1)   California explicitly defined the role of carbon removal for achieving carbon neutrality goals in its carbon neutrality roadmap; and

2)   Key legislation passed requiring state agencies to develop frameworks and a program for carbon capture.

Luckily, projects have been in the works for years.

California has made clear that both natural and engineered forms of carbon removal and storage will be needed to achieve carbon neutrality by 2045. It has also clarified that carbon neutrality cannot be achieved without engineered (or sometimes referred to as mechanical) forms of carbon capture and removal.

But there’s only one facility in the entire state mechanically capturing and storing carbon today: Heirloom’s Tracy Direct Air Capture facility. The Heirloom facility can capture 1,000 tons of CO2 per year. This capacity will be scaled over the years but it’s clear that more than just a single project will be needed to meet California’s carbon removal targets.

More projects are in the works. There are currently, as of January 5, 2024, twelve applications for the geologic sequestration of carbon in California under review at the EPA.[1]

The furthest along in the EPA’s approval process is the Carbon TerraVault I Elk Hills 26R project. At this project, four wells will be developed at the Elk Hills Oil Field 26R reservoir in Kern County for the geologic sequestration of carbon. The project will have the capability to store 1.46 million metric tons of CO2 per year for 26 years. The carbon will be captured from onsite emissions being produced by a hydrogen production plant and field gas treatment. The facility will also sequester carbon captured from a direct air capture facility, and eventually from a natural gas power plant. If the EPA approves the project, then the actual injections to sequester the carbon are planned to start as early as 2025.

In the meantime, the California Natural Resources Agency and the California Air Resources Board (CARB) have been working on the implementation of Senate Bill (SB) 905 (Cabellero, 2022), a key piece of legislation requiring CARB to create a carbon capture, removal, utilization, and storage program to regulate carbon capture in the state. The California Natural Resources Agency must also establish a framework for governing property right agreements to access the geologic pore space in which carbon will be stored.

California is far from its 2030 20 million metric ton carbon removal target and even further from its 2045 100 million metric ton target but 2024 is a critical year for the state to prop up the programs and frameworks needed to support the deployment of carbon capture, removal, utilization, and storage facilities at scale in the state. If California is to meet its 2030 carbon removal target, then there cannot be any delay to the operation start date of the projects currently being developed.