Altman-Backed Startup Opens Largest US Facility to Pull Carbon From Air

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(Bloomberg) — A startup says it has built the US’s largest facility to pull carbon from the air. The Shidler, Oklahoma-based plant uses machines capable of capturing 5,000 tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere annually, with the gas used to extract oil, Heimdal announced Tuesday. 

The company’s technology has demonstrated a cost of capture of under $200 per ton, according to co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Marcus Lima. Heimdal’s approach to grabbing CO2 from the air involves heating quarried limestone, exposing the resulting material to air to absorb the gas, and then heating it again to extract the captured CO2.

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Many of Heimdal’s competitors have agreed to only store captured CO2 rather than use it to extract oil. That includes Heirloom Carbon Technologies, which opened the first commercial-scale direct air capture (DAC) facility in the US near San Francisco last year. Climeworks AG, the company behind the world’s largest DAC project located in Iceland, also does not engage in enhanced oil recovery (EOR).

Heimdal, which is backed by Sam Altman, Marc Benioff and Y Combinator Management LLC, has different designs. The startup has partnered with carbon utilization and storage company CapturePoint, which is using the facility’s captured CO2 to dislodge more oil from a nearby well. Oil company Occidental Petroleum Corp. is also constructing a large plant that will remove and use CO2 for enhanced oil recovery.

“We are, of course, very supportive of the EOR industry,” Heimdal’s Lima said. “I don’t believe the fossil fuel industry should go away in its entirety.”

Heimdal is also departing from other carbon removal startups in another way: using natural gas to power its technology, which emits CO2. Lima said the plant’s 5,000-ton capacity doesn’t account for operational emissions. The startup will need operating data to see exactly how much CO2 is emitted during the process, though Lima said for the company’s energy requirements, most kilns emit about 550 pounds (250 kilograms) of CO2 “for every ton of CO2 we remove.”

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The world must cut greenhouse gas emissions as quickly as possible, and research shows reducing the use of fossil fuels is the fastest way to do so. Scientists agree that CO2 removal is best used for sectors that will be challenging to decarbonize, such as aviation, and for drawing down some historical emissions to limit the worst effects of climate change. DAC is one technology that has emerged aimed at achieving this goal, though it is currently far from reaching meaningful scale.

The US has become a fertile breeding ground for early-stage DAC companies, thanks in part to tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act aimed at spurring investment in the nascent sector as well as generous funding from the US Energy Department. Those credits are highest for removing and storing CO2, though enhanced oil recovery still qualifies for partial credits.

Lima said Heimdal is open to permanently sequestering its CO2 in underground wells. That process, however, depends on successfully permitting sequestration wells, which may take several years. Heimdal is also open to switching to electric kilns to power the process, though Lima said the startup favors natural gas currently because “it’s the cheapest form of heat out there.”

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