Carbon capture returns to the earth

Six months ago, the prospects for the emerging carbon removal market seemed as huge as the sky.

Bill Gates and other investors stood in line to finance startups that promised to suck carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, which curbed global warming. Large companies such as Google, Airbus and Amazon have started to buy credits for removing carbon. And McKinsey projected that the market could be no less than $ 1.2 trillion in 2050. An investor called it “the greatest chance I saw in 20 years of daring capital.”

But less than six months after President Trump’s second term, in which he moved to drastically reform climate policy, the carbon trap industry is definitely modest.

The energy department last month Tied up 24 prices worth $ 3.7 billionmost of which were reserved for carbon removal projects. Applications for new carbon collection and Sekwestratieverergunning were in the United States 55 percent down In the first three months of the year.

And last month Klimeworks, the most prominent CO2 removal company, what I reported about last yearCut 22 percent of their staff awaiting slower growth. Two other start-ups of carbon collection, Heirloom and Pachama have also announced dismissals in recent weeks.

“There is a new administration in the US,” said Jan Wurzbacher, the co-chef director of Klimorkers, Me. “That is a fact, and the new administration sets certain things in question.”

Yet it is not only the political landscape that has changed. There are also new questions about the viability of some prominent carbon catching technologies.

The flagship plant of climbing in Iceland, which uses so -called direct aerial abovement to scrub carbon dioxide from the air, only removed a piece of carbon dioxide it had hoped During the first 10 months in operation, according to Heimildin, an Icelandic news organization.

“It takes time to rise,” Wurzbacher told me when I asked about the report. “We are just in the beginning and it took longer than we thought.”

Achieving ‘energy security’

The industry is not in full free fall.

Two important direct air catch developments that were enlightened greenery by the Biden administration, including one in Louisiana with Klimeworks that is known as Project CipresDid not belong to the projects canceled by the energy department.

Wurzbacher said that the interactions of his company with the Trump administration are limited, but that he now expects project to move forward, albeit with some delays.

Have tax credits for carbon reception projects survived so far Republican negotiations on their characteristic policy account, in contrast to some other tax credits for clean energy. (The possibility of transferring these tax credits can be limited, which can harm some start-ups.)

And in April, Occidental Petroleum, an important oil and gas company that also invests in direct air catching technology, receive approval from the government To redes the carbon dioxide, it sucks from the air with a gigantic new facility it builds in Texas.

Vicki Hollub, the Chief Executive of Occidental, said that the project ‘the United States would help reach energy security’, a rhetorical nod to Trump.

She added that the project ‘organizations would help to tackle their emissions’, a nod to companies that want to pay carbon dioxide underground permanently in an attempt to dispose of global warming.

At the same time, she said that direct aerial replacement could help “to produce vital agents and fuels”, a reference to the practice of the use of caught carbon dioxide to extract more gas underground.

Proponents have depicted the carbon capture as necessary to touch global global climate goals, but the prospect of using caught carbon to produce more fossil fuels leads to some climate activists see more than a list that is designed to perpetuate the oil and gas industry.

‘A big step back’

The carbon removal market depends on companies that voluntarily buy credits from start-ups that promise to remove the greenhouse gas from the atmosphere, a dynamic that makes industry vulnerable to the changing priorities of the business world.

For now, large companies are still in line to buy carbon removal loans from a series of start-ups. CDR.FYI, a website that follows the industry, reported that Bain & Company, Microsoft and JPMorgan belonged to the companies that had signed deals this year with CO2 removal companies.

Yet even Alexander Rink, the Chief Executive of CDR.FYI, hit a warning note when he was asked about the future of the industry. Rink expects the sale of carbon credits to be linked to direct air distribution, but he also predicts that more industry companies will go bankrupt.

The Carbon Capture Coalition, an industrial group, called the decision of the energy department To cancel the 24 subsidies “A big step back in the national use of carbon management technologies.”

And Wurzbacher said that although Klimeworks still expected to build his first American factory in Louisiana, the company occupied. Instead of trying to scale up quickly and build new factories, the company will now concentrate on improving the efficiency of its technology in an attempt to lower costs.

“Looking at the world around us, we decided that we need a little consolidation,” he said.

Climate policy

Republicans vote in Georgia to kill green jobs, but are confronted with little fallout

Outside the peel of a closed yarn factory, thousands of old solar panels are stacked on gravel.

In Cedartown, Ga., A company, Solarcycle, spent around $ 50 million of $ 500 million to invest the facility to build the solar panel and an adjacent factory in the production of glass. Once operational, Solarcycle would be the largest employer in the area.

And yet President Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” put the Solarcycle factory in his tracks. The legislation, which the house has adopted and is now being discussed in the Senate, would essentially eliminate the tax benefits from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act on which companies count to build new wind and solar projects, battery factories for electric vehicles and more.

But in Cedartown, Many interviewed people said they had never heard of the inflation reduction law And don’t connect it with the Solarcycle Factory. Some of those who had heard about the law described it as wasting expenses. – Lisa Freidman

Read more.

By the figures

Up to 2.8 billion out of 27.3 billion

In 2012, powered by a marine heat wave in the Gulf of Maine, the northern shrimp population fell an estimated 2.8 billion in 2022 of 27.3 billion two years earlier, according to modeling by the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission.

“This disappearance of the shrimp was just shocking,” said Anne Richards, a retired biologist from the Fisheries study who worked at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Center Northast Fisheries Science Center at the time.

It is part of the Greater impact on marine ecosystems of unusual heat waves who have taken place on the planet in all the old ocean basins in recent years. Some of these events have become so intense that scientists have come up with a new term: Super Marine Heat waves. – Delger Erdenesaaaaa

More climate news from on the internet:

• Due to the energy needs of data centers and artificial intelligence, Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet and Meta rose according to the average of 2020 to 2023 on average 150 percent A report marked by Energy Monitor.

• Amazon will invest $ 20 billion in two data centers in Pennsylvania, including one next to a nuclear power plant, The Associated Press Reports.

• The Washington Post emphasizes a new study That is what homeless people think 27 times more likely to visit a hospital for heat -related diseases than other people in the United States.

• The internal natural fire forecasts of South California Edison underestimate the potential size of the January Canyon Fire in Los Angeles with a factor of 10, According to documents assessed by Reuters.

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