betting on dac

Oxy acquires carbon capture co. in $1.1B deal

Occidental says its all-cash acquisition of Canada-based Carbon Engineering is set to close by the end of 2023. Photo via carbonengineering.com

In yet another bet on direct carbon capture (DAC), Houston-based Occidental has agreed to purchase a DAC technology company for $1.1 billion.

Occidental says its all-cash acquisition of Canada-based Carbon Engineering is set to close by the end of 2023. Carbon Engineering was founded in 2009.

Under the deal, Carbon Engineering would become a wholly owned subsidiary of Oxy Low Carbon Ventures, the investment arm of Occidental. Carbon Engineering employees will work with teams at Occidental and its low-carbon subsidiary, 1PointFive, on DAC technology. The company’s R&D and innovation units will remain in Squamish, British Columbia.

Occidental has been a key DAC partner of Carbon Engineering since 2019.

“We look forward to continuing our collaboration with the Carbon Engineering team, which has been a leader in pioneering and advancing DAC technology,” Vicki Hollub, president and CEO of Occidental, says in an August 15 news release. “Together, Occidental and Carbon Engineering can accelerate plans to globally deploy DAC technology at a climate-relevant scale and make DAC the preferred solution for businesses seeking to remove their hard-to-abate emissions.”

Billionaire Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway conglomerate owns about one-fourth of the shares of publicly traded Occidental.

In conjunction with Carbon Engineering, Occidental’s 1PointFive is building Stratos, the world’s largest DAC plant. The Ector County facility, scheduled to begin operating in mid-2025, is projected to extract up to 500,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide from the air each year. It’s anticipated that Stratos will employ more than 1,000 people during construction and up to 75 people once the plant is up and running.

Occidental and Carbon Engineering are adapting Stratos’ engineering and design features for a DAC plant to be built on a site at South Texas’ King Ranch. The South Texas DAC Hub, which is on track to create about 2,500 jobs, recently received a roughly $600 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE).

1PointFive plans to open as many as 135 DAC facilities around the world by 2035, with the capacity to capture 100 million metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year.

DAC technology pulls carbon dioxide emissions from the atmosphere at any location and permanently stores the CO2 or uses it for other purposes. By contrast, carbon capture sucks carbon dioxide from the air near where emissions are generated and then permanently stores the CO2 or uses it for other purposes.

A DAC system vacuums about 50 percent to 60 percent of the carbon dioxide from the air that passes through the system’s fans.

DAC “is shaping up to be a key component of meeting net-zero emissions goals in the United States,” according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

Trending News

A View From HETI

Texas falls among the middle of the pack when it comes to EV adoption, according to a new report. Photo via Unsplash

Even though Texas is home to Tesla, a major manufacturer of electric vehicles, motorists in the Lone Star State aren’t in the fast lane when it comes to getting behind the wheel of an EV.

U.S. Department of Energy data compiled by Visual Capitalist shows Texas has 689.9 EV registrations per 100,000 people, putting it in 20th place for EV adoption among the 50 states and the District of Columbia. A report released in 2023 by the University of Houston and Texas Southern University found that a little over 5 percent of Texans drove EVs.

California leads all states for EV adoption, with 3,025.6 registrations per 100,000 people, according to Visual Capitalist. In second place is Washington, with an EV adoption rate of 1,805.4 per 100,000.

A recent survey by AAA revealed lingering reluctance among Americans to drive all-electric vehicles.

In the survey, just 16 percent of U.S. adults reported being “very likely” or “likely” to buy an all-electric vehicle as their next car. That’s the lowest level of interest in EVs recorded by AAA since 1999. The share of consumers indicating they’d be “very unlikely” or “unlikely” to buy an EV rose to 63 percent, the highest level since 2022.

Factors cited by EV critics included:

  • High cost to repair batteries (62 percent).
  • High purchase price (59 percent).
  • Ineffective transportation for long-distance travel (57 percent).
  • Lack of convenient public charging stations (56 percent).
  • Fear of battery running out of power while driving (55 percent).

“Since AAA began tracking consumer interest in fully electric vehicles, we’ve observed fluctuations in enthusiasm,” said Doug Shupe, corporate communications manager for AAA Texas. “While automakers continue investing in electrification and expanding EV offerings, many drivers still express hesitation — often tied to concerns about cost, range, and charging infrastructure.”

Trending News