Nearly 2,000 clean-tech projects that faced the ax look set to get funding in surprise move by the Energy Department
A project to suck carbon out of the atmosphere in Louisiana—which faced closure under the Trump administration—is among nearly 2,000 clean-technology initiatives getting a surprise funding lifeline after a Department of Energy review.
Direct-air-capture startups Heirloom and Climeworks were awarded $600 million by the Biden administration to build a carbon-capture project in areas of the Pelican State that have traditionally been strongholds of the oil-and-gas industry. The project is at two different sites: Heirloom in Shreveport and Climeworks in Calcasieu Parish near Vinton.
However, Project Cypress, as the joint venture is known, has sat idle since the start of President Trump’s second term and looked set to be axed. The Trump administration has made widespread funding cuts to climate projects since its return to office.
On Wednesday, Heirloom and Climeworks received a notice the funding would continue, with an initial award of $50 million shared between both companies.
The carbon-capture project is among 1,950 DOE-funded clean-technology initiatives to get a reprieve, according to a DOE list reviewed by WSJ Pro Sustainable Business. That list has a total funding of close to $24 billion.
A spokesman for the DOE referred WSJ Pro Sustainable Business to Energy Secretary Chris Wright’s comments made during a budget hearing on Wednesday. In the speech, Wright said some 2,200 projects were reviewed, with about 80% passing the DOE’s bar for funding.
“Frankly, there were a lot of projects, large in scale, that had no meat on the bones. Hundreds of projects [worth] hundreds of millions of dollars that didn’t have a business plan that would basically just spend the taxpayer money and we’d have nothing new at the end,” said Wright during the hearing.
“But there are many that were, and well over 80% of all these projects we reviewed in detail passed and are going on.”
Occidental Petroleum, which planned to open a direct-air-capture hub in Texas, was also on the DOE list. Other projects set to receive funding under the DOE review are an electric-vehicle plant in Michigan, a hydrogen facility in Louisiana and a solar operation in Arizona.
Occidental didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
Heirloom said Project Cypress will create high-quality jobs in the Louisiana area. Vikrum Aiyer, head of global public policy and external affairs at the company, said it would “strengthen domestic supply chains, and pair industrial growth with advanced carbon management—while supporting Louisiana’s all-of-the-above energy strategy and ensuring DAC employs inventive energy systems to serve as a good grid citizen.”
A spokesman for Climeworks said the company “welcomes the indication that Project Cypress has been retained and looks forward to engaging with the Department of Energy and our partners on next steps to advance our project in Louisiana.”
Heirloom uses limestone to capture carbon dioxide. Climeworks draws air in through large fans, where CO2 is captured. Project Cypress was slated to create around 2,300 jobs. A further 2,000 were to be created at the Occidental DAC hub in Texas, which was also awarded $600 million.
Roughly $35 billion of investments and 38,000 current and future jobs related to cleantech industries were lost as a result of Trump administration grant cuts last year, according to E2, an environmental consultancy. Most of those focused on battery and EV projects.
Corrections & Amplifications
Heirloom and Climeworks were awarded $600 million by the Biden administration and have already received $50 million. An earlier version of this article said the companies were awarded more than $1 billion by the Biden administration but never received any of the money. (Corrected on April 16.)
