A billion-dollar climate initiative in the district of House Speaker Mike Johnson is at risk from President Donald Trump’s budget proposal.
The Louisiana development, named Project Cypress, aims to use federal funds to build carbon removal facilities and a pipeline network that would pull 1 million tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide from the atmosphere annually and store it permanently underground.
The president’s budget, released Friday, called on Congress to cancel “over $15 billion in Green New Scam funds committed to build unreliable renewable energy, removing carbon dioxide from the air, and other costly technologies burdensome to ratepayers and consumers.” The proposal specifically targeted “unplanned and unobligated balances, meaning the cancellation would not impact any currently awarded projects.”
It’s unclear what that means for Project Cypress. During the Biden administration, the Department of Energy negotiated a deal that could provide the initiative with up to $550 million in matching funds. But the agency has so far only disbursed $50 million of that sum.
