Sweetwater County is slated to become home to the world’s largest atmospheric carbon removal project within eight years, though the two companies planning the project, dubbed Project Bison, aren’t yet publicizing exactly where it will be located.
The project is a partnership between California-based CarbonCapture Inc. and Texas-based Frontier Carbon Solutions. By 2030, Project Bison is planned to store five megatons of carbon dioxide annually — enough to offset about 0.1% of the carbon dioxide that the U.S. currently emits each year. CarbonCapture will manufacture direct-air capture modules to collect carbon dioxide from the atmosphere while Frontier Carbon Solutions will inject the carbon dioxide underground.
“We are not yet disclosing the location of the site for competitive reasons,” Al Duncan, a spokesman for the project, told the Star in a Tuesday email.
However, the Department of Environmental Quality received three permit applications from Frontier Carbon Solutions on Sept. 15, a week after the existence of Project Bison was announced in a press release. Those applications, which don’t detail the proposed locations of CarbonCapture’s modules, do show the precise locations for where carbon dioxide would be injected underground.
According to the permit applications, the project area would straddle the borders of Sweetwater and Lincoln counties — just west of Granger. The application indicates the project would include three injection sites: one on a private ranchland alongside Hams Fork in Sweetwater County, one on state land in Sweetwater County about a quarter-mile north of Blacks Fork, and one on private ranchland in Lincoln County.
“Expectations are for (CarbonCapture) to deploy the first of their modular (direct-air capture) systems” within a 10,728-acre area surrounding the injection sites, the permit application states.
The companies have stated they picked Wyoming for the project because of the state’s favorable regulatory environment and because its deep saline aquifers are ideal for underground storage of carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide would be injected at an average depth of 13,700 underground, the permit application states.
CarbonCapture will host an Oct. 5 “town hall event” at Western Wyoming Community College to explain the project to the community.
To bring the company’s vision to fruition, Project Bison will need the typical permits for air quality and industrial siting, but the key permit the project needs is a Class VI injection well permit from the DEQ, Duncan said.
A Class VI permit allows a company to inject carbon dioxide into underground subsurface rock formations or saline aquifers for long-term storage or geologic sequestration.
Carbon dioxide would be collected from both direct-air capture and from “neighboring industrial emitters,” the permit application states. The injection of the carbon dioxide would occur over a 20-year period.
According to a flyer mailed to homes in Sweetwater County this week, Project Bison will begin operations next year. CarbonCapture’s website states the project would capture 10,000 tons of carbon dioxide annually during its first two years, increasing to 200,000 tons annually for 2025 and 2026, reaching 1 megaton of annual carbon capture in the following two years before finally scaling up to 5 megatons.
“With the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, the proliferation of companies seeking high-quality carbon removal credits, and a disruptive low-cost technology, we now have the ingredients needed to scale DAC to megaton levels by the end of this decade,” CarbonCapture CEO Adrian Corless stated in a press release.
The project is part of CarbonCapture’s goal to “offer the lowest priced (direct air capture) carbon removal credits in the markets,” he said.
Corless also stated that the project aims to create “many permanent, well-paying jobs that leverage the deep skill set of the local workforce.”
Gov. Mark Gordon backed the project in a press release of his own.
“The interest in locating a project of this scale here demonstrates Wyoming’s commitment to CO2 capture, use and storage projects as this industry develops,” he said.
Patricia Loria, CarbonCapture’s vice president for business development, told Sweetwater County Commissioners in July that industrial buyers of carbon removal credits will likely be willing to initially pay $800 per ton, with the price being reduced over time. Along with energy producers, Loria said that soda ash facilities could be a possible user of the project.
Wyoming and North Dakota are currently the most practical states to quickly start carbon sequestration facilities in, Loria said, because they’re the only states presently authorized to issue Class VI permits, which are regulated by the federal government. The Environmental Protection Agency still retains primacy to issue Class VI permits in all other 48 states. While CarbonCapture would expect a three-year timeframe to receive a Class VI permit from the EPA, it hopes to receive one from Wyoming’s DEQ within a year.
Another CarbonCapture official told commissioners in July that a carbon capture project of Project Bison’s size would need 200 acres alone to house the necessary direct-air capture modules, which resemble shipping containers.
Currently, the world’s largest operating direct-air capture facility is located in Iceland and captures 4,000 tons of carbon dioxide annually. Aside from CarbonCapture, other companies have planned projects for the coming decade that would dwarf the Icelandic facility in the coming decade. Even with ample competition, CarbonCapture expects Project Bison to be the “largest single atmospheric carbon removal project in the world” in 2030, the company’s website states.
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