Carbon capture plans getting $2.5B
White House is releasing funds for projects; Houston is interested in a storage complex
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration is releasing $2.5 billion in federal funding to help develop carbon capture projects, one of the technologies Houston city leaders are banking on to help turn the region into a clean energy hub.
The Department of Energy said $1.7 billion in funding will go to up to six carbon capture projects where emissions are transported and stored geologically with an additional $820 million targeted toward largescale pilot projects that can be used to capture emissions from the power and industrial sectors.
“Drastically cutting emissions across our economy through next-generation carbon management technologies is a critical component of President Biden’s strategy to combat the climate crisis,” Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said in a statement. “By focusing on some of the most challenging, carbon-intensive sectors and heavy industrial processes, today’s investment will ensure America is on a path to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 and at the forefront of the global clean energy revolution.”
The United Nations International Panel on Climate Change has identified carbon capture as a necessary technology if the world is to avoid cataclysmic climate change.
The technology has so far proved to be prohibitively expensive, but a number of startup businesses and some oil companies, including Occidental Petroleum, are investing in the technology as a means to keep using oil and natural gas as nations move toward net-zero greenhouse gas emissions.
A coalition of companies that includes Exxon Mobil, Air Liquide, Royal Dutch Shell and Chevron is developing a largescale carbon storage complex in the Houston area to serve the region’s massive industrial and petrochemical sectors. The facility would have the capacity to store 50 million metric tons of carbon dioxide per year by 2030 and about 100 million metric tons by 2040 — equal to almost the entire global capacity of existing carbon capture systems.
Jane Stricker, executive director of the Houston Energy Transition Initiative, a local business group, called the $2.5 billion in funding, “a major step in the right direction and will
likely help jump-start critical efforts in this region.”
“We continue to believe there is no geography in the world better positioned than Houston for large-scale (carbon capture, use and storage) projects,” she said.
The funding announced Thursday was part of a $12 billion package for carbon capture projects included in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act signed into law by President Joe Biden in 2021. Those projects are also able to claim an increased tax credit under last year’s Inflation Reduction Act, with facilities storing carbon dioxide underground eligible for an $85 per ton tax credit — the price technology companies said was needed to make projects economic.
Construction on carbon capture facilities has so far been slow to begin, with more than 30 projects still under review at the Environmental Protection Agency.