Occidental Petroleum Makes a $1.1 Billion Bet on Carbon Capture Technology

credit: Wikipedia

"It's like a vacuum cleaner, basically, that sucks carbon out of the air," Economist climate innovation editorjay Vaitheeswaran tells Marketplace.

"That's actually as good a description as anyone's come up for it."

Vaitheeswaran is referring to direct air capture, a process in which chemicals are used to suck carbon dioxide out of the air.

Last week, Occidental Petroleum bought Carbon Engineering, a firm backed by Bill Gates, for more than $1 billion, a move that's drawing criticism from environmentalists.

"It's only right to be skeptical when an oil company says, 'Hey, we're gonna do this nice thing, and so we can keep pumping oil,'" Vaitheeswaran says.

But Vaitheeswaran says that's exactly what's happening.

"The US government has just given a massive grant [of] $1.2 billion for, specifically, this topic," he says.

"Real money, going into pilot phase projects that are ready to scale up to commercial level."

Carbon Engineering's technology is currently being tested in Texas, and Vaitheeswaran says it could be used to make fizzy drinks or other industrial uses.

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