"The Biden administration has championed carbon removal projects as better neighbors than the pollution-spewing industries of the past.
But the Department of Energy’s first two candidates for its $3.5 billion direct air capture program have conducted an opaque early outreach process in the disadvantaged Louisiana and Texas communities where the projects would be built. Some residents and advocates say they feel shut out of a process that was intended to protect them.
Battelle Memorial Institute and Occidental Petroleum Corp. are the project owners for the two selected DAC hubs in Calcasieu Parish, La., and Kleberg County, Texas. DOE announced last month that it was opening negotiations that could result in the two companies each receiving upward of $500 million in federal dollars. That’s a massive shot in the arm for a new industry that aims to suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and store it permanently — in this case in underground injection sites."
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