Recently, the Department of Energy launched a $3.5 billion program in order to help fund technology for the purpose of eliminating carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This program will particularly focus on the taking of air from the atmosphere through carbon capture hubs across the United States.
Essentially, they will take carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. In doing so, it will complement President Biden's ultimate plan of reaching a net-zero economy by the year 2050.
"The UN's latest climate report made clear that removing legacy carbon pollution from the air through direct air capture and safely storing it is an essential weapon in our fight against the climate crisis," United States Secretary of Energy, Jennifer M. Granholm, said in a statement. "President Biden's Bipartisan Infrastructure Law is funding new technologies that will not only make our carbon-free future a reality but will help position the U.S. as a net-zero leader while creating good-paying jobs for a transitioning clean energy workforce."
The process of air capture is what helps carbon dioxide to separate itself from ambient air (atmospheric air in natural form). After the carbon dioxide is eliminated from the air, it is kept underground for usage in something like concrete in order to keep it from going back into the atmosphere. This process is unique from carbon capture systems at industrial facilities or power plants, since it focuses on removing the carbon emissions from the air and preventing them from returning to the air itself.
According to the Department of Energy, it has predicted that by the middle of the century, many other processes such as this will be implemented at a much more global scale in order to effectively combat greenhouse gas emissions. Given that some past plans and projects have not exactly worked out, this project should be paid close attention to. A recent study that was done by the human rights organization Global Witness conveyed that oil company Shell's
Since the year 2015, it has been calculated that such projects have stopped approximately five million tons of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere, but that they have also placed around 7.5 million tons into the atmosphere.
Though it has not been demonstrated exactly what types of projects that the Department of Energy will be giving support to, press releases have stated that "hubs will have the capacity to capture and then permanently store at least one million metric tons of CO2 from the atmosphere annually, either from a single unit or from multiple interconnected units."
