United invests in carbon-capture project to be 100% green by 2050

United said Thursday it had committed to a multimillion-dollar investment in a project to remove carbon dioxide from the air through air direct-capture technology as part of a plan to be 100% “green” by 2050. The project, 1PointFive, is a partnership between Occidental Petroleum Corp subsidiary Oxy Low Carbon Ventures and Rusheen Capital Management that plans to build the first US industrial-sized direct air capture plant that would permanently sequester 1m tons of CO2 each year. That is the equivalent of what 40m trees can do, but covering a land area about 3,000 times smaller, United said, adding that direct-capture technology is one of the few proven ways to correct for aircraft emissions. United declined to provide details on the investment amount. United CEO Scott Kirby said carbon capture and sequestration is the only scalable technology that removes carbon from the atmosphere and buries it in the ground. “Sequestration is a real and permanent solution,” Kirby said. Until now, the airline industry has focused primarily on the purchase of carbon offsets to reduce the environmental impact of flying.<br/>