![]() ![]() The stated goal of the proposal is climate change mitigation and emissions reductions. Instead, it sets benchmarks for GHG emissions reductions by 20, and offers that fossil fuel companies could achieve those reductions through one of three pathways: shutting down operations and transitioning to renewables, co-firing “low-GHG hydrogen” (which has its own issues), or carbon capture. The Biden Admin’s new policy doesn’t mandate CCS. It would be cheaper, he pointed out, to just swap natural gas and coal for renewables. “Why would we want to spend enormous sums of money on carbon capture projects, which time and time again have proven to be big boondoggles of public money, usually, and rate payer money?” asked Foley. But the power sector doesn’t necessarily need carbon capture to become GHG-free, multiple experts told Earther. Decarbonizing cement and steel production, for instance, will likely require some version of CCS. There are specific applications wherein many agree that carbon capture is important. Often, companies redirect captured gas toward enhanced oil recovery, which means more fossil fuel is extracted, thanks to CCS. There are frequent issues of leaks, breakdowns, and finding adequate storage for all that CO2. And all that effort might not even work to combat climate change. Actually running the CCS technology takes a lot of energy itself. energy sector equalled about 1.65 billion tonnes-meaning using CCS to zero out emissions would cost somewhere on the order of $124 billion each year, not including the sizable upfront cost of building out and retrofitting power plants. Sucking up a single metric ton of carbon emissions at one of these facilities costs between $50 and $100. There are only 12 currently operational CCS projects in the U.S. At basically every turn, instituting carbon capture has proved more complicated, more expensive, and less impactful than expected. And in the decades since, there’s been very little to show for all the billions of dollars of investment that have gone into it. The big push for CCS technology began in the 1980s, marketed by the Department of Energy as “clean coal technology,” said Jonathan Foley, an environmental scientist and the executive director at the climate and decarbonization nonprofit Project Drawdown, in a phone call with Earther. Unfortunately, though CCS might seem less inherently sci-fi than giant, ambient air scrubbers, it also has massive issues of scalability, cost, and efficacy. Then there’s carbon capture and storage (CCS), which aims to tackle carbon pollution at the source and prevent CO2 emissions from ever entering the atmosphere from smokestacks, industrial facilities, and power plants. The tech has lots of problems of scalability, cost, and efficacy, and isn’t a part of this new proposal. ![]() Direct air capture sucks CO2 straight from the atmosphere and sequesters it for safekeeping. There are two major types of carbon capture. Instead, these plants have the option to reduce their emissions through carbon capture and storage-a controversial climate strategy that’s so far mostly proven to be a waste of money and time. One of the biggest potential downsides is that the proposal leans heavily on the idea that fossil fuel-powered plants don’t need to transition to renewables to get us to Biden’s Net-Zero by 2050 goal. (As EPA administrator Michael Regan said proudly in his announcement of the new policy: “Our work is not sacrifice. For environmental and climate advocates, it is not fast nor comprehensive enough. It won’t get rid of all the power sector’s emissions, even if every goal within it is achieved. It doesn’t make any demands of small, often harmful “peaker” plants. Through the proposed rule, the federal agency estimates 617 million metric tons of CO2 emissions would be avoided by 2042-about the same as 137 million cars’ annual output.īut, as with basically all federal environmental policies, it comes with some major caveats. Almost all of these emissions are the result of burning fossil fuels. Energy production emits 25% of all domestic GHG emissions, according to 2021 EPA data, and is second only to transportation in its impact. fixed and unmoving fount) of greenhouse gas emissions in the country. The power sector is the biggest stationary source (i.e. It’s undoubtedly big news for the energy industry and the U.S.’s carbon footprint. Remembering Enterprise: The Test Shuttle That Never Flew to Space These Winning Close-Up Photos Show Life That's Often Overlooked ![]()
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