The technological industry has defended the development of new technologies that filter carbon dioxide out of the air to try to undo damage caused by heating emissions from the planet. In recent years, they have made a multitude of splashing announcements to finance this type of project, called Direct Air Capture (DAC).
This concluded with the attempted Joe Biden administration to combat climate change by cutting federal dollars into regional centers for the DAC. Now there is a new president in the city, the one who calls climate change a hoax and wants to “unravel, baby, forest”. Donald Trump’s latest attempts to kill clean and climate energy initiatives include federal funding last week for at least 10 DAC hubs.
It presents itself at a inflection point for American technological companies, because their obsession for AI creates more carbon pollution. And this raises questions about how they can still count on carbon elimination projects in the United States to achieve their sustainability objectives while the Trump administration tries to make the country as inhospitable as possible.
The big names, including Microsoft and Amazon, have already made significant commitments to carbon elimination projects in the United States. “I imagine that they will spend this money, that they are at least already determined on this subject,” explains Erin Burns, executive director of non -profit carbon180, who advocates the elimination of carbon, explains The penis. “The question is to spend it on projects built here in the United States? Or will they spend it elsewhere? ”
Big names, including Amazon and Microsoft, have already made important commitments to carbon elimination projects
The US Energy Ministry announced last week that it would end around $ 7.5 billion in financial awards for 223 clean and climatic energy projects. A calculation sheet listing the names of the beneficiaries who have lost funding, which the agency shared with the legislators and was obtained by The penis And other media confirm that prices of at least 10 DAC centers have been completed.
This includes a subsidy that the Californian startup Carboncapture received to conduct an engineering study for a new DAC factory in Louisiana. Microsoft signed an agreement with carboncapture in 2023 to reduce carbon pollution in the context of the technology giant’s objective to eventually become a carbon negative.
Carboncapture announced in Bloomberg Last week, she would move her first Arizona Commercial Pilot Project in Alberta, Canada. This decision was for months in preparation, says the CEO of Carboncapture, Adrian Corless The penisAfter starting to see the writing on the wall for the DAC in the post-electoral United States. Trump’s Trump’s budget proposal published in May called for the end of funding to eliminate carbon dioxide out of the air, calling it “new green scam”.
When The penis Speaking with Corless on Friday evening, the company had not yet received confirmation from the DOE that its subsidy had been cut beyond the calculation sheet released to certain legislators and lobbyists. But following the news, he said: “We are no longer on the right track to make a project in Louisiana” if there is a lack of funding. Carboncapture was also a partner in similar DAC projects proposed in California and Illinois who had their subsidies terminated, as well as another project in Arizona which was not on the list to lose funding,
Regarding the financing reductions as a whole for the elimination of carbon, he adds: “He will clearly remove the United States in terms of the leadership position he has won over the past four years in this particular space.”
Microsoft was also to become one of the first customers of a DAC HUB funded by the federal government in Louisiana under development by two other companies. In 2022, the Biden administration launched a 3.5 billion dollars program to build regional direct air capture centers across the United States. In particular, certain centers which are more in development – and are also projecting supported by oil and gas companies, in particular Chevron and Western Petroleum (Oxy) – were not on the list of subsidies that the DOE decided to end last week.
Captured carbon can be used in a process called improved oil recovery to push more difficult to reach grounds. Earlier this year, Western declared during a profit call that he expected that his carbon elimination activity helps him to extract tens of billions of oil barrels and that he had “several conversations” with the president on “profitability analysis” for the elimination of carbon.
The Western subsidiary 1POINTFIVE develops a massive project at the King Ranch that the BIDEN administration DOE also chose to finance as one of the first DAC HUBS. Amazon announced an agreement to buy 250,000 metric tonnes of carbon elimination of 1POINTFIVE in 2023.
Small DAC companies, which could count on federal funding more than a large fossil fuels company with more capital to embark on projects, are now facing winds-contrary to the United States. “Unless you have capital capacity, like an oxy, it will be really difficult for … you know, go to a scene to deploy.”
The Trump administration’s targeted attacks add to other challenges than the emerging carbon elimination industry is still faced, as if the DAC can be affordable and durable on a large scale given the amount of energy that technology needs. Carboncapture canceled another of his projects in Wyoming last year, citing problems that quickly guarantee enough electricity for installation.
Meanwhile, technological companies such as Microsoft, Amazon and Google that turned to DAC to try to reduce their carbon emissions have in fact seen their carbon footprints increase in recent years despite their declared climatic goals. While they are building data centers wrapped with more powerful and more greedy equipment to support new AI tools, the enigma in which they are deepened. Some environmental defenders have always been skeptical of the DAC, fearing that companies will bet as a rapid solution instead of focusing on reducing their emissions in the first place.
Other climate defenders argue that humans have already created too much carbon pollution to ignore, and that carbon elimination is a necessary tool to stop climate change. And as the Trump administration decreases environmental protection after the other – the DOE even told its employees to avoid using the term “climate change” – it seems that there will be even more carbon to clean.
The DEE funding discounts last week were largely considered to be another partisan attack against the States led by Democrats who are home to most of the projects while the Congress budget and the resulting government closure are continuing. The chamber budget proposal for financial year 26 sought to cancel $ 1 billion for the DAC Hubs program.
But the DOE cuts also affect projects through the red states Thermal mass underlines in its reports. The cancelled carboncapture subsidy is listed as a Californian project on the spreadsheet, even if it was supposed to be located in Louisiana. And it was not only the targeted DAC. The canceled subsidies perform the entire range, hubs for hydrogen fuel to the turbine and the manufacture of batteries.
It is a blow for American innovation in all these industries, says Burns. “It abandons a huge advantage in the United States that we have, right? … We overthrow the ball, I suppose, not drop it.”
