A standard drilling rig that Chevron will be drilling its first onshore test well for the 14,000-acre Bayou Bend CCUS project is photographed on Thursday, Feb. 22, 2024 in Winnie area. It is expected to have the capacity to store more than 1 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide in underground geologic structures.
A paper mill in a small Mississippi town could help demonstrate whether capturing carbon dioxide emissions and storing it deep underground is a viable path to fight climate change.
The proposed project at International Paper‘s mill in Vicksburg was chosen by the Department of Energy in February to receive up to $88 million in taxpayer funding. If successful, the system would capture and permanently store 120,000 tons of carbon dioxide annually, the equivalent of 27,000 gas-powered cars, according to the companies behind the project.
Amazon, a partner in the project, sources containerboard from the mill for its boxes and packaging. SLB, the oilfield services giant formerly known as Schlumberger, is designing and engineering the carbon capture system in collaboration with RTI International, a nonprofit that developed the technology.
The Vicksburg paper mill project is just one example of how $12 billion in funding from the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law is supporting the development of carbon capture technology across the United States, as part of the Biden administration’s efforts to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.
Carbon capture and storage technology today is expensive, logistically complex and faces controversy over its role in the energy transition and safety concerns in communities where pipeline infrastructure would be expanded.
The Paris-based International Energy Agency has described carbon capture and storage as “critical” to achieve global net-zero emissions, while also warning the oil and gas industry against using the technology as a way to maintain the status quo on fossil fuels. Some climate activists accuse the industry of simply investing in carbon capture as way to extend the use of oil and gas.
The technology typically uses chemical absorption to capture carbon dioxide emitted from the chimney of an industrial plant. The emissions are condensed into a fluid for transport, normally through a pipeline, and are stored thousands of feet below ground in depleted oil wells or geological formations such as saltwater reservoirs.
The challenges to implementing the technology are immense. The world needs to capture more than 1 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide annually by 2030, more than 20 times the 45 million metric tons captured in 2022, according to the IEA. By 2050, the amount of carbon that’s captured needs to reach 6 billion tons — more than 130 times the 2022 level, according to the agency.
But the track record of carbon capture and storage so far has been one of “underperformance,” with only 5% of announced projects having reached a final investment decision, according to the IEA. The industry needs to demonstrate that the technology can operate economically at scale after struggling to ramp up deployment for years, the agency says.
The Vicksburg papermill project is still in an early development stage. SLB is confident that it will prove technologically viable, said Fred Majkut, senior vice president of carbon solutions at the company. The goal is to demonstrate that carbon capture and storage is also economically viable, Majkut said.
“The economic viability of carbon capture and sequestration is a challenge today because the cost of building most plants in order to capture carbon dioxide are very significant,” the executive said. It can cost hundreds of millions of dollars to retrofit an industrial plant, he said.
For International Paper, the Vicksburg project is a potential way to produce lower carbon products for consumers who are climate conscious and a potential opportunity to benefit financially through the sale of carbon credits.
“There are examples in the marketplace where customers have the opportunity to express their preferences economically, whether that’s clicking a button to say they want to abate the carbon emissions for a trip in an Uber or an airplane,” said Adam Miklos, director of low carbon innovation at International Paper.
“Ultimately, it has the potential to reduce our emissions and, if successful, present an opportunity to sell carbon and renewable credits,” Miklos said.
Decarbonizing heavy industry
The Mississippi mill is a snapshot of how the oil and gas industry is trying to demonstrate that carbon capture and storage is a viable tool in the race to slash emissions, after using similar technology for decades to extract oil.
The industry has used carbon storage techniques since the 1970s in a process called enhanced oil recovery, in which carbon dioxide is injected underground to create pressure that pushes more crude toward production wells.
Chevron, Exxon, Baker Hughes and SLB, among others, are now repurposing that expertise, betting that carbon capture and storage will serve a large market of heavy industries such as cement and steel that have few good options right now to slash their emissions.
Total spending on carbon capture and storage projects is expected to reach $241 billion worldwide by 2030 if all announced projects materialize, according Rystad Energy. The United States and the United Kingdom are the leaders, with investments expected to reach $85 billion and $45 billion, respectively, by the end of the decade, according to Rystad.
In the U.S., investment in carbon management technologies more than doubled to $1.2 billion in 2023, the first full year after the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, according to the Clean Investment Monitor. The law supports the industry with tax credits of up to $85 per ton of emissions captured and stored.
Cement plants, for example, produce emissions not only by burning fossil fuels, but also due to the materials used in the manufacturing process. About two-thirds of the industry’s carbon dioxide emissions come from chemical reactions that occur when breaking down limestone.
Cement is one of the most widely-used products globally, second only to drinking water, and is responsible for about 7% of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions alone, according to the United Nations. Cement and steel together represent about 14% of global emissions, according to the U.N.
“Right now, these types of industries have no way to effectively decarbonize to net zero without carbon capture,” Majkut said. “If they want to produce cement, there will be CO2 emissions simply because of the materials that are being used.”
With carbon storage already a mature commercial business, SLB is trying to tackle the capture side, which presents one of the major hurdles to scaling up the technology due to its high cost, according to Majkut. The solvent that would be used to catch carbon dioxide molecules at the Mississippi mill promises to lower the energy requirements of the capture process and make it more cost effective, he said.
“We’re quite comfortable that in the next 12 to 24 months, we will be coming to market with actually that chemistry as part of our core offering and develop what we call process design packages,” Majkut said.
SLB CEO Olivier Le Peuch has said carbon capture and storage will play a leading role in the company’s annual revenue targets of $3 billion by 2030 and $10 billion by 2040 for its new energy portfolio.
SLB this month announced a nearly $400 million investment in Aker Carbon Capture, a pure-play carbon capture company based in Norway, in an effort to accelerate deployment of the technology at commercial scale.
Competitor Baker Hughes is developing direct air capture technology after acquiring a company called Mosaic Materials in 2022. Baker Hughes has not disclosed the value of the deal.
The technology aims to catch low concentration carbon dioxide emissions, which are harder to capture, directly from the atmosphere as well as from industrial plants. Baker Hughes anticipates the technology will most likely come to market by the end of 2026.
Baker Hughes is targeting up to $7 billion in orders by 2030 for its new energy portfolio, which includes carbon capture and storage technology. The company is forecasting a total market for its new energy business of between $60 billion and $70 billion by the end of the decade.
“By 2030, I do believe we’re going to start to see these technologies start to become reasonably competitive,” said Alessandro Bresciani, senior vice president of climate technologies at Baker Hughes.
Chevron, Exxon building Gulf Coast hubs
The Gulf Coast of the United States, home to enormous oil and gas and other industrial plants, is emerging as a center of carbon capture and storage investments in the U.S.
Jeff Gustavson, vice president of lower carbon energies at Chevron, said the region has the potential to quickly increase use of the technology because of favorable geology for storage located close to high concentration emissions that are easier to capture at a lower cost. Some 100 million tons of carbon dioxide are emitted annually from Houston through to Port Arthur, Texas, Gustavson said.
Chevron and Exxon are targeting $10 billion and more than $20 billion, respectively, of spending on emissions-reducing technologies that include carbon capture and storage in major projects under development along the Gulf Coast.
Exxon over the past two years has entered agreements to capture carbon emissions from ammonia and fertilizer producer CF Industries and steelmaker Nucor, both in Louisiana, and industrial gas producer Linde in Beaumont, Texas. The country’s largest oil company is targeting a start-up date for a carbon capture and storage system at CF Industries in the first half of 2025.
Dan Ammann, president of low carbon solutions at Exxon, said those three contracts combined promise to remove 5 million tons of emissions annually — the equivalent of converting 2 million gas-powered cars to electric vehicles.
Exxon completed its acquisition of the carbon-dioxide pipeline operator Denbury for $5 billion in late 2023. The deal gave Exxon more than 900 miles of pipeline stretching through Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas that are located near at least 10 storage sites in the region.
“It gives us sort of instantaneous scale, instantaneous reach, across this huge source of emissions along the Gulf Coast,” Ammann said of the Denbury acquisition. “It gives us the ability to develop storage all along that pipeline as well.”
Exxon says it now owns the largest carbon dioxide pipeline network in the U.S. As the infrastructure comes together, Exxon is seeing “a very high level of interest from a lot of different emitters along the Gulf Coast,” Ammann said.
Chevron is the operator and lead investor in a flagship project called Bayou Bend, which has a 140,000 acre position of permanent carbon dioxide storage space near Port Arthur and Beaumont, Texas. The project is a joint venture with minority shareholders Talos Energy and Carbonvert.
Negotiations are currently underway with potential customers, Gustavson said, declining to disclose names. The area is home to large petrochemical, refinery, liquid natural gas and industrial gas operations with significant carbon dioxide footprints, he said.
“Bayou Bend could be one of the largest CO2 storage projects in the world. You’re talking several million tons a year of storage,” Gustavson said. The project has the potential for even more storage capacity depending on how much technical progress is made, the executive said.
While the IEA has described carbon capture and storage as “essential” to slash emissions in sectors like heavy industry, agency director Fatih Birol issued a sharply worded statement in November calling on the oil and gas industry to let go of the “illusion that implausibly large amounts of carbon capture are the solution” to climate change.
Birol’s comments came on the back of an IEA report that called on the industry to invest more in clean energy and accept the “uncomfortable truth” that a successful energy transition will result in the scaling back of fossil fuel production. That sparked a backlash from OPEC, which accused the IEA of vilifying the oil and gas industry.
“We’re not saying carbon capture can be implemented everywhere,” SLB’s Majkut said. “As a matter of fact, the primary way to decarbonize should be energy efficiency, scale up of renewables, and effectively carbon capture shall be used on applications that you can’t easily electrify, that you can’t easily decarbonize otherwise.”
Pipeline opposition
Increasing carbon capture and storage to meet net-zero emissions goals in the U.S. will require a massive expansion of pipeline infrastructure. The Department of Energy estimates that the network of carbon dioxide pipelines needs to grow from about 5,200 miles currently to between 30,000 and 90,000 miles.
“The key is the right geology close by to concentrated emissions,” Gustavson said. “That’s where we see this scaling fastest first, but over time, we will need to build more CO2 infrastructure to be able to transport CO2 much longer distances to access the same storage.”
But the permitting process is challenging because pipelines often cross state lines, requiring lengthy approval from multiple jurisdictions and creating bottlenecks, Majkut said.
Pipeline expansion has faced opposition in communities where residents are worried about the safety of transporting carbon dioxide. In 2020, a pipeline owned by Denbury ruptured just outside the village of Satartia, Mississippi, leading to the release of more than 31,000 barrels of carbon dioxide. More than 40 people were hospitalized and 200 individuals were evacuated from the area. Denbury was fined nearly $2.9 million by the U.S. Transportation Department.
Denbury said in a 2022 report that it had upgraded equipment and procedures in the wake of the pipeline leak to “substantially reduce the risk of similar events in the future, as well as mitigate and diminish the consequences in the event they do occur.”
The Energy Department says carbon dioxide pipelines have a better safety record than natural gas pipelines and other large infrastructure such as electric transmission. There have been no deaths from carbon dioxide pipelines over the past two decades and one injury in addition to the hospitalizations from the Satartia incident, according to the Transportation Department.
There are still a lot of uncertainties surrounding carbon capture and storage, said Miklos, the executive at International Paper. But the Vicksburg project is an opportunity to carefully examine the technical and economic viability and the impact on climate over a multiyear period, he said.
“The primary questions are around the ability to do this in a way that is cost effective,” he said.
Hyundai has unveiled the design refresh of its Ioniq 6 sedan, and announced that it will become a family of cars rather than a single model, with an N Line trim and upcoming N performance model, much like its sister car the Ioniq 5.
Hyundai has been doing great with its EVs lately, hitting sales records and getting great reviews.
Much of that focus has been on the Ioniq 5, an attractive crossover SUV with lots of capability at a good price – and a bonkers N performance version which has been breaking different kinds of records.
The Ioniq 6, conversely, hasn’t attracted quite as much attention, even though it has some records of its own (it’s the most efficient vehicle in the US… for under $70k).
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Between its admittedly odd looks – much more aerodynamic and rounded than the comparatively blocky 5 – and it fitting into the less-popular (but better) sedan form factor, it just hasn’t captured as much imagination as the 5.
But that’s about to change, as Hyundai is giving the model some love with a design update and some hints at new things to come.
We’ve seenspyshots of these design updates before, but now Hyundai is showing them to everyone at the Seoul Mobility Show.
Hyundai showed two models today, the standard Ioniq 6 and the “N Line,” an upgraded trim level with some interior and exterior changes to look a little more sporty. Hyundai has used similar nomenclature for its other models, and that carries over here.
Both have a redesigned front end, making it look more aggressive than the prior bulbous and aerodynamic shape, and narrower headlights.
The N Line looks even more aggressive than the standard model, though, with an even more aggressive front and rear end.
Hyundai says that the redesign will also include interior enhancements for “a more comfortable, intuitive experience,” with a redesigned steering wheel, larger climate control display, upgraded materials and redesigned center console with more physical controls.
Beyond this, the refresh was light on details – intentionally, with a full unveil of specs and changes coming later. We can imagine a lot of the improvements on the 2025 Ioniq 5 will be carried over, such as a native NACS port for example, and potentially a slightly larger or faster-charging battery.
We had also previously heard hints that an N version (yes, “N” and “N Line” are different, no, we don’t know why they used these confusing names) of the Ioniq 6 is coming, and Hyundai reiterated those hints today – even giving us a glimpse of the car in the background of one of its shots.
Now THIS one looks quite aggressive, with a bigger double wing and potentially some changes to the diffuser (it’s hard to tell from the shot, as the N Line also has a modified diffuser).
The ioniq 5N has earned rave reviews from enthusiasts for its bonkers driving dynamics and comparatively reasonable price for a true performance vehicle. But it’s still an SUV format, and frankly, an SUV will never be a sportscar no matter how many horsepower you put into it (I will die on this hill).
The 6, however, with its sedan shape and footprint, could make for a much more compelling sports package once it’s all put together. So we’re very excited to see what Hyundai can do if they apply the same magic they put into the 5 into a new 6N. Looking forward to July.
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Over the next two years, homebuilder Lennar is outfitting more than 1,500 new Colorado homes with Dandelion Energy’s geothermal systems in one of the largest residential geothermal rollouts in the US.
The big draw for homeowners is lower energy bills and cleaner heating and cooling. Dandelion claims Lennar homeowners with geothermal systems will collectively save around $30 million over the next 20 years compared to using air-source heat pumps. Geothermal heat pumps don’t need outdoor AC units or conventional heating systems, either.
Geothermal systems use the sustained temperature of the ground to heat or cool a home. A ground loop system absorbs heat energy (BTUs) from the earth so that it can be transferred to a heat pump and efficiently converted into warmth for a home. Dandelion says its ground loop systems are built to last for over 50 years and should require no maintenance.
Dandelion’s geothermal system uses a vertical ground closed-loop system that is installed using well-boring equipment and trenched back into the house to connect to a heat pump. The pipes circulate a mixture of water and propylene glycol, a food-grade antifreeze, that absorbs the ground’s temperature. A ground source heat pump circulates the liquid through the ground loops and it exchanges its heat energy in the heat pump with liquid refrigerant. The refrigerant is converted to vapor, compressed to increase its temperature, then passed through a heat exchanger to transfer heat to the air, which is circulated through a home’s HVAC ductwork.
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Daniel Yates, Dandelion Energy’s CEO, called the partnership with Lennar a “new benchmark for affordable, energy-efficient, and high-quality home heating and cooling.” By streamlining its installation process, Dandelion is making geothermal systems simpler and cheaper for homebuilders and homeowners to adopt.
This collaboration is happening at a time when Colorado is pushing hard to meet its clean energy targets. Governor Jared Polis is excited about the move, calling it a win for Coloradans’ wallets, air quality, and the state’s leadership on geothermal energy. Will Toor, executive director of the Colorado Energy Office, said that “ensuring affordable access to geothermal heating and cooling is essential to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, and we’re excited to be part of such a huge effort to bring this technology to so many new Colorado homes.”
And it’s not just about cutting emissions – geothermal heat pumps help reduce peak electric demand. Analysis from the Department of Energy found that widespread adoption of these systems could save the US from needing 24,500 miles of new transmission lines. That’s like crossing the continental US eight times.
Colorado is making this transition a lot more attractive through state tax credits and Xcel Energy’s rebate programs. These incentives slash upfront costs for builders like Lennar, making geothermal installations more financially viable. The utility’s Clean Heat Plan and electrification strategy are working to keep energy bills low while meeting climate goals.
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Polestar has removed the Polestar 2 from its US website header in an early sign of how new tariffs will restrict choice and competition for American consumers, thus increasing prices.
The Polestar 2 is Polestar’s first full EV – the original Polestar 1 was a limited-edition plug-in hybrid.
It started production in 2020 in Luqiao, Zhejiang, China, where Polestar and Volvo’s parent corporation, Geely, was founded.
Unfortunately, that interacts with some news that has been getting a lot of play lately: tariffs.
The US has been gradually getting stupider and stupider on the issue of tariffs, apparently determined to increase prices for Americans and decrease the competitiveness of American manufacturing in a time of change for the auto industry.
It is widely acknowledged (by anyone who has given it a few seconds of thought) that tariffs increase prices and that trade barriers tend to reduce competition, leading to less innovation.
It started with 25% tariffs on various products from China, implemented in the 2018-2020 timeframe. Then, in 2024, President Biden implemented a 100% tariff on Chinese EVs, effectively stopping their sale in the US. These tariffs included some exceptions and credits based on Volvo’s other US manufacturing, which Polestar had used to keep the most expensive versions of the 2 on sale in the US, while restricting the lower-priced versions from sale. Nevertheless, they were a bad idea.
Now, in yet another step to make America less competitive and inflate the prices of goods more for Americans, we got more tariff announcements today from a senile ex-reality TV host who wandered into the White House rose garden (which he does not belong in). These tariffs do not include the same exceptions as the previously-announced Biden tariffs.
Apparently this has all been enough for Polestar, as even in advance of today’s tariff announcements, the company suddenly removed its Polestar 2 from its website header today.
The change can be seen at polestar.com/us, where only the Polestar 3 and 4 are listed in the header area. On other sites, like the company’s Norwegian website or British website, the car is still there. The Polestar 2 page is still up on the US website, but it isn’t linked to elsewhere on the site (we’ll see how long it stays up).
We reached out to Polestar for comment, but didn’t hear anything back before publication. We’ll update if we do.
It makes sense that the Polestar 2 would still be for sale elsewhere, as it only started production in 2020. Most car models are available for at least 7 years, so this is an earlier exit than expected.
So it’s likely that all of the tariff news is what had an effect in killing the Polestar 2.
Then again, this is also just the second day of a new fiscal quarter. Perhaps the timing offers Polestar an opportunity to make a clean break – especially now that the lower-priced version of its Polestar 3 is available.
Despite the lower $67.5k base price of the new Polestar 3 variant, that represents a big increase in price for the brand, which had sold the base model Polestar 2 for around $50k originally, before all of these tariffs.
Update: Polestar got back to us with comment, but understandably, it doesn’t say much:
Polestar is a three-car company and Polestar 2 is available for customers now. There are a select number of Polestar 2s in stock at retailers that can be found on Polestar.com, but Polestar 3 and Polestar 4 will be the priority in the North American market.
Volvo decided to build the car in Belgium and export it to the US, but now that new tariffs apply to the EU as well, maybe that low-priced, awesome, fast, small EV will instead stay in Europe instead of being shipped overseas.
This shows how mercurial tariff fiats from an ignoramus are bad for manufacturing, as they mean that companies can’t make plans – and if they can’t make plans, eventually, they’ll probably just write the country making the random decisions out of their plans so they don’t have to deal with the nonsense.
And we’ve heard this from every businessperson or manufacturer representative we’ve talked to at any level of the automotive industry. Nobody thinks any of this is a good idea, because it objectively is not. All it does is make business harder, make the US less trustworthy, make things more expensive, and overall just harm America.
Yet another way that Americans are getting screwed by this stupid nonsense. 49% of you voted for inflation, and 100% of Americans are now getting it. Happy Inflation Day, everyone.
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