Carbon-capture projects launched in Los Angeles County

As Rising Fossil Fuel Emissions As global temperatures continue to rise, several projects have been launched in Los Angeles County to remove carbon dioxide from the air — an effort that project developers say is destined to make Southern California a global leader in climate adaptation.

State and local officials gathered recently under the sweltering Palmdale sun to lay the groundwork for just such a project, a first-of-its-kind wastewater treatment facility that also removes CO2 from the atmosphere.

Project Monarch, A public-private partnership between the Palmdale Water District and a climate technology company capture6, This will not only provide residents with a new water supply, but will also help California achieve its goal of 100% renewable energy Carbon neutrality by 2045according to Nancy Vogel, deputy secretary for water at the California Natural Resources Agency.

Nancy Vogel, deputy secretary for water at the California Natural Resources Agency, announced Project Monarch in Palmdale.

(Myang J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

“The cornerstone of California’s climate change leadership is to electrify our economy and decarbonize our grid, and we’ve set ambitious goals for that,” Vogel told the crowd on Thursday. However, “we can’t get there by just reducing our emissions. We have to start reducing existing emissions first.”

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Upon completion of Project Monarch and its wastewater component, pure water deer valleyIt will purify 4.5 million gallons of water every day and capture 25,000 tons of atmospheric CO2 every year. (A typical gasoline-powered automobile emits 4.6 tons of carbon per year, According to the EPA,

Carbon dioxide released from the extraction and combustion of fossil fuels is one of the main drivers of climate change. Yet global CO2 emissions continue to reach new highs, May readings from the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii show. Biggest jump in peak CO2 levels in two years on record. The current CO2 level in the atmosphere is 427 parts per million and counting,

Project managers say Project Monarch will demonstrate proven technologies for converting wastewater into potable water, and capture carbon dioxide directly from the air using first-of-its-kind technology from Capture6.

(Myang J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

Efforts to reduce these emissions, as well as remove CO2 from the atmosphere, have been promoted by the California Air Resources Board and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — both of which have promoted the use of so-called direct air capture technologies.

“Clean water will make us more drought-resistant, give us local control over our water, and improve the quality and quantity of our groundwater,” said Denis Lamoreaux, general manager of the Palmdale Water District. “Having the ability to capture carbon in Project Monarch is a win-win for everyone.”

Capture6 received an $8 million grant from the California Energy Commission. Meanwhile, the Biden administration has announced more than $100 million. Investment of $ 3.5 billion in direct air capture projects across the country.

But the Palmdale project isn’t the only new carbon-capture development in L.A. County. On Friday, officials said CarbonCapture IncThe gathering in Long Beach presented the first commercial-scale US direct air capture system designed for mass production.

The unit, which resembles a shipping container, can remove more than 500 tons of atmospheric CO2 per year.

CarbonCapture Inc.’s LEO Series direct air capture module will be mass-produced and can capture more than 500 tons of atmospheric carbon dioxide per year.

(CarbonCapture Inc.)

“What CarbonCapture Inc. is doing with its modular approach to direct air capture, and its efforts to scale up production and drive down the cost of the technology, underscores the indispensable role the private sector plays in developing and implementing carbon management at the scale needed to achieve a clean energy and industrial future,” Brad Crabtree, the U.S. Department of Energy’s assistant secretary for fossil energy and carbon management, said in a statement.

The LA-based company also announced that it Mass producing our 4,000 DAC modules Will be held annually in a new facility in Mesa, Arizona.

It joins similar efforts by L.A.-based Capturewhich is working to remove CO2 from the upper ocean; LA-based Avanosthat produces water while capturing carbon; and L.A.-based EquatorialWhich is working to remove atmospheric CO2 using the ocean.

“The rest of the world knows that if Los Angeles, and California more broadly, is able to do it, other places will be able to do it, too,” said Edward Sanders, Aquatic’s chief operating officer.

EQUATIC was born UCLA’s Carbon Management InstituteWhere researchers found a way to combine CO2 removal with hydrogen production, “both legacy and future emissions were addressed in a single process,” the company says.

The company’s San Pedro facility pumps seawater through a series of electric plates that separate the water into hydrogen and oxygen, as well as acidic and alkaline streams of liquid. Operators say the alkaline, or base, stream comes into contact with the atmosphere, where it mineralizes CO2 into carbonates that are then dissolved and released back into the ocean for permanent storage. According to Sanders, the process complies with all current coastal regulations.

Aquatica’s facility in San Pedro works to remove CO2 from the atmosphere using the ocean.

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Additionally, he said the hydrogen produced from this process is carbon-negative, making it a source of renewable energy that can be used to fuel the CO2 removal process or sold to other users.

Earlier this month, Equitech announced it would partner with a Canadian developer to build out the North American First commercial-scale ocean-based CO2 removal plant Following the success of its effort in Los Angeles, the facility is set to open in Quebec, as well as in Singapore. Sanders said the San Pedro facility can capture about 40 tonnes of CO2 per year, while the Quebec facility will capture about 100,000 tonnes per year.

“As important as it is to do this globally, we believe there’s a lot happening in Los Angeles, and to be able to bring people there and see that — to see one of these plants, to literally hold in their hands the carbon that we’ve taken out of the atmosphere — that’s really important,” he said.

Although various projects represent the carbon-capture boom in Southern California, they each use different strategies.

Project Monarch’s carbon-capture process begins at Palmdale’s new wastewater treatment facility, which will purify recycled water from L.A. County for potable reuse. The purification process removes bacteria, viruses and other harmful microbes from the water, but it also comes with a byproduct: a salty solution known as brine. The district had planned to store the brine in open-air ponds, where it would stagnate until it evaporated.

Capture6 CEO and co-founder Ethan Cohen-Cole at the Pure Water Antelope Valley and Project Monarch groundbreaking ceremony in Palmdale on Thursday.

(Myang J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

Instead, Capture6’s technology will put the salty water through a series of steps that turn it first into sodium hydroxide, which naturally removes CO2 from the atmosphere, and finally into sodium carbonate, a mineral form of captured carbon. The resulting rocks dissolve into water that can be reused directly in the water treatment process, or injected into aquifers or other non-potable subsurface formations for permanent storage.

“This facility has the potential to demonstrate — to the state and the country, and possibly globally — that we can build a carbon-negative water treatment facility,” said Ethan Cohen-Cole, Capture6’s chief executive officer.

Cohen-Cole said the project would run on grid energy, which is becoming increasingly renewable in California. He said L.A.’s activism and innovation on water and energy issues made it a natural fit for the project, which would be the first of four such efforts worldwide.

“California looks like many other water-stressed places in the world that are motivated to decarbonize,” he said. “The two of those together make it a great place to be.”

However, the carbon-capture process also has some drawbacks. It can be expensive and energy-intensive, and there is still much active research going on about the best methods and ways to store carbon.

Several companies sell carbon-removal credits to other companies, such as Meta, Chase, McKinsey and Boeing. While Capture6, Aquatic and CarbonCapture Inc. claim high-integrity credits, carbon credit marketplaces in general are also criticized for allowing polluters to continue emitting while “greenwashing” their reputations.

Hard hat in front of a rendering of Pure Water Antelope Valley and Project Monarch, which when completed will produce 4.5 million gallons of pure water each day and absorb 25,000 tons of CO2 from the atmosphere each year.

(Myang J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

Similarly, experts say the rapidly growing capacity to remove CO2 from the atmosphere must become more effective. not equivalent to allowing emissions to continueThe Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that controlling climate change will require the removal of 6 to 12 billion tons of CO2 each year. limiting the global temperature rise to 1.5°C By mid-century.

“Even if we reduced emissions to zero tomorrow, which isn’t happening, we still have to remove billions of tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere,” said Aquatica’s Sanders. “But we don’t want to do it so that in five or 10 years we’re behind, and we don’t have the technology to either remove the things that can’t be reduced, or to clean up the pollution that’s been in the atmosphere for the last 120 years.”

Cohen-Cole expressed similar sentiments as he and other officials gathered with hard hats and shovels to lay the groundwork for Pure Water and Project Monarch, which should be operational in 2025.

“This will only work if we prioritize emissions reductions,” Cohen-Cole said. “I would never argue that we should use carbon removal in the absence of reductions — and we are driven by the fact that both California and the IPCC say we need to do this now. We have no choice.”