The 2021 bipartisan infrastructure bill devoted more than $12 billion to carbon capture and removal and another $8 billion to “clean hydrogen,” a portion of which will flow to CCS projects.Some activists worry that even if the technology reduces climate pollution, it will fail to reduce toxic emissions from fossil fuel infrastructure while allowing refineries, pipelines and gas wells to continue polluting for decades. Energy companies want to apply carbon capture widely to power plants, refineries and more.Some academics and policy experts say carbon capture and storage could play a small but important role reducing emissions from “hard-to-abate” sectors like cement, steel and chemicals production.After lobbying by fossil fuel companies, Congress and the Biden administration have allocated billions in grants and loans and potentially tens of billions more in tax incentives to carbon capture, despite concerns the technology will not meaningfully reduce emissions and will present its own environmental risks.So far, utilities looking to reduce their climate pollution have generally said carbon capture remains too expensive to use at their existing coal plants and have opted instead to replace them with wind and solar energy generation. At the time the rules were proposed, there were no commercial-scale power plants with CCS running in the United States. New rules proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency would require the nation’s largest coal and gas power plants to install carbon capture equipment if they plan to continue operating beyond 2040. Many environmental groups have said this money would be better spent on efforts to phase out fossil fuels and have criticized CCS as little more than “greenwashing” for oil companies looking to burnish their image.īut some academics and policy experts argue that CCS could play a small but important role removing emissions not from fossil fuel combustion but from other sectors of the economy, like cement and steel manufacturing, which produce significant pollution but do not currently have viable alternatives. Oil companies lobbied hard to secure billions in federal loans, grants and tax incentives that were included in the 2021 infrastructure bill and Inflation Reduction Act of 2022. Some of the biggest supporters of CCS have been fossil fuel producers. Capturing CO2 from these gas processing plants is generally far cheaper than doing so at power plants or industrial sites. Most of the existing capacity is attached to gas processing plants, where oil companies separate naturally-occuring carbon dioxide from methane, also known as natural gas. That’s equal to about 0.1 percent of global CO2 emissions. Carbon dioxide that is injected underground can also leak into groundwater or the atmosphere if storage sites are not properly screened or maintained.ĭespite decades of research and billions in public and private investment, there were only a few dozen CCS plants operating worldwide as of March 2023, with the ability to remove only about 46 million metric tons of carbon dioxide per year, according to the International Energy Agency. One CO2 pipeline ruptured in Mississippi in 2020, sending dozens who were exposed to the gas to the hospital. The problem is that building and running carbon capture operations is expensive, involves complex engineering challenges and presents environmental risks. The technologies could, theoretically, help reduce emissions from coal- and gas-fired power plants and industrial operations like cement and steel manufacturing, and it could also be used to make low-carbon hydrogen fuel from natural gas. The idea is not new, but has gotten lots of attention and tens of billions of dollars in funding in recent years as governments look to accelerate efforts to cut climate pollution. Carbon capture and storage refers to a suite of technologies that remove carbon dioxide from smokestack emissions and then compress the climate-warming gas for injection underground.
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