The two carbon capture-focused companies today signed a Memorandum of Understanding to collaborate on the development of facilities, which they hope will remove millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere annually.
One location the partnership is considering for the for UK-based DAC plant is in North East Scotland, close to the Acorn CCS project. The proposed facility will deliver permanent CO2 removal by capture CO2 from the air and then permanently storing it below the seabed in an offshore geological storage site.
Read more: Acorn CCS project progresses
Alan James, Managing Director at PBDE, said, “We are delighted to be partnering with Carbon Engineering to explore the opportunities for DAC in the UK. Whilst most businesses have growing aspirations to decarbonise to make their contribution to meeting the UK’s Net Zero target, some face huge challenges due to the nature of their emissions, or the uncertain business environment for their operations during the energy transition.”
“For some, installing decarbonisation technology may simply never be commercially or logistically practical. DAC will provide a mechanism for those businesses to reduce their climate impact effectively and allow others to remove from the atmosphere the emissions that they were responsible for in the past.”
From its pilot facility in British Columbia, Canada, Carbon Engineering has been capturing CO2 from the atmosphere since 2015 and is now engineering its first large-scale commercial plant in the US that will capture one million tonnes of atmosphere CO2 annually – equivalent to the work of 40 million trees.
Read more: Carbon Engineering expands capacity at commercial DAC plant
Steve Oldham, CEO of Carbon Engineering, said, “We’ve been developing and optimising our DAC technology for more than a decade and are thrilled to now be working with Pale Blue Dot to bring this solution to the UK. This partnership with Pale Blue Dot enables the deployment of DAC projects in the UK and will help establish a UK DAC industry that will deliver significant emission reductions and help address climate change.”