--- title: "White House Pledges $1.2 Billion to Suck Carbon Out of the Air" description: "The US Department of Energy will invest $1.2 billion to build two direct air capture facilities that will remove carbon from the atmosphere." date: "2023-08-11" modified: "2023-08-11" authors: - name: "Frank Landymore" job_title: "Contributing Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/flandymore" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/white-house-suck-carbon-out-of-air" categories: - "Climate Change" - "Environment" - "Science & Energy" tags: - "carbon removal" - "climate change" - "direct air capture" - "the digest" --- # White House Pledges $1.2 Billion to Suck Carbon Out of the Air ![The US Department of Energy will invest $1.2 billion to build two direct air capture facilities that will remove carbon from the atmosphere.]() *SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH - AUGUST 10: U.S. President Joe Biden speaks at the George E. Wahlen Department of Veterans Affairs Medical Center on August 10, 2023 in Salt Lake City, Utah. President Biden was celebrating the first anniversary of the PACT Act. (Photo by George Frey/Getty Images) \Image: George Frey / Getty\* ## Direct Air Capture President Joe Biden's administration will fund a massive carbon removal project to suck the greenhouse gas straight out of the atmosphere using what's known as direct air capture — the first time the US has made a major investment in the controversial technology. White House senior advisor Mitch Landrieu called it "the largest investment in engineered carbon removal in history," [as quoted by *The Washington Post*](). To commence the project, the US Department of Energy will spend a formidable $1.2 billion to construct two direct air capture plants, the agency announced on Friday, adding to a total of around 130 of these facilities in the works worldwide. "These projects are going to help us prove out the potential of these next-generation technologies so that we can add them to our climate crisis fighting arsenal," energy secretary Jennifer Granholm told reporters, per *WaPo*. One plant will be built in Texas by Occidental Petroleum, and another by research and development nonprofit Battelle in Louisiana. Once completed, they'll be the largest direct air capture plants in the world, according to the Energy Department. The real question, though, is whether the tech will ever be able to scale up enough to make a difference. ## Climate Excuses Many environmentalists aren't convinced that direct air capture will be an effective way to combat climate change, and some argue that it will only distract from more important issues. "It's useful to give them an excuse for not ever stopping oil," said former Vice President and noted climate activist Al Gore at a recent Ted Talk, [as quoted by *The New York Times*](). "That gives them a license to continue producing more and more oil and gas." But desperate times call for desperate measures, and the tech has gained significant momentum in recent years; a 2022 [report from the International Energy Agency]() identified direct air capture as a "key technology" for achieving net zero carbon emissions. Others don't necessarily disagree with Gore's stance, but argue that both approaches can still work hand in hand — and that we're going to need all the solutions we can get. "There is no scenario for meeting our climate goals that does not involve both the phaseout of fossil fuels and carbon dioxide removal on a massive scale," Michael Gerrard, an environmental law expert at Columbia University, told the *NYT*. "The technologies are still in their relatively early stage, but we're going to need a lot of them, and we have to get going." It's unclear what the direct air capture plants will do with the removed carbon, or even how much carbon they will remove, though energy officials promised it wouldn't be injected back into the ground [to extract more oil](). *WaPo* notes that a similar facility in Iceland vacuums up around 4,000 tons of carbon per year — a drop in the pond compared to the nearly [37 billion metric tons emitted last year](). **More on climate change:** *[Ocean Hits Highest Recorded Temperature, Still Rising]()* ## Author At Futurism, my work has often centered on bringing a sense of clarity and insight to complex topics ranging from the regulation of emerging technologies to the esoteric ideologies of Silicon Valley executives, while striving not to lose the poetic sense of awe inspired by often-obscure fields like astrophysics and quantum computing. I broke the story of CNET using AI to produce articles that turned out to be riddled with factual errors and plagiarism — a dam-breaking inflection point, as I've reported, that's inspired copycats and endless discourse while beguiling stakeholders ranging from tech giants to purveyors of spam around the web. My work at Futurism has been cited by publications including CBS News, the Los Angeles Times, Vice, Gizmodo, Engadget, the Verge, and Vanity Fair. I grew up in locales ranging from India to China, and now live in the exotic suburbs of Virginia. In my free time, I'm an avid reader of weird sci-fi literature, an aficionado of East Asian cinema, and, regrettably, a relapsed gamer. Allegedly, I’m working on a debut novel, currently untitled. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()