Direct air capture developers Return Carbon BV and Verified Carbon are working with Spanish renewables company Greenalia SA to use wind power to vacuum up as much as 500,000 tons of CO₂ per year in Tom Green County, Texas, the stakeholders said Nov. 21.

The proposed facility, called Project Concho, would be the world's first direct air capture "hub" powered entirely by wind energy, according to the developers and technology vendor Skytree BV The partners plan to source that power from a new wind farm to be built by Greenalia.

The first phase of the project would be completed by 2030 with a smaller capacity of about 50,000 tons of CO₂ annually, Netherlands-based Return Carbon said in a news release. The CO₂ would be injected deep underground at an onsite facility, allowing Project Concho to make money through the sale of carbon credits.

Project Concho is one of about a dozen direct air capture projects under development in the US, including an Occidental Petroleum Corp. project nearing completion in Ector County, Texas. The development is encouraged by federal tax credits for carbon capture and the bipartisan infrastructure law's $3.5 billion grant program for the technology.

But sourcing renewable or nuclear power for the energy-intensive technology has proven a challenge. In September, direct air capture developer Carbon Capture Inc. canceled plans to build its flagship project in Wyoming due to the competition for clean power, even after securing carbon storage permits in the state.

Project Concho's partners say they plan to address this challenge by guaranteeing a reliable offtake of excess wind power in exchange for low-cost electricity. The developers and Greenalia have committed to negotiating a purchase power agreement that "allows for price stability and full energy deliverability," Return Carbon said.

"The flexibility offered by the [direct air capture] hub to optimize around energy price peaks is a game changer for renewable energy projects," Alexandre Alonso, Greenalia's SVP of business development, said in a Nov. 21 statement. "It not only strengthens the business case for our wind farm under development in Texas but also contributes to adding innovative business models and alternatives for a greener energy landscape in the US."

The developers did not immediately return a request for information about the project's funding status.

Other direct air capture developers and vendors say they are exploring how they can match their operations with power generation.

Heirloom Carbon Technologies Inc., for example, uses limestone to absorb CO₂ from air, requiring very little electricity, the company's head of commercialization, Max Scholten, said in an interview earlier this year. Heirloom still requires electricity to separate the CO₂ from the limestone by heating the rock in a kiln, but this process does not need to run continuously, Scholten said.