Removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere remains a big challenge. Technologies exist that can pull CO2, an extremely diffuse molecule, out of thin air, but the industry is in its very early stages. It also needs to scale in record time in order to have a chance at keeping the global temperature in line with Paris Agreement goals.

Zoom in: The infrastructure law passed in November includes $3.5 billion for four regional direct-air capture (DAC) hubs across the US, which aim to remove at least 1 million metric tons of CO2 each per year.

• Operating just one of these hubs would mean 100 times as much CO2 being pulled from the air than today’s global DAC capacity, though that is still far short of the 10 billion tonnes needed by 2050 to meet the Paris Agreement targets.

But, but, but...There are still plenty of questions about how the US Department of Energy will select and design these sites. We spoke with industry experts, including three DAC company executives, to learn more about how they’d like to see the funding allocated.

Carbon cash

One big question is whether the 1-million-tonne scale outlined in the legislation will be used as a goal or as a prerequisite, since the latter could preclude early-stage methods from participating, DAC company executives told us.

• The execs are hoping that this federal funding will instead support different technologies in multiple deployments, which together will add up to the 1-million-tonne goal.

“The funding itself should be accessible in various stages—from proof of concept or early-stage ideas through to projects that are at hundreds of thousands of tonnes or growing to millions of tonnes,” Adrian Corless, CEO of CarbonCapture Inc., told us. “It’s this idea of allowing lots of on-ramps, and then still a vision for getting the best ones to get larger.”

There are various DAC strategies, none of which have been proven at scale so far.

• For example, CarbonCapture’s process uses a dehumidifier and a mineral called zeolites, Noya adds a proprietary “sponge” material to suck CO2 out of air that flows through cooling towers, and Heirloom uses accelerated carbon mineralization to store CO2 in limestone.

One way to make sure smaller companies have a chance to benefit from this federal backing is for the DOE to invest in carbon-removal infrastructure at these hubs, which multiple DAC companies can use. That could allow companies to focus only on improving their tech and driving costs down, rather than using resources to pay for clean energy, or CO2 compression, transport, and storage.

Big picture: DAC technology will only potentially be cost-effective once it’s able to capture megatonnes of CO2 per year. Both CarbonCapture and Heirloom aim to reach that scale by the end of the decade, while Noya is aiming to scale to 100,000 tonnes per year over the next five years.

Executives from the companies say funding and infrastructure from the DAC hubs could help them get there.

Keep reading.—GD

What makes a car a car? The answer isn’t a steering wheel, pedals, or other manual driving controls, according to the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

Earlier this month, the agency updated the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards with the first-ever change dedicated to autonomous vehicles. The new rules should make it legal to build and deploy AVs without the traditional controls that are associated with a human driver—though there is some fine print involved.

What’s different now: “The occupant protection standards are currently written for traditionally designed vehicles and use terms such as ‘driver’s seat’ and ‘steering wheel’ that are not meaningful to vehicle designs that, for example, lack a steering wheel or other driver controls,” the NHTSA rule states.

• The new rule essentially updates that terminology to better reflect potential layouts and designs of future AVs.
• Automakers may still need to ask the NHTSA for an exemption to sell their autonomous vehicles, Reuters reported.

“It’s a clear indicator that the technology is on the road to commercialization,” Grayson Brulte, co-founder and president of Brulte & Company, an autonomous-mobility consulting firm, told Emerging Tech Brew.

What comes next: We’ll likely see these vehicles offered first in fleet form, Brulte said. He thinks that passengers will see Cruise, ​​the General Motors-backed AV startup, and Zoox, Amazon’s AV subsidiary, take advantage of the new rules first.

• For autonomous-driving companies, this move not only increases their flexibility in design and manufacturing, but it also signals an official step toward AV adoption.

Brulte estimated we may see these pod-like vehicles rolled out via pilot programs in as soon as 12–24 months, but he warned that global supply-chain struggles could slow things down.

Zoom out: The new standards do not apply to some occupant-less AVs like Nuro’s, which deliver goods rather than people.

The NHTSA “tentatively determined” that a “safety need did not exist” to apply certain existing standards to vehicles without occupants. Most public commenters agreed with that decision, though some said they had concerns about “crash compatibility and other safety matters.”

Click here to read on-site.—HF

Heather Durgin is chief of staff at the Department of Defense’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC), a division within the Pentagon’s sprawling operation tasked with furthering the US military’s understanding and use of artificial intelligence.

• The JAIC was established in 2018, and Durgin has been in charge of beefing up the department’s personnel since May 2021, which means scouring the labor market and competing for talent with the foremost names in the tech industry.

Compared with private-sector tech companies, the JAIC is an outlier in the AI space, which, according to Durgin, means recruitment efforts have to be creative to stay competitive. HR Brew spoke to Durgin about her recruitment strategy and why AI might not be a substitute for human connections in the hunt for promising hires.

Below is a one-question excerpt of the interview—you can read the full thing here.

On AI’s role at the DoD

"AI is one of the department’s top tech modernization priorities. Tech advances like AI are changing the face and the pace of warfare. As such, the Department of Defense will use AI responsibly as a force multiplier—one that helps us to make decisions faster and more rigorously, to integrate across all domains, and to replace old ways of doing business—from the boardroom to the battlefield.

The Department of Defense is seeking to rapidly develop an AI-ready workforce through education, recruitment, and cadre-building. The JAIC has developed and piloted numerous courses, independently and with DoD and academic partners, addressing workforce skills outlined in the DoD AI Education Strategy. We are also sharing educational materials, such as an “AI Adoption Journey” on our website, AI.mil. From a human-capital perspective, my team is focused on bringing those talented AI and data professionals to help the DoD accelerate the adoption of this transformative technology.”

Click here to read the full interview.—SB

Stat: The surge in nickel prices could add between $1,000 and $2,000 to the price of every EV, per a Morgan Stanley analyst note cited by Insider.

Quote: “We’re going to ship more machines this year than last year and . . . more machines next year than this year. But it will not be enough if we look at the demand curve. We really need to step up our capacity significantly more than 50%. That will take time.”—Peter Wennink, CEO of ASML, a key supplier of the lithography machines used to produce advanced semiconductors, told the Financial Times

Read: Some startups affiliated with Ukraine are finding ways to help the country’s army fight.

Watch: The Metaverse has become the latest buzzword that companies have latched on to as the future of technology. But what is it? And is it really something we could see as a part of everyday life in the next decade? Check out our latest episode of Brew Breakdown to find out.

On Monday, the SEC gave initial approval to a new rule that would require public companies to disclose both their emissions and the risks that climate change poses to their business.

• Now, the regulator will hold a 60-day public-comment period before voting on a final version. But the rule is likely to face legal challenges from Republican leaders and business groups who claim the SEC lacks authority in this space.

The tech angle: A cottage industry of companies that automate the measurement of carbon emissions could gain steam if the rule goes into effect. The proposal asks for additional comment on the potential role of “automated collection techniques or other forms of information technology” in this task.

My cordless vacuum cleaner pretty regularly runs out of battery mid-use. But, no worries: I simply replace the dead battery with a fully charged one and continue vacuuming up whatever mess my cats made that particular day.

EV companies have toyed with this same concept—battery swapping—since at least 2007. Rather than wait at least 30 minutes to top off your battery at a charging station, the thinking goes, why not quickly exchange the tapped battery for a fresh one?

• After years of struggling to take off, Protocol reports that this idea is now gaining steam in the world’s largest EV market: China. There are currently 1,400+ swap stations nationwide, with plans to grow that figure to 26,000 by 2025.
• That’s certainly evidence of rising interest, but for context, there are more than 1.2 million public EV charging stations in the country, per Protocol.

Looking ahead…Nio, one of the companies that has led the growth of this charging trend in China, plans to build 1,000 swapping stations outside of China by 2025.

Catch up on the top Emerging Tech Brew stories from the past few editions:

• Before layoffs hit Google-owned Looker, workers unknowingly trained their replacements
• California’s vehicle-to-grid experiments offer a glimpse of the future
• Training an AI system is time consuming, but this startup says it has a solution