Opinion: Louisiana Becomes a Leader in ‘Cutting Carbs’

No, it’s not what you think.  Bread pudding is still very much on the menu.

But Louisiana is becoming a national and international leader in new “carbon capture” technologies that will allow America to sustain industry, while dramatically cutting carbon emissions. For example:

The past week, Heirloom – a leader in direct air capture (DAC) technology deployment, announced plans to build two DAC facilities in Northwest Louisiana.

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  • The two direct air capture plants will have a combined capacity of capturing and storing around 320,000 tons of CO2 annually
  • One of the facilities will have a capacity of 17,000 tons per year and will be operational in 2026.  The second one is currently under design and is part of Project Cypress, the Regional DAC Hub in Louisiana being built along with other players in the carbon management industry, including Climeworks and Battelle, and managed by the U.S Department of Energy’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED), which is eligible for up to $600 million in funding
  • Heirloom will sell carbon credits to major technology companies, who will use the credits to offset emissions from data centers and other carbon-producing activities.

Earlier this year, Lake Charles Methanol announced plans to invest $3.24 billion for a new manufacturing plant at the Port of Lake Charles, creating a total of 723 new jobs in southwest Louisiana. 

  • The project includes construction a new manufacturing plant that will produce low-carbon intensity methanol and other chemicals at the Port of Lake Charles
  • The facility will reform natural gas and renewable gas feedstocks into hydrogen, while capturing carbon dioxide, which will then be used to produce about 3.6 million tons per year of methanol
  • Lake Charles Methanol plans to work with a third party to capture and sequester about 1 million metric tons of CO2 per year, which would reduce the carbon intensity of the hydrogen for synthesis into low carbon intensity methanol

Finally, a partnership between CF Industries, ExxonMobil, and EnLink are endeavoring on an “unprecedented” decarbonization collaboration aimed at dramatically reducing industrial CO2 emissions in Louisiana.  

  • Their shared plans are to capture up to 2.2 million tons of emissions from CF Industries’ Ascension Parish manufacturing complex each year, transport the CO2 through EnLink’s transportation network and permanently store it underground on property owned by ExxonMobil in Vermilion Parish
  • Removing this amount of CO2 is the equivalent of replacing 700,000 gasoline-powered cars with electric vehicles
  • It is described as a potential business prototype for industrial-scale carbon capture and sequestration projects

These projects are just a few of the dozens of companies who have committed to over $40B in future energy projects in Louisiana.  Our state benefits from decades of energy experience, massive pre-existing infrastructure, favorable geology, and a bi-partisan approach to “all-of-the-above” energy. 

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Michael Hecht is president and CEO of Greater New Orleans, Inc. This essay originally appeared in the GNO, Inc. Sunday Night Highlight email newsletter.

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