US: Controversy erupts as government hands USD 500 million to oil company´s carbon removal project
"US sparks controversy by backing oil comapny´s carbon sucking plans", 15 August 2023
"The US government has been criticised for plans to hand out up to $500 million to help an oil company suck carbon out of the air in Texas.
The Department of Energy announced it would invest in two direct air capture facilities, which will suck the planet-warming gas out of the atmosphere and store it underground.
One of those facilities will be built by Occidental Petroleum, whose CEO Vicki Hollub said earlier this year that direct air capture will help “preserve our industry” and get more oil out of the ground....
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scientists say the world needs to develop some direct air capture to compensate for the emissions of the hardest to clean up sectors.
But IPCC author Glen Peters told Climate Home that Occidental “do not really understand the role of carbon dioxide removal” and Hollub’s views are “not consistent with the science”.
Peters said that “in principle” the US government should not have given Occidental this money, although he questioned how such an exclusion could be justified...
In November 2021, Congress members from the Democrats and Republicans agreed to a Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which included $1.2 billion for direct air capture hubs.
On Friday, they announced that up to $500 million each of this investment would go to Occidental’s hub in Texas and to another center run by air direct capture company Climeworks in Louisiana....
But Hollub sees a much bigger role for carbon dioxide removal than scientists and independent energy experts do.
Last March, she told an oil conference that direct air capture “is going to be technology that helps to preserve our industry” and gives it “a license to continue to operate for the 60, 70, 80 years that I think it’s going to be very much needed”.
But Peters said that Hollub’s statement “is not consistent with the science”. He said that “scenarios show that even with mind-boggling amounts of carbon dioxide removal, coal, oil and gas drop rapidly”...
Occidental has previously been accused of inflating the role of carbon dioxide removal when it told investors that it could capture 10 gigatonnes by 2030.
IPCC author Zeke Hausfather thinks “carbon dioxide removal is an important part of getting to net zero”.
But he tweeted last year that Occidental’s projections are “deeply problematic and oversell the role of CDR” as “there is no world” in which they come true.
“CDR is not a replacement for deep emissions reductions, and anyone who says differently is selling something”, he said...."