Occidental Petroleum’s carbon capture unit, 1PointFive, announced that the US Department of Energy’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations has pledged up to $500 million to support the development of its South Texas Direct Air Capture (DAC) Hub. Previously, the company secured funding from BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, for its DAC facility, Stratos, currently under construction in Odessa, Texas.
Occidental’s first large-scale DAC facility marks a significant economic test for a technology that the International Energy Agency believes will be crucial for global industrial decarbonisation, despite its high initial costs. According to Occidental, the total funding from the DOE could increase to $650 million for expanding the regional carbon network in South Texas.
The hub’s initial capacity to remove 500,000 metric tons of CO2 annually could be expanded to over one million metric tons per year. Earlier this year, 1PointFive also announced plans to sell carbon credits to companies like AT&T and Microsoft.