Environment | Ten Across | Data Viz
The federal government is spending millions on carbon capture. What is it?
Credit: Marcin Jozwiak for Unsplash.
As a key climate change mitigation strategy, investments are being made at both a federal and private level for carbon capture projects across the country
Editor’s note: This article is part of a collaboration between APM Research Lab and the Ten Across initiative, housed at Arizona State University.
by RITHWIK KALALE | April 23, 2024
Carbon dioxide emissions are a major byproduct of fossil fuel usage—and a key driver of climate change. As of 2022, total cumulative global carbon dioxide emissions totaled 1.77 trillion metric tons, up from 424 billion in 1970, the year of the first Earth Day.
The impacts of carbon dioxide emissions can be mitigated by cutting emissions, a familiar strategy. But, perhaps less well known, carbon dioxide can also be trapped and stored so that it does not impact the earth’s atmosphere. In fact, carbon capture is a major mitigation strategy highlighted in the most recent National Climate Assessment.
How does carbon capture work?
There are two main types of carbon capture: point source and direct air carbon capture. Point source involves trapping carbon dioxide at its source and storing it elsewhere, before it ever gets a chance to emit into the atmosphere. Direct air capture (DAC) technologies attempt to capture CO₂ directly from the air, after emission. According to the International Energy Agency, DAC requires more energy and is more expensive to implement, due to the challenge of extracting dilute carbon from the air.
The logistics of carbon capture play out in three steps, according to utility company National Grid: capture, transport and storage.
The capture stage starts either with a DAC or point source method. For most current carbon-capture projects, the emissions coming from steel and cement production, or fossil fuel burning are the main targets for mitigation.
In both processes, CO₂ is pressurized into a liquid state. The liquid carbon is then transported, either by ship or pipeline, and injected underground for storage. Underground storage methods for CO₂ can be in the form of either saline aquifers, or depleted oil reservoirs.
The logistics of carbon capture are not without its flaws, according to Jennifer Dunn, a professor at the department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Northwestern University.
"There is obvious and notable concern about this type of technology and CO₂ pipelines, for example, if they rupture, it can be catastrophic,” she said.
Pipelines carrying concentrated carbon dioxide that rupture can often lead to explosions, and long-term health consequences for nearby communities. In 2020, the town of Satartia, Mississipi experienced this, and is still dealing with the effects years later.
Natural disasters and other climate issues can also affect this process, especially with the underground stored carbon.
According to the Great Plains Institute, carbon capture hubs are largely located in 14 regions throughout the U.S., while the geological storage potential is spread evenly throughout the country.
Incentivizing and Investment
“The challenge is taking CO₂ from the air and pumping it underground without some kind of policy incentive or some reason for doing it. It wouldn’t happen, right? We're not making a thing that we can sell,” said Dunn.
“What we're selling— our product— is less global warming. Who's the customer for that right now? It's the government with 45Q tax credits. But without that incentive, this is not like a company making widgets to sell. So it's a little bit economically challenging without a strong policy driver.”
The 45Q tax credit, the main federal incentive for investment in carbon capture, recently got a big boost. As part of both the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) and Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) passed by the Biden administration in 2022, tax credit 45Q was updated from providing $50 per ton of CO₂ captured and stored to providing an $80 per ton tax credit for point source capture and $180 per ton for direct air capture. These increases have already caught the attention of companies like ExxonMobil, Shell and Amazon.
ExxonMobil, specifically, issued a statement detailing their progress on both hydrogen production and CO₂ capture efforts, noting that 7.6 billion metric tons of CO₂ will need to be captured and stored per year by 2050 to achieve global net-zero goals.
In December, the energy giant announced a $17 billion investment in low carbon projects. This came after criticism from the International Energy Agency regarding fossil fuel companies attempting to offset their environmental damage by investing in CO₂ capture, instead of opting for clean energy practices.
Getting to implementation
In November 2023, the Department of Energy announced a $444 million dollar investment in carbon capture projects across 12 states in the country. These states included: Texas, Ohio, Colorado, Virginia, California, Oklahoma, Georgia, Arkansas, Wyoming, New Mexico, Illinois and Florida. This investment is separate from the 45Q tax credits granted by the federal government.
As Bloomberg has reported, Texas, Louisiana, Arizona, and West Virginia are in the Environmental Protection Agency’s pre-application process, pending approval for the implementation of technology that will inject and store carbon dioxide underground instead of releasing it into the air (also known as Class VI technologies).
Gulf states lead the country in CO₂ capture efforts, with 10% of CO₂captured globally being in the industrial facilities of the Gulf States.
“Achieving our goals is very, very difficult. We're relying on a lot of different technologies to try and help us get there, which all have lead times,” said Dunn. “Many are subjected to permitting or other environmental review processes and there are various communities that are not enthusiastic about these types of projects. So, this can mean that they don't happen, or they happen much more slowly.”
One example of this is the current implementation of a direct air capture hub in Louisiana. In March, Project Cypress was approved with an initial DOE award amount of over $50 million. The project outline states that it will provide other benefits to the local community and promises to keep them involved, by making data publicly available and encouraging “two-way engagement with impacted communities and workers, with attention to including fence-line, disadvantaged, underrepresented, and typically excluded groups.”
Environmental groups have brought up pipeline concerns, and how the construction of this new facility (along with 22 other proposed hubs awaiting state review) may negatively affect non-wealthy communities and communities of color.
Although a vital part of the country’s efforts in adapting and mitigating climate change, experts say this should not be the only mitigation strategy that we should rely on to meet our climate goals. A study by Stanford University’s Mark Jacobson found that CO₂ capture technology only removed around 10% of an industrial plant’s net emissions and mentions how clean energy alternatives such as wind reduce CO₂ emissions far more, and at a lower cost.
According to Dunn, however, carbon capture is still needed:
“I think even if we turned off all sources of greenhouse gas emissions today, we would still need to do a bunch of work to remove what we've already emitted to mitigate climate change.
“We need to talk with open minds as a country to figure out how we're going to address this problem that is affecting us all. From the Great Lakes to [Arizona] there's no one untouched. We really need to go at this, it sounds so corny but, all together.”