World’s First Carbon Removal Plant Powered Directly by Wind Planned

A planned project in Texas could be the world’s first direct air capture development to rely primarily on electricity produced on site by wind power

CLIMATEWIRE | How can projects that scrub carbon dioxide from the atmosphere reduce their sky-high costs?

For a planned development in Texas, one answer is to draw power directly from a wind farm.

The innovative project, announced Monday by three European companies, could be the world's first direct air capture (DAC) development to rely primarily on behind-the-meter electricity. That means the DAC facility would run mainly with low-cost clean power that's generated on site, not metered out from the grid.

The facility is slated to come online in 2028 and is intended to eventually remove up to 500,000 metric tons of carbon from the atmosphere per year — more than the average annual emissions of a natural gas plant, according to EPA data. The planned facility is larger than any other direct air capture plant currently in operation, although several DAC projects under development are similarly sized.

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The new Texas project is being led by Return Carbon, a Dutch project development and investment company, and Skytree, a direct air capture technology firm also based in the Netherlands, with wind power from EDF, the state-owned French utility. Carbon dioxide the facility pulls from the sky would be stored permanently underground by Verified Carbon, a Texas firm.

"It is a new framework, which we have agreed with EDF," said Martijn Verwoerd, co-founder and managing director of Return Carbon, in an interview before publicly revealing the deal. "That's why we're announcing it."

The novel agreement would ensure that Return Carbon, which plans to own and operate the direct air capture facility, has access to a consistent supply of low-cost clean energy from Texas's windy Gulf Coast. Verwoerd declined to say the price per kilowatt-hour Return Carbon has locked in and said the consortium would decide on a precise location later this year.

For EDF, the deal would reduce the likelihood that it has to sell its electricity at a loss or even pay to add it to the grid, Verwoerd explained. Utilities can suffer negative power prices when electricity production exceeds the demand for power.

The agreement also allows EDF to redirect its electricity from Return Carbon onto the grid when there is peak pricing in the market, he said. In that scenario, the direct air capture facility could operate using renewable energy from a separate agreement Return Carbon has struck with other power providers or go offline until electricity prices fall to an acceptable level.

"It's a win-win for all parties," Verwoerd said.

To avoid the worst impacts of climate change, scientists say the world needs to immediately reduce its emissions of carbon dioxide, the main source of which is the burning of oil, gas, and coal. At the same time, countries and companies need to begin deploying carbon dioxide removal technologies such as direct air capture to reduce the amount of carbon that's already been spewed into the atmosphere.

Neither are happening quickly enough, with President Donald Trump promising to double down on oil drilling while slashing federal support for climate-related initiatives.

Direct air capture plants use fans, carbon-absorbing materials, electricity, heat, and piping to pull carbon dioxide from the sky and deposit the planet-warming gas into rock formations thousands of feet below the Earth's surface. Members of Congress and top corporations have supported DAC technologies largely because the amount of CO2 they remove is easily quantifiable.

But the process is expensive, costing around $500 per ton of removed carbon dioxide, according to CDR.fyi, an industry data clearinghouse. That's nearly three times what it costs to remove CO2 by burning biomass for energy and trapping the emissions, a process known as bioenergy with carbon capture and storage.

Return Carbon and Skytree, which was spun out of the European Space Agency in 2014, didn't respond to a follow-up question about their target price for removals from the new Texas project.

Last November, Return Carbon and Skytree announced a similar wind-powered direct air capture megaproject in the Lone Star State with Greenalia, a Spanish renewables company.

European climate and clean energy firms are looking to expand in the oil state of Texas because "there's a lot of wind" and "the geology is very well known," said Verwoerd.