The US Department of Energy (DoE) has just announced it will be spending $24 million of government funding on a total of 9 carbon capture research projects throughout the USA. The projects are set to explore and develop new methods of capturing CO2 from the air and permanently storing it away.
This new yet rapidly expanding field known as Direct Air Capture (DAC) is one of the key tools the world is currently relying on to achieve the goal of net-zero emissions by 2050, which was also acknowledged by the Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm in her statement earlier.
The aim of this carbon capture investment, according to her, is also to position the United States in a leading role in this field by creating well-paid jobs and taking effective steps towards securing a carbon-free future.
The Need For Carbon Capture
As many studies and researchers of climate change agree, simply cutting down on the amount of CO2 emitted into the atmosphere is not enough to tackle the climate crisis. Instead, additional measures such as capturing carbon dioxide directly from the air are what is necessary to facilitate real changes for the better.
For this, however, large investing in carbon capture technology are required to help expand the field of DAC and help create viable, scalable, and cost-effective solutions that can be deployed in time to address the climate crisis as soon as possible.
The hopes of the new research projects are to find ways to overcome the limitations present in existing technologies and optimize their processes.
Among the projects that will be awarded funding by the US DOE are seven universities and two national laboratories. The largest portion of $9 million will go to the University of Illinois, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and Case Western Reserve University.
And other projects include Washington State University and Oklahoma State University that will be exploring ways to manufacture useful products from captured CO2.
