(C) Common Dreams
This story was originally published by Common Dreams and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .



Carbon dioxide removal–What’s worth doing? A biophysical and public need perspective [1]

['June Sekera', 'New School For Social Research', 'New York', 'United States Of America', 'Dominique Cagalanan', 'Coastal Carolina University', 'Conway', 'Sc', 'Amy Swan', 'Colorado State University']

Date: 2024-08

Failures of market-mechanistic policymaking

In addition to the biophysical analysis, also of crucial importance for policymaking is the perspective of societal need as the policy driver. In terms of public policymaking, societal need differs fundamentally and crucially from market demand; societal (public) need is collective, and the nature of need is different from the nature of demand [11, 13, 71, 72].

In the U.S., CDR policymaking has rested on a notion of market demand and a view that markets will generate effective CDR solutions, with the role of government being to subsidize commercial actors in order to induce development of effective CDR technologies. Calls for research and development on mechanical methods has explicitly identified commercialization as the purpose of government financing, a public policy strategy of “technology push and market pull” [73]. In 2010, the Interagency Task Force on Carbon Capture and Storage called for “national policy frameworks” for commercialization of CCS [74]; the National Academies of Sciences prefaced its 2019 report on “negative emissions technologies” by indicating that it rested on NETs being an attractive commercial opportunity in the “international market” [18]; in 2020 the Congressional Research Service noted that the Dept. of Energy saw “the purpose of its CCS” funding being “to benefit the existing and future fleet of fossil fuel power generating facilities” [75]; and in 2022 the White House Council on Environmental Quality issued guidance to Federal agencies implementing “CCUS” projects across the country, stating repeatedly that “commercialization” is the purpose, even to the point of using public lands for commercial CO2 storage [76].

The technology-push, market-pull orientation of U.S. policymaking on CDR is represented in much of the literature on mechanical CDR [22, 77, 78], and has resulted in several decades and billions of dollars in public subsidies for mechanical carbon capture. Examples include tax credits for CCS and DAC such as the federal 45Q tax credit; carbon offset credit programs, such as the California Low Carbon Fuel Standard; subsidies for scoping and preparation for buildout of CO2 pipelines; and subsidies for alternative fuel production processes (e.g., ethanol, hydrogen) that rely on CCS to be considered “low-carbon”. Additionally, there are federal subsidies that enable oil producers to extract new oil, seen as necessary to assure that CDR projects can be commercially viable [e.g., 79]. In this process, called “enhanced oil recovery” (EOR), drillers use captured CO2 to force out otherwise difficult-to-access, uneconomic, oil. In all but one of the existing 12 CCS projects in the U.S. the captured CO2 is used for EOR [80]. The argument that this process is superior to conventional oil production because some of the injected CO2 stays underground and that this “lower carbon” oil displaces the production of higher-carbon, conventionally-produced oil, is based on unsupported assumptions from economic theory and on an unsupported carbon accounting contrivance [23].

This policy approach has resulted in a track record of failures. The most extensive review [73] examined 263 CCS (this study uses the abbreviation “CCUS” to include projects in which the captured CO2 is solely injected underground, not in any way “utilized”, so the correct abbreviation is “CCS”) projects undertaken between 1995–2018 and found that the majority failed; larger plants with higher capture capacity are more likely to be ended or put on hold; much of the world had cancelled projects (European Union, Australia, Canada, China, United States); and a “growing sentiment” that the risks associated with scaling up the technology to “learn” more are not worth the large investments required. Though the study found private investment in mechanical CDR projects had been minimal, the trend has reversed in the U.S. with pipeline companies, venture capitalists and other companies now arising in growing numbers to take advantage of the public subsidies, such as the 45Q tax credit and California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard to undertake carbon capture, pipeline transport and underground storage of CO2.

A 2021 review of public records [81] on publicly-subsidized CCS projects at power plants in the U.S. similarly showed that all projects failed. A study by the U.S. Government Accountability Office [82] reviewed the 11 major publicly-subsidized CCS projects funded by the US Dept. of Energy from 2009 to 2018 and found that none of the 8 CCS projects at coal power plants were successful, and that only two of the three industrial site demonstration projects remained operational; the study expressed concerns about DOE management of all 11 projects, and highlighted the need for more active Congressional monitoring to improve accountability and reduce the risk of significant spending on projects likely to fail.

A 2020 federal investigation found that claimants for the 45Q tax credit failed to document successful geological storage for nearly $900 million of the $1 billion they had claimed [83, 84]. In a 2021 report on the 45Q tax credit program, the Congressional Research Service [80] noted the shortcomings of the present monitoring, reporting, and verification requirements, and suggested that “Congress may consider whether the IRS has adequately addressed concerns about improper claims”.

The market-mechanistic policy perspective that has resulted in the series of failures encompasses two fundamental flaws in terms of CDR policy. First is the view of captured CO2 as a commodity with exchange value. Second is the idea that burying CO2 underground is a market activity.

The view of captured CO2 as a commodity with exchange value may be sound in theory but is in practice irrelevant: in terms of having climate-relevant impact on the stock of atmospheric CO2, the potential commercial demand for captured CO2 is either insufficient [22, 85–89], counter-productive [e.g., 86], or both. Using CO2 to produce fuel and many other products puts the CO2 back into atmosphere; the primary use is for EOR. There is not sufficient market demand of any kind at the multi-gigaton level of removal and storage required annually to have significant impact on the level of atmospheric CO2. Treating CO2 as a commodity, therefore, will not result in climate-relevant removal.

Secondly, the main justifications for government subsidies are to bring costs down and capture capabilities up. The analogy is frequently made to solar power, where government subsidies led to lower costs and market development. However, this is a false analogy, and a category error. In order to have a climate-significant impact, mechanically captured CO2 must be disposed of at the multi-gigaton level—injected and retained underground, perpetually. In the market exchange mechanism for solar power there is a product—energy—purchased by a customer. But, when the producer’s product—captured CO2—is buried underground and the payor is the public this is not a market exchange [78]. Rather, the process is publicly-financed waste disposal [78, 90–92]. This is analogous to a sewage system [90].

A publicly-financed “sewer system” for disposal of fossil fuel emissions at the multi-gigaton level annually would require the construction of tens of thousands of miles of new CO2 pipelines [28], oftentimes the taking of land by eminent domain; the identification, scoping and preparation of acceptable underground “storage” sites; and negotiations between governments and private storage operators about who will bear long-term legal and financial responsibility for damages and harms from leakage, rupture, seismic events, and probable mass casualty events [47, 48, 93–95]. Co-impacts from every stage of the process are adverse, and would pose significant risks, particularly to frontline communities.

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://journals.plos.org/climate/article?id=10.1371/journal.pclm.0000124

Published and (C) by Common Dreams
Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 3.0..

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/commondreams/

You are viewing proxied material from magical.fish. The copyright of proxied material belongs to its original authors. Any comments or complaints in relation to proxied material should be directed to the original authors of the content concerned. Please see the disclaimer for more details.