Direct air capture business developers at the University of Illinois Prairie Research Institute are seeking $500m for each of three proposed DAAC hubs across the US, program director Chinmoy Baroi told ReSource.
The proposed hubs center on Florida, Colorado, and the tri-state region of Illinois, Kentucky and Indiana.
Hub directors are seeking private investment to match federal grants, looking to investors in the US, UK and abroad, Baroi said. The US DOE is expected to match $500m for each hub, provided there is equal investment from the private sector.
The directors have held talks with investment bankers and technology providers seeking additional information, he said. The process is in early stages of forming a consortium.
The hubs have been described publicly as such:
- The Illinois Basin Regional DAC Hub intends to coordinate DAC technology, green energy, CO2 transport, and underground storage or industrial offtake to promote storage of CO2 in the proven geological storage strata stretching under the tri-state Basin region.
- The Florida Regional DAC Hub will lead an effort to promote tech that can capture CO2 from the atmosphere and store it underground in the Tuscaloosa Group (thick, permeable saline aquifers 4,920 ft. to 7,050 ft. deep).
- The Colorado (Pueblo) Regional DAC Hub will build upon previous geological studies conducted on the Denver-Julesburg Basin.
To date the DOE has publicly provided $2.9m. The developers have received non-DOE funding of $800,000.
ReSource has tracked about thirty DAC projects that have been announced or started development in North America. Among them, only Heirloom DAC California is operational.
