The Trump administration may cut funding for two major direct-air capture plants

The list features a “latest status” column, which includes the word “terminate” next to the roughly $50 million award amounts for each project. Those line up with the initial tranche of Department of Energy (DOE) funding for each development. According to the original announcement in 2023, the projects could have received $500 million or more in total grants as they proceeded.

It’s not clear if the termination of the initial grants would mean the full funding would also be canceled.

“It could mean nothing,” says Erin Burns, executive director of Carbon180, a nonprofit that advocates for the removal and reuse of carbon dioxide. “It could mean there’s a renegotiation of the awards. Or it could mean they’re entirely cut. But the uncertainty certainly doesn’t help projects.”

A DOE spokesman stressed that no final decision has been made.

“It is incorrect to suggest those two projects have been terminated and we are unable to verify any lists provided by anonymous sources,” Ben Dietderich, the department’s press secretary, said in an email, adding: “The Department continues to conduct an individualized and thorough review of financial awards made by the previous administration.”

Last week, the DOE announced it would terminate about $7.5 billion dollars in grants for more than 200 projects, stating that they “did not adequately advance the nation’s energy needs, were not economically viable, and would not provide a positive return on investment of taxpayer dollars.”

Battelle and 1PointFive didn’t respond to inquiries from MIT Technology Review.

“Market rumors have surfaced, and Climeworks is prepared for all scenarios,” Christoph Gebald, one of the company’s co-CEOs, said in a statement. He added later: “The need for DAC is growing as the world falls short of its climate goals and we’re working to achieve the gigaton capacity that will be needed.”

“We aren’t aware of a decision from DOE and continue to productively engage with the administration in a project review,” Heirloom said in a statement.

The rising dangers of climate change have driven the development of the direct-air capture industry in recent years.

Climate models have found that the world may need to suck down billions of tons of carbon dioxide per year by around midcentury, on top of dramatic emissions cuts, to prevent the planet from warming past 2˚ C.

Carbon-sucking direct-air factories are considered one of the most reliable ways of drawing the greenhouse gas out of the atmosphere, but they also remain one of the most expensive and energy-intensive methods.

Under former President Joe Biden, the US began providing increasingly generous grants, subsidies and other forms of support to help scale up the nascent sector.