Carbon Engineering signs agreement for commercial-scale direct air capture facility

Carbon Engineering / 1PointFive

Oxy Low Carbon Ventures and private equity firm Rusheen Capital Management have formed a development company to finance and deploy Carbon Engineering’s direct air capture (DAC) technology at a commercial scale.

The development company, called 1PointFive, aims to reduce the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere through Carbon Engineering’s technology. The technology has been used to capture 1 t/d of CO₂ at Carbon Engineering’s pilot plant Squamish, Canada, since 2015, and convert the CO₂ to fuel since 2017.

The industrial-scale facility will be located in the Permian Basin, and design and development work has been underway since 2019. The final FEED is due to begin in the first quarter of 2021, with construction expected to begin in 2022. When the facility is operational, it will be capable of capturing up to 1m t/y of CO₂ which will then either be stored, used for enhanced oil production by Occidental, or used as a feedstock.  

Richard Jackson, Oxy Low Carbon Ventures President and Chairman of 1PointFive, said: “The formation of 1PointFive…will advance our plans to build the world’s largest-scale DAC facility to remove substantial volumes of carbon dioxide emissions from the atmosphere. This is an important step toward realising our vision for a new, sustainable low-carbon economy, and we are dedicated to working with Rusheen and Carbon Engineering to ensure this critical technology becomes a global emissions reduction solution.”

Steve Oldham, CEO of Carbon Engineering, said: “The Carbon Engineering business model is to license our technology to developers around the world to enable rapid and widespread global deployment of DAC technology. This partnership marks Carbon Engineering’s first licensing agreement in the US and is a critical next step in the commercialisation of DAC technology. It will prove the technology at large, climate-relevant scale, validate the cost, and demonstrate that DAC is now a feasible, available, and affordable tool that can be added to the global climate toolkit.”