WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy, M.D. (R-LA) announced that Louisiana will receive up to $603,000,000.00 from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to plan and construct Direct Air Capture (DAC) Hubs in the state, making it the largest single award from his Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) in the entire country.
“Carbon capture opens a new era of energy and manufacturing dominance for Louisiana. It is the future of job creation and economic development for our state,” said Dr. Cassidy. “It’s for this reason that I wrote the original the Direct Air Capture Hub program and ensured its inclusion in the infrastructure bill.”
Project Cypress, to be located in southwest Louisiana, is receiving an initial $50,000,000.00 to begin development of a regional DAC hub. Pending final negotiations and continued achievement of development milestones, the project will receive a total of $500-$600 million of grant funding during the hub’s development. Once completed, the hub will capture more than one million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere annually and sequester the CO2 permanently deep underground. Battelle will act as the DAC Hub owner in partnership with technology providers Climeworks Corporation and Heirloom Carbon Technologies, Inc. Project Cypress intends to rely on Gulf Coast Sequestration (GCS) for the offtake and geologic storage of captured atmospheric CO2. The owner of GCS, the Stream family of companies, is also supporting Project Cypress as the landowner and lessor of the host site in southwest Louisiana, and will provide land suitable for the construction, installation, commissioning, operation, and maintenance of the DAC facilities developed by Climeworks and Heirloom.
At its full value, the Project Cyprus award is the largest competitive grant award issued as a result of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to date. The project is one of only two projects in the country that has the opportunity to claim the full grant value.
Louisiana State University is also receiving $2,999,960.000 for the Pelican-Gulf Coast Carbon Removal project to build a examine additional DAC hub opportunities in Louisiana. The Pelican consortium includes the University of Houston and Shell. Pelican proposes developing technologies that can enable accelerated and replicable carbon removal and permanent storage in ways that protect and generate workforce opportunities. The consortium is evaluating a DAC hub that would remove CO2 already in the atmosphere and permanently store it. Upon completion of the initial evaluation that this funding allows, the Pelican-Gulf Coast project will be eligible to apply for additional DAC hub grant funding.
Together, the awards continue to pave the way for Louisiana to be a global energy and manufacturing leader.
Background
Congress established the DAC Hub Program to advance the deployment of new technologies designed to capture carbon dioxide from ambient air. Congress created this program to lower long-term costs of DAC.
In June, Cassidy penned an op-ed in the American Press in Lake Charles, Louisiana, highlighting the importance of investing in carbon capture and storage projects.
In April, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced that they intend to grant Louisiana the authority to permit, site, and provide oversight of carbon storage wells in the state. Cassidy has led a two-year push for the EPA to allow Louisiana to invest in carbon storage wells, meeting resistance from the Biden administration. The long-awaited concession from the EPA will allow Louisiana to continue leading the country in the expansion of new, lower-pollution technologies such as carbon capture, hydrogen, and direct air capture. It also positions Louisiana to access funding dedicated to carbon capture in IIJA.
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