Federal authorities have approved the use of underground formations below public land to store carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere.

The Bureau of Land Management on May 23 announced it would allow the use of federally owned underground storage space across 44,350 acres in Uinta, Sweetwater, and Lincoln counties in Wyoming for Frontier Carbon Solutions' Sweetwater Carbon Storage Hub project.

The CO2 was originally proposed to come from Project Bison, a direct air capture facility planned by CarbonCapture Inc. to use renewable power to remove 12,000 tons of CO2 per year from the atmosphere. However, CarbonCapture Inc. announced in September 2024 that it would pause the project’s development and was seeking a new location because of high competition for renewable energy in the state from proposed data centers. Frontier has since discussed shipping CO2 in from industrial sites by rail.

The Wyoming Department of Environmental Conservation in 2023 approved three carbon storage wells planned by Frontier to inject carbon into underground formations.