Heirloom Carbon Technologies, a carbon removal startup based in Brisbane, held a ribbon-cutting Thursday at its first commercial direct air capture facility in Tracy. The startup contends it is the first of its kind and scope in the United States.
The ceremony was attended by U.S. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, California Lt. Gov. Eleni Koulanakis and other officials.
Using a process involving limestone to remove carbon from the atmosphere, the facility can capture up to 1,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year. The CO2 will be stored through a partnership with a Canadian company, CarbonCure Technologies, and is powered by renewable energy from Oakland-based Ava Community Energy. Major companies including Microsoft and Stripe have agreed to purchase the CO2 removal credits generated by the facility through Stripe's Frontier program, which has earmarked billions to try to jumpstart the carbon removal industry.
The process involves heating limestone in a kiln, which separates the CO2 from the limestone, leaving behind a mineral powder. The powder is spread on stacked trays and absorbs CO2 from the surrounding air like a sponge. Once the powder is saturated with CO2, it goes back into the kiln where the CO2 is extracted to start the process over again. The captured CO2 gas can then be safely and permanently stored underground or mixed into concrete through its partnership with CarbonCure.
“This first commercial direct air capture facility is the closest thing on Earth that we have to a time machine, because it can turn back the clock on climate change by removing carbon dioxide that has already been emitted into our atmosphere,” said Heirloom CEO and co-founder Shashank Samala in a press release.
Samala said the facility represents rapid progress for the company’s DAC technology and would help meet the company's goal of removing 1 billion tons by 2035.
A report by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimated that to prevent global temperatures from rising beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius, about 6 billion tons of carbon would have to be removed from the atmosphere per year by 2050.
However, some climate scientists are skeptical of technologies like direct air capture and other carbon removal methods, saying the technology is too energy-intensive and cannot scale quickly enough to prevent climate change.
The carbon removal industry is still in its fledgling stages, and Heirloom's new facility represents a major step forward for the sector as it attempts to prove its own viability. An Iceland-based company, Climeworks, is perhaps the farthest along developing DAC capacity and is currently working on a plant to capture 36,000 tons of CO2 per year.
Heirloom, founded in 2020, has raised $53 million in funding. In August, Heirloom among other companies were selected to take part in a project to build a DAC facility in Louisiana that is eligible for up to $600 million in federal funding under the Biden Administration's DAC Hub program.
