the atmosphere.
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Joe Biden’s government announced in May a plan to reduce CO2 emissions for gas and coal-fired power plants, focusing in particular on this second technique.
2023-08-11 17:08:55
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