Heirloom to build two direct air capture plants in Louisiana

By Corbin Hiar | 06/25/2024 06:20 AM EDT

One of the facilities is slated to begin sucking carbon out of the air in 2026.

a direct air capture facility behind a fence

Heirloom's direct air capture facility in California. Corbin Hiar/POLITICO’s E&E News

A startup that uses limestone and robots to remove carbon from the atmosphere plans to build two new taxpayer-subsidized facilities in northwest Louisiana.

Heirloom’s direct air capture plants would be built along Shreveport’s Red River and could eventually scrub nearly 320,000 tons of planet-warming carbon dioxide from the sky per year. A plant with 17,000 tons of annual CO2 removal capacity is slated to come online in 2026, with a second plant removing an additional 100,000 tons each year starting in 2027.

“Heirloom’s expansion into the Port of Caddo-Bossier means even more growth and more jobs for our State and is another example of how we are leading the race to drive the nation’s energy future,” Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican, said in a press release on Monday. The projects are expected to create at least 1,000 construction jobs and over 80 permanent positions in the conservative, oil-dependent state, according to Heirloom.

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To avoid the worst impacts of climate change, scientists say the world needs to immediately begin slashing carbon emissions — the main sources of which are oil, gas and coal — while also developing industrial-scale carbon removal projects. Landry, who took office in January, is a staunch oil industry ally who has previously called climate change a “hoax.”

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