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DOE doles out $36M to Oxy for carbon capture hubs

Occidental subsidiary 1PointFive received federal funding — and more trending Houston energy transition news. Photo via 1pointfive.com

Two carbon dioxide sequestration hubs being built by a subsidiary of Houston-based Occidental Petroleum have received a total of $36 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Energy.

The two 1PointFive projects that gained federal funding are the Bluebonnet Sequestration Hub, located in the Houston area’s Chambers County, and the Magnolia Sequestration Hub, located in Allen Parish, Louisiana.

The more than 55,000-acre Bluebonnet site will potentially store about 1.2 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide. The 26,000-acre Magnolia hub will offer about 300 million metric tons of CO2 storage capacity.

“We are using our over 50 years of carbon management expertise and experience developing projects at scale to deliver a proven solution that helps advance industrial decarbonization,” Jeff Alvarez, president of 1PointFive Sequestration, says in a news release.

The 1PointFive hubs are aimed at helping hard-to-decarbonize industries achieve climate goals.

The carbon sequestration process captures carbon dioxide in the air and then stores it. The 1PointFive hubs will inject captured CO2 into underground geological formations.

Fortune Business Insights predicts the value of the global market for carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) will climb from $3.54 billion in 2024 to $14.51 billion by 2032.

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A View From HETI

ERCOT predicts power demand will hit a peak of more than 92.2 gigawatts this summer. Photo via Unsplash

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages about 90 percent of the state’s power, is waving a warning flag: The ERCOT grid may set a new record for peak demand this summer.

Based on expectations for a hotter summer this year than last year, ERCOT predicts power demand will hit a peak of more than 92.2 gigawatts this summer — enough power for roughly 18.4 million homes.

“Given the potential for extreme heat combined with significant load growth, ERCOT may surpass its current all-time summer peak,” the organization says in its 2026 summertime forecast.

Further taxing the ERCOT grid are power-hungry data centers and cryptocurrency-mining facilities.

Last year’s peak summer demand for ERCOT reached 83.7 megawatts on Aug. 18, and all-time peak demand of 85.5 gigawatts was recorded on Aug. 10, 2023.

Fortunately, ERCOT believes the grid is in good shape to withstand this summer’s heat: It found a 0.09 percent chance of a grid emergency in June and a 0.21 percent chance in July.

More generation of electricity from solar and wind is helping ERCOT meet stepped-up demand prompted by population growth, and the significant power needs of data centers and cryptocurrency-mining facilities.

About 27 million Texas customers depend on power from ERCOT’s grid.

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