Carbon Capture and Storage: Fact or Fiction?

Extractive industry uses propaganda to protect private profits at the expense of the public interest. According to our analysis, evidence suggests that carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a greenwashing scheme that not only bolsters the oil and gas industry, but is also a boon to other corporate interests opposed to decarbonizing the economy.

Ohio River Valley Carbon Capture and Storage Candidates

This interactive map looks at existing fossil fuel and energy infrastructure along with CO2 production in the Ohio River Valley.

View the map “Details” tab below in the top right corner to learn more and access the data, or click on the map to explore the dynamic version of this data. Data sources are also listed at the end of this article.

In order to turn layers on and off in the map, use the Layers dropdown menu. This tool is only available in Full Screen view.

Items will activate in this map dependent on the level of zoom in or out.

View Full Size Map | Updated 8/31/2022 | Map Tutorial

Carbon Capture and Storage: Fact or Fiction?

Will taxpayers be on the hook for the incurred losses and none of the gains associated with carbon capture and storage (CCS)? As a result of new legislation, it appears that the answer is yes. The Federal Carbon Dioxide Removal Leadership Act recently introduced by Democratic Representatives Paul Tonko of New York and Scott Peters of California would direct the Department of Energy to pay for an increasing amount of carbon to be removed from the atmosphere each year at a cost of about $9.6 billion over the first 12 years (Grist), or roughly 15% of what the fossil fuel industry receives each year in “implicit fossil fuel subsidies” according to research by Matthew Kotchen at Yale University. 

This would be on top of the $3.5 billion committed by the US Federal Government to Direct Air Capture (DAC) to build “four hubs for industrial carbon removal, without limitations on that funding flowing to private corporations.” This announcement caused consortia all across the country to clamor to be the first in line for government handouts like the IRS’s 45Q program “intended to incentivize investment in carbon capture and sequestration.” 

CCS and CCUS are integral parts of the Biden administration’s Build Back Better (BBB) fleet of initiatives, but do they substantively address climate change? Or are they simply short-term profiteering schemes for the fossil fuel industry and their cronies? One ominous sign is that, in a city where the only thing the two parties can agree upon is the need to make Daylight Savings Time permanent, they both seem to be unified in cheerleading for CCS and CCUS. 

The 45Q programs promoted by BBB were summarized by RBN Energy as follows, which gives us a sense for the increasingly obvious connectivity between Big Oil & Gas and Big Ag:

“The discussed changes incorporated in the BBB include significant increases in the tax credit for conventional sequestration methods, two elements included in nearly all plans to update the 45Q tax credit. For example, the current credit for [CCUS] (such as EOR) stands at $25.15/MT [Metric Tons]…and is scheduled to rise to $35/MT in 2026…under the existing tax code; under BBB, it would be reset at $50/MT…For CCS, the credit — now $37.85/MT…and set to increase to $50/MT…in 2026 — would soar to $85/MT…under BBB…the higher rates would significantly benefit carbon-capture retrofits on projects including ammonia, ethanol, natural gas processing, and hydrogen…”

As senior investigator at the Climate Investigations Center, and author of the Huffpost piece, “The Gassing of Satartia,” Dan Zegart wrote about the industries that stand to benefit from the profiteering associated with CCS and CCUS, stating, “There is…a much larger range of supporting industries, from ammonia to ethanol and fertilizer, chemicals, LNG, steel, cement and now hydrogen – than ten years ago. And the international climate treaty process has wrapped itself tightly around CCS as the magic bullet to keep the world at safer GHG levels.” 

To Zegart’s point about industry connectivity and beneficiaries the US EPA FLIGHT data speaks to 453 cement manufacturing and related construction facilities in the US with average annual emissions of 257,207 metric tons of CO2, 31 NGL or LNG facilities averaging 365,843 metric tons of CO2, 668 agricultural operators broadly defined to include fertilizers averaging 167,187 metric tons of CO2, and 105 ethanol related operators averaging 160,529 metric tons of CO2 emitted (Table 1).

Table 1. Total and Average CO2 Emissions across sectors in the US EPA FLIGHT Emissions Database.

There is recent evidence that a majority of CCUS technologies don’t permanently store CO2, collect it from atmospheric and natural sources, nor have zero emissions. A team of scientists at Radboud University in the Netherlands found that 32 of the 40 CCUS technologies they looked at did not meet any of these criteria, and in fact emitted more carbon than they captured. The exceptions were those technologies deployed in the production of concrete and oil extraction, such as enhanced oil recovery (EOR). Furthermore, from a political and financial perspective, there is evidence of rampant fraud in the carbon-capture tax credits program with the US Treasury Department finding that $893 million of the $1 billion in tax credits claimed by ten companies from 2010 to 2019 didn’t comply with EPA incentive program rules.

The loudest voices in favor of weakening EPA emissions include the largest fish in the oil and gas pond like ExxonMobil. It can’t be a coincidence that Exxon wants to weaken EPA emissions requirements while its much ballyhooed 35-year-old Shute Creek EOR CCUS Project in Southwest Wyoming has “failed to reach carbon dioxide (CO2) capture capacity…and has vented captured CO2 back into the atmosphere when it couldn’t be sold to companies extracting more oil from depleted reservoirs.”

Industry Fabrication

This article is part three in a series about carbon capture and storage. In the next installment, we look at how CCS pipeline proposals are playing out in the United States’ Bread Basket, the role that pore space is playing in these discussions, and current and future legislation designed to impede the ability of individuals to fight back against eminent domain and related industry heavy handedness. Read more.