§16298d Carbon removal

Summary

The Secretary must set up a research, development, and demonstration program, working with other federal agencies including the Secretary of Agriculture, to test and improve ways to remove carbon dioxide from the air at large scale. The program must include the Office of Fossil Energy, the Office of Science, and the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. It may work on things like direct air capture and storage, bioenergy with carbon capture, enhanced geological weathering, farming practices, forest management and planting, and planned or man-made carbon sinks. When picking technologies and strategies, the Secretary must consider land use, ocean acidification, overall greenhouse gas effects, whether a method can be sold or scaled up, near-term impact, potential to cut carbon at the gigaton level, and economic co-benefits. Within 2 years after December 27, 2020, the Secretary must create a competitive prize program for carbon capture from dilute sources and for commercial direct air capture. The Secretary must set rules, monitoring, and verification. For commercial direct air capture, prizes are paid per verified metric ton captured, equal for each winner, and must not exceed $180 per ton for storage in saline formations (lower amounts apply for enhanced oil recovery or other uses). The Secretary must also award grants within 2 years after December 27, 2020, to run test centers for direct air capture and storage, support pilot and demonstration projects (including pilots of 10–100 tonnes per year and demos over 1,000 tonnes per year), and fund development of 4 regional direct air capture hubs that each can handle at least 1,000,000 metric tons per year. The Secretary must solicit applications not later than 180 days after November 15, 2021, select projects within 3 years after that application deadline, and use criteria that favor regional diversity, places with carbon-intensive industries or recent closures, high sequestration potential, economic benefit to distressed communities, larger initial capacity, expansion potential, lower cost per ton, and job creation. The hubs program is authorized $3,500,000,000 for fiscal years 2022 through 2026, to remain available until spent. Defined terms (one line each): "dilute media" — air or other media with CO2 under 1% by volume; "prize competition" — the competitive prize described above; "qualified carbon dioxide" — CO2 captured directly from ambient air and measured at capture and at disposal/injection/use (with certain inclusions and exclusions); "qualified direct air capture facility" — a facility that captures CO2 directly from air and captures more than 50,000 metric tons per year (with some exclusions); "eligible project" — a direct air capture project or part of a regional hub; "regional direct air capture hub" — a regional network of capture projects, users, transport, and sequestration infrastructure. Annual authorized funding: $175,000,000 for FY2021 (including $15,000,000 for precommercial prizes and $100,000,000 for commercial direct air capture prizes, both to remain available until expended), $63,500,000 for FY2022, $66,150,000 for FY2023, $69,458,000 for FY2024, and $72,930,000 for FY2025.