2023-08-12 07:00:00
The US government has decided to fight global warming with billions. This Friday, the Ministry of Energy announced that it wanted to invest $1.2 billion in two projects to capture CO2 directly from the atmosphere, ” the biggest investment » ever achieved in this technology.
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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, or in total, the equivalent of the annual emissions of 445,000 cars. The capacity of each project will be 250 times more CO2 than the largest capture site currently in operation, the US Department said. These Direct Air Capture (DAC) techniques 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 reaching the atmosphere.
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The Swiss company Climeworks, leader in the sector, will participate in the project in Louisiana, which will store the captured CO2 underground. It already operates a plant in Iceland with an annual capacity to capture 4,000 tonnes of CO2 from the air.
130 carbon pumps under construction
According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), there are currently 27 atmospheric carbon capture sites worldwide, but their scale is small. However, more than 130 projects are in development.
These investments by Joe Biden’s government are being made as part of a major infrastructure law passed in 2021. The Department of Energy previously announced plans to invest in a total of four projects, worth $3.5 billion. dollars. The American president also announced, in May, a plan to reduce CO2 emissions for gas and coal-fired power plants, focusing in particular on this second technique.
“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,” US Energy Minister Jennifer Granholm said in a statement following the announcement of the two new projects.
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.
A controversial technology
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.
Many environmental NGOs accuse CCS defenders of preventing the emergence of alternatives, by favoring the maintenance of fossil fuels under the pretext of CO2 capture. Thus, according to the Climate Action Network (RAC), which federates most climate associations, the CCS is a ” false solution which diverts attention from the energy efficiency and decarbonization of energy sources used ».
« Carbon capture and storage are more greenwashing tools than real climate progress “, even affirmed the RAC in a press release published in April 2022.
(With AFP)
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