The Department of Energy began accepting applications Thursday for $1.8 billion in climate spending that could be halted, trimmed or trashed by President-elect Donald Trump, a skeptic of mainstream climate science.
The competitive funding would come from DOE’s $3.5 billion regional direct air capture hub program. Created by the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law, the commercial initiative aims to help develop at least four massive installations capable of sucking 1 million metric tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the atmosphere annually.
DOE has already committed — but not fully distributed — $1.4 billion in matching funds in a previous competition that selected two DAC hubs now under development on the Gulf Coast.
The Trump transition team didn’t directly respond to questions about its plans for the DAC hub program.
