Researchers Look to Apply Direct Air Capture Technology in California’s San Joaquin Valley

A research team is launching a project to explore the possibility of a direct air capture facility to purge carbon dioxide from the air in California’s Southern San Joaquin Valley. The group is composed of researchers from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Center for Law, Energy and the Environment at the University of California Berkeley School of Law.

The team will study the feasibility of a DAC hub at three possible locations in the SSJV area, taking into consideration technical, environmental, social and governance factors, Berkeley Lab said.

The project is part of the Department of Energy’s multibillion-dollar program to develop commercial DAC hubs potentially capable of capturing a minimum of 1 million metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually. The collected CO2 will be permanently stored in underground geologic rock or converted into bioproducts.

The first DAC hub in California, to be set up in Kern County, was announced on Aug. 16 by GreenFire Energy Inc., which said the DOE has awarded $11.8 million in funding to the facility. The financing from the department’s Regional DAC Hubs Initiative is linked to the proposed establishment of California’s first full-scale DAC and storage network of regional hubs.