California has identified the deployment of carbon dioxide removal, including direct air capture and biomass carbon removal, as necessary to achieving the state’s climate goals. To support these newer technologies, the federal Department of Energy is awarding four grants of up to $700 million each to establish Regional Direct Air Capture Hubs across the U.S. Without deliberate action California risks missing out on this key opportunity to establish a foundation and attract major private investment in support of its carbon removal goals.

Earlier today, the Department of Energy announced the recipients sharing in $1.2 billion in Direct Air Capture (DAC) Hub funding made available via the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. In this blog post, we highlight the projects in California that were successful in receiving federal funding. We explore the state’s remaining challenge in attracting the remaining full-scale funding grants available.

The 2022 Scoping Plan identified the need for 100 million tons of carbon capture and storage (CCS) to achieve net-zero emissions by 2045. This is a significant share – equal to about 25% of the total solution. However, there are currently no operating CCS projects in the state. Can California reliably deploy this technology and infrastructure in the timeframe required by the Scoping Plan, and if so, how can we get from here to there? In this technical blog post – the first of a two-part series – we analyze the first main barrier: lack of a regulatory framework.

Today, the California Air Resources Board released its proposed 2022 Final Scoping Plan, providing a roadmap for how the state can achieve net-zero emissions by 2045. The Plan identifies a key role for technological carbon dioxide removal, including direct air capture and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage.