Corporate Carbon awarded $4 million grant - media release 8 June 2021

Pilot Direct Air Carbon Capture, Use and Storage project awarded $4 million federal government grant

Corporate Carbon was awarded a $4 million grant today as part of the federal government’s $50 million Carbon Capture Use and Storage Development Fund. The project Pilot Direct Air Carbon Capture, Use and Storage: off-site abatement & ACCUs will deliver a pilot scale Direct Air Carbon Capture, Use and Storage (DACCUS) facility to operate at 1t CO2/day.

The $50 million fund, announced by Energy Minister, Angus Taylor in March 2021, provides grants of up to $25 million for businesses for pilot projects or pre-commercial projects aimed at reducing emissions. The intended outcomes of the grant program are to lower the cost of technology adoption, encourage industry investment in deploying CCUS in Australia, and progress the deployment of CCUS projects from R&D towards commercial operation.

Corporate Carbon’s DACCUS facility will be constructed at an existing injection well, with the captured CO2 being geologically stored. The project will demonstrate the relative economics of DAC versus points source carbon capture, which usually requires piping of the captured CO2 to the injection well.

“DACCUS will enable hard-to-abate sectors to deploy a cost effective and scalable solution that does not rely on expensive retrofitting, GHG capture costs or transport costs,” said Gary Wyatt, Managing Director, Corporate Carbon. “Once deployed at scale, DAC as a carbon removal technology has the potential to make heavy industries net-zero emitters of GHG well before 2050.”

Corporate Carbon envisages this project as the first to a large scale (1Mt CO2/year) DAC facility fully powered by renewable energy. The development and delivery of this project will be a steppingstone to place Australia in a unique position to play a leading role in this emerging industry by harnessing Australia’s ideal conditions for solar energy, due to high solar intensity and close proximity to some of the world’s best geological sequestration sites.

“Given Australia’s abundant renewable energy and geological storage resources, DAC could become a new export market for Australia,” said Wyatt.

Corporate Carbon delivers climate solutions from project development to sale of credits, ensuring emissions reductions, carbon sequestration and co-benefits for the environment, individuals and businesses. It has been instrumental in demonstrating the commercial viability of capturing CO2 in agricultural soils. It created the first soil carbon credits under the Emissions Reduction Fund (ERF) and through its spin-off company (AgriProve) has registered more than 75% of all soil carbon projects under the ERF.

“We understand what it takes to bring a new carbon capture and storage technology to market, through innovation and a relentless focus on driving down costs,” said Wyatt. “We see the same potential for DAC as we previously saw in soil carbon, and we will use this experience to develop and roll out the DAC technology in a similar way.”