The amount of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere reached an all-time high this May, and odds are, 2024 will rank as the warmest year on record.
Climate intervention requires more than lowering greenhouse gas emissions through increasing energy efficiency and transitioning to renewable power sources; we also need to remove the carbon dioxide that is already in the atmosphere.
Jennifer Wilcox and her team at Penn’s Clean Energy Conversions Lab are finding ways to do just that. An expert on all things “carbon management,” she’s been pursuing carbon-reducing and -removal technologies her entire career.
“We’re almost out of time,” says Wilcox, Presidential Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering and Energy Policy in the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy and the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. “If there’s something I can do that will have an impact, I’m going to do it.”
Establishing National Policy at DOE
Wilcox recently completed her tenure at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), where she served as the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Fossil Energy and Carbon Management. There, she expanded the department’s research and development (R&D) program, putting an emphasis on new carbon management methods, including carbon capture, removal, conversion and storage, with the goal of minimizing environmental and climate impacts of fossil fuels.
That 3.5-year appointment delayed Wilcox’s arrival to Penn’s campus until this year, but gave her another way to showcase more than a decade’s worth of clean-energy efforts, including research that led to the creation of the direct air capture (DAC) technology used by Heirloom, a 2020 startup. Noah McQueen (GR’21), Heirloom’s co-founder, was one of Wilcox’s graduate students at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) before following her to Penn Engineering, where he completed his Ph.D. while she was at DOE.
Heirloom’s Direct Air Capture (DAC) facility in Tracy, CA, is capturing CO2 from the atmosphere and embedding it permanently in concrete, which can then be used in the foundations of buildings and other structures.
Heirloom’s technology leverages magnesium or calcium-rich feedstocks that react with carbon in order to capture CO2. Once captured, the resulting carbonate minerals are then heated, and CO2 is re-released in a high-purity form for compression and deep underground storage. Alternatively, in cases where the carbon removal is done on a smaller scale, the carbon can be stored in concrete products.
Regarding McQueen’s work with Heirloom, Wilcox is modest. “I’m a teacher, and when my students are successful, I’m proud of them. I’m a cheerleader,” says Wilcox, noting that McQueen made Forbes’ 2023 “30 Under 30” list for social impact.
Predicting a Cleaner Future
Wilcox similarly downplays her DOE achievements. She’d just completed her move from WPI to Penn in late 2020, when she received an email from the incoming Biden–Harris Administration asking if she was interested in a job at the DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy.
She assumed it was spam and deleted it. “Then they sent me another one. My husband said, ‘That’s not spam. You need to submit your CV,’” Wilcox recalls. “I hadn’t even unpacked my boxes. I wasn’t looking for another job.”
But the opportunity was too good to pass up. Penn’s leadership, recognizing the government’s interest in Wilcox as confirmation they’d asked the right person to join their team, granted Wilcox leave before she’d even started work.
Soon after taking office, President Biden signed an executive order committing the nation to eliminating carbon pollution from the electricity sector by 2035 and to achieving net-zero emissions across the economy by 2050.
That prompted a change to Wilcox’s office that went far beyond a name addendum. (The Office of Fossil Energy added the words “and Carbon Management” to its letterhead.) It was also tasked with distributing billions of dollars in carbon management R&D and demonstration funding. One such DOE project in western Pennsylvania has since moved on to more advanced stages without needing government support. “The private sector scooped them up,” Wilcox says. “That’s how it should happen.”
Another DOE success for Wilcox? Being part of the 2021 launch of the “Energy Earthshots” initiative: eight enabling the removal and storage of CO2 from the atmosphere for less than $100/net metric ton of CO2 within the decade. During a 2018 TED Talk, Wilcox had proposed a similar program, modeling the funding strategy after the U.S.’s successful Apollo program in 1966, when it allocated about half of 1% of GDP in funds. In modern terms, that’s about $100 billion. Investing even a fraction of that amount would have a significant impact in the fight against climate change. “I made a prediction, and six years later, I was building and launching that program,” Wilcox says. “It was surreal.”
Creating New Solutions at Penn
Now back at Penn, Wilcox says her lab will continue to find engineering-based solutions to the problem of man-made pollution.
Those solutions could include using ultramafic rocks, which are rich in magnesium and calcium that readily react with carbon. Through enhanced rock weathering, these rocks could ultimately detoxify bodies of water, a treatment that may potentially reduce the acidity in the Schuylkill River. She also hopes to explore engineering approaches to increasing the amount of carbon stored in woody biomass in forests.
“People get nervous when we say we’re going to drill a well a mile underground and inject CO2. They don’t know what that means,” she says. “But when you mineralize carbon in a rock, or remove CO2 from the atmosphere through enhanced forest uptake, that’s a more comfortable solution. The social barrier feels easier to overcome.”
She’s also interested in repurposing industry waste. That could mean using fly ash — a coal combustion byproduct — to source minerals that can store carbon, sourcing rare-earth elements for making batteries for electric vehicles or magnets for wind turbines, or leveraging old batteries to extract critical minerals that American manufacturers now source from abroad. This approach is costly, she notes, but carries invaluable co-benefits.
“You have to flip it. It’s not about the cost. It’s about the value,” she says. “It’s valuable that we wouldn’t need to depend on other countries for critical materials and at the same time create jobs where they have been lost because mining coal is on the decline. There’s value because you’re remediating and restoring ecosystems.”
A native of Maine, Wilcox is also excited about a new collaboration she’s launched between Penn and academics at the University of Maine’s School of Forest Resources. She also talks about the possibilities of using the outdoor space provided by Pennovation Works (where her lab resides) to carry out more controlled carbon-removal forest and agriculture experiments with some of the same rocks that led to Heirloom’s technology through enhanced rock weathering.
“I get excited about these projects and working with students on cutting-edge ideas that have a solid pathway to positive climate and environmental impact. I’m ready to get going.”
Story by Natalie Pompilio / Photo by Kevin Monko