President Trump’s administration has announced the cancellation of a US$500m grant awarded in December for a cement plant conversion in Kern County, California, which was planned to become the state’s first net-zero cement facility.
First announced last year, the Carbon Terra Vault (CTV) project, a collaboration with National Cement Company of California, is a US$891m initiative that would see the transportation and sequestration of up to 1Mta of CO2 emissions annually from National Cement’s Lebec plant.
Under the plans the 60 year-old facility, which would utilise locally-sourced biomass and switch production to limestone calcined clay cement (LC3), would transfer captured CO2 to underground storage reservoirs in the Kern valley, to be built by CTV. Subject to approvals the project was expected to be operational by 3031, with National Cement anticipating 20-25 jobs would be created.
Neither National Cement nor CTV’s parent company, California Resources Corp have commented on the cancellation, which is one of 24 carbon capture projects listed by the federal government on 30 May as having lost financial support, totalling US$3.7bn.
The US Department of Energy said in a news release that the projects had “failed to advance the energy needs of the American people, were not economically viable and would not generate a positive return on investment of taxpayer dollars."
