How can projects that scrub carbon dioxide from the atmosphere reduce their sky-high costs?
For a planned development in Texas, one answer is to draw power directly from a wind farm.
The innovative project, announced Monday by three European companies, could be the world’s first direct air capture development to rely primarily on so-called behind the meter electricity. That means the DAC facility would run mainly with low-cost clean power that’s generated on site, not metered out from the grid.
The facility is slated to come online in 2028 and is intended to eventually remove up to 500,000 metric tons of carbon from the atmosphere per year — more than the average annual emissions of a natural gas plant, according to EPA data. The planned facility is larger than any other direct air capture plant currently in operation, although several DAC projects under development are similarly sized.
