
Photo courtesy of Eastman
After a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) nreview, specialty materials company Eastman has lost a $375 million grant it had been awarded in March 2024 to help cover the costs of building its second molecular recycling facility for plastics in the country—a $1.2 billion project—in Longview, Texas, where the company has maintained an operational presence for decades.
The company, headquartered in Kingsport, Tennessee, was to receive funding through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act, via the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED). On May 30, U.S. Secretary of Energy Chris Wright announced the termination of 24 awards issued by the office totaling more than $3.7 billion.
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In a news release announcing the funding cuts, Wright says that of the 24 awards canceled, nearly 70 percent were signed by the Biden administration between Election Day and Jan. 20 and primarily included funding for carbon capture and sequestration and decarbonization initiatives.
“While the previous administration failed to conduct a thorough financial review before signing away billions of taxpayer dollars, the Trump administration is doing our due diligence to ensure we are utilizing taxpayer dollars to strengthen our national security, bolster affordable, reliable energy sources and advance projects that generate the highest possible return on investment,” Wright says. “Today, we are acting in the best interest of the American people by canceling these 24 awards.”
Despite the loss of the grant, Eastman tells the Longview News-Journal that the plastics recycling facility project still could proceed, though the timeline and scope could change. When it announced the funding last year, the company said it would enable the facility to expand its scope to include more decarbonization technology.
“We strongly believe in the role this project plays in meeting the need of a circular economy and keeping plastic waste out of the environment,” Eastman communications representative Kristin Parker tells the News-Journal. “We also continue to believe that it fully aligns with the [Trump] administration’s goals of creating jobs, driving energy independence and strengthening U.S. manufacturing.”
The facility has been designed to prepare mixed plastic scrap for processing using Eastman’s next-generation molecular recycling unit to depolymerize scrap and a polymer facility to create what the company calls “virgin-quality materials” for packaging and textiles. The company has said it expects the facility will have the capacity to recycle approximately 110,000 metric tons of hard-to-recycle plastic per year.
Additionally, the company said last year it expected its Longview investment to bring more than 200 full-time jobs to the community, in addition to about 1,000 temporary construction jobs during the development and building of the facility. The company has obtained about $70 million in state and local tax incentives in support of the project.
Eastman has operated in Longview for more than 70 years and currently has over 1,500 team members at its existing location.
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