👋 Goodbye CDR in the U.S. Department of Energy?

🇺🇸 No government department in the world has done more for the growth of the carbon removal industry than the U.S. DoE. Unfortunately, that seems to have come to an abrupt and tragic end.

🪓 Two weeks ago, we learnt that all funds from the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law will be frozen for the time being, affecting programmes such as DAC Hubs.

👎 On Monday, the new Secretary of Energy Chris Wright publicly called net-zero “a sinister goal”.

😢 And now, we learnt that the entire CDR department of the DoE might be gone? Many of the people I respect most in the sector, who have invaluable experience and dedication, were fired and told their work was not in the public interest anymore.

🌤️ In between this mayhem and doom, there are still glimmers of hope. Congress might start stepping up to unfreeze funds after Trump’s first 90 days. The Procurement Pilot funds might be safer than you think. And the 45Q tax credit seems unaffected.

🌟 No one is better placed than Noah Deich to make sense of it all, as the DoE veteran who set up a lot of the programmes we all came to know and love. He will be joining Eve Tamme and I for our next CDR Policy Scoop.

📅 Make sure to tune in coming Tuesday at noon EST / 6pm CET: https://lnkd.in/dHCh-PMV

⁉️ Now over to you: what is your take? Where is CDR heading at the DoE? What questions would you like us to discuss.

CORRECTIONS/ADDITIONS: as this post is spreading, more info is being shared in the comments and with me directly (do reach out if you want to share something). I just wrote what I heard/knew and shall add it here for folks to see:

1. There is still staff remaining working on CDR at DoE, who have not been moved elsewhere.

2. Staff working on CDR at the National Labs are still in place.

UPDATE 22.02: I got some things wrong and published an apology today https://lnkd.in/d7nzN-7d

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