Battelle (Columbus, Ohio) will serve as the prime recipient to manage the project, and will collaborate with a range of industry-leading partners—including Direct Air Capture technology providers Climeworks and Heirloom—to bring their global expertise to this first-of-its-kind initiative. The Hub is proposed for a site in southwest Louisiana, where carbon captured from the ambient air would be safely and permanently stored underground by leading geologic storage company Gulf Coast Sequestration, thereby removing it from the atmosphere.
In addition to the technical goals of the Hub, Project Cypress will make robust investments in the local community and region by creating a host of new jobs throughout the design, construction, and operation of the project. Beyond discussions with workforce development organizations already under way, a core component of Project Cypress will be an active collaboration with a broad cross-section of community stakeholders ranging from business groups and housing advocates to job training teams and new energy advocates. This two-way dialogue will ensure that the community is intimately involved in shaping the characteristics and deployment of the project in order to maximize its benefits to the economy, the environment, and the needs of local neighbors.
“This is the kind of project we’ve been working towards for decades and fits with our overall climate focus,” said Battelle Energy and Resilience Division Manager Shawn Bennett. “Direct Air Capture technology is an important bridge to a future that greatly reduces the amount of legacy carbon dioxide in our atmosphere. But in addition to that, Project Cypress will be developed to the benefit of the local community, maximizing local job opportunities for the energy transition.’’
“Climeworks is delighted to collaborate with Battelle, to be part of a joint project with Heirloom and GCS and is looking forward to deepening the relationship with the other project stakeholders on the journey to realize Project Cypress,” said Dirk Nuber, Chief of Project Development at Climeworks. “Uniting Climeworks’ experience in Direct Air Capture combined with storage and Battelle’s decades-long experience in critical services and large project leadership is an exciting opportunity to bring high-quality carbon removal to Louisiana, and beyond.”
“Heirloom is honored to be part of Project Cypress. We have had very promising early conversations with community leaders in the area—which has long led the world in energy jobs, and now is at the precipice of pioneering the frontier of new clean tech jobs,” said Heirloom Head of Commercialization Max Scholten. “We believe that Project Cypress will form the blueprint for what highly scalable, equitable and just deployments of Direct Air Capture technologies could look like going forward.”
By siting Project Cypress in a region with a long history of fossil fuel production and related industrial activity, project developers intend to leverage the existing workforce that has transferable skillsets to construct and operate Project Cypress. This will bring fossil energy employees into the energy transition and jobs to southwest Louisiana. The Hub will combine leading DAC technologies and one of the most mature Class VI well applications for saline storage in the Gulf Coast region.