The US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (FECM), with DOE’s Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office (HFTO), announced more than $58.5 million in federal funding for projects to help develop a commercially viable carbon dioxide (CO₂) removal industry in the United States. The funding will support pilot projects and testing facilities to demonstrate and scale atmospheric CO₂ removal technologies.

To support an emerging and necessary carbon dioxide removal industry, in 2021 DOE launched the Carbon Negative Shot—the US government’s first major carbon dioxide removal effort. Part of DOE’s larger Energy Earthshots Initiative, the Carbon Negative Shot is a Department-wide call for crosscutting innovation and commercialization of a wide range of carbon dioxide removal technologies and approaches.

This Earthshot sets the portfolio-wide goal of reducing the cost of removing CO₂ from the atmosphere to less than $100 per net metric ton of CO₂-equivalent by 2032, together with robust measurement, monitoring, reporting, and verification and secure storage.

The selected projects will aim to support Carbon Negative Shot objectives across carbon dioxide removal pathways through integrated pilot-scale testing of advanced technologies and detailed monitoring, reporting, and verification protocols.

HFTO will manage the following project that supports small-scale biomass carbon removal and storage technology:

• Mote, Inc. (Los Angeles, California) will utilize wood waste to demonstrate a gasification system for hydrogen production coupled with CO₂ capture.

DOE’s National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), under the purview of FECM, will manage the remaining 10 projects. Four of these projects will also support small-scale biomass carbon removal and storage technology:

• Arbor Energy and Resources Corporation (El Segundo, California) will utilize unmarketable forest waste from land management practices, storing the inherent carbon in the biomass while producing power using a supercritical CO₂ power system.

• Carba, Inc. (Minneapolis, Minnesota) will convert biomass to charcoal to demonstrate permanent CO2 storage as solid carbon underground in oxygen-free chambers.

• Carbon Lockdown Project Benefit LLC (Silver Spring, Maryland) will implement pilot biomass burial projects at three sites in the Appalachian region, demonstrating the utilization of a variety of residual biomass sources for carbon removal.

• Clemson University (Clemson, South Carolina) will demonstrate the injection of wood particles into the subsurface as a method for removing carbon from the atmosphere and storing it in geologic formations with high permanence.

Four projects will support enhanced mineralization technologies:

• Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University (Stanford, California) intends to test a new enhanced weathering technology designed to enable rapid and scalable carbon dioxide removal in soil and durable storage as bicarbonate ions.

• Eion Corp (Princeton, New Jersey) plans to implement a digital measurement, reporting, and verification platform for a terrestrial enhanced weathering technology.

• Lithos Carbon (Dover, Delaware) will implement enhanced rock weathering on more than 3,000 acres of agricultural land in the southeastern United States, notably North Carolina.

• Northwestern University (Chicago, Illinois) will demonstrate an innovative enhanced weathering mineralization methodology for removing atmospheric CO₂ that will help Midwest farmers durably store carbon as dissolved bicarbonate.

Two projects will support testbed facilities suitable for evaluating, developing, and integrating multiple carbon dioxide removal pathways across different ecosystems, climates, and communities:

• Arizona Board of Regents on behalf of Arizona State University (Tempe, Arizona) will expand their existing testbed to evaluate direct air capture systems that capture CO₂ suitable for geologic storage or mineralization; grown and waste biomass carbon dioxide removal processed into biochar as an amendment to soils, low carbon concrete, and asphalt materials; and marine carbon dioxide removal pathways.

• University of North Dakota Energy & Environmental Research Center (Grand Forks, North Dakota) will expand its existing test facilities to facilitate carbon dioxide removal technology transition testing from laboratory-scale concepts to integrated pilot-scale carbon dioxide removal systems.