Carbon capture lets Big Oil off the hook; we foot the bill
After going into overtime negotiations, a historic agreement by delegates from more than 200 countries attending the annual U.N. Climate Change Conference made global headlines last week for referencing the need for a transition “away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner.”
As my fellow climate and community advocates, including many who joined me at COP28 to push for a fossil fuel phase out, were quick to point out, the agreement in Dubai was simultaneously groundbreaking and not nearly enough to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, or even to keep the world under 1.5 degrees of warming.
What’s more, the agreement leaves giant loopholes for costly emissions reduction technologies that are unproven at best and that more likely will increase dangerous pollution.
The promise that fossil fuel operations will capture and store the carbon they produce is repeated by the industry and governments alike, including the Biden administration. In reality, carbon capture has overwhelmingly been used to produce more oil and gas, and more greenhouse gases. An industry report showed that, of a dozen U.S. commercial carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) projects in operation in 2021, over 90% were engaged in the process of “enhanced oil recovery.”
The agreement reached at COP28 calls for carbon capture and storage for difficult-to-abate sectors such as concrete and steel production. It’s hard to imagine governments and industry won’t use this as cover to produce more oil and gas for all kinds of uses.
Already the U.S. has set production records for oil and gas, along with exports of the same.
As a former oil and gas industry worker, I know all too well that these companies have only one thing on their minds: profits. They’ll do whatever it takes to continue business as usual, and CCS is just the fig leaf they needed.
CCS empowers oil and gas companies to make money on both ends — from extracting and selling more oil and gas and from the supposed solutions to its pollution — thanks to massive government subsidies. For example, in the United States, taxpayers are footing the bill for expensive CCS demonstration projects and research, and to underwrite loan guarantees for risky carbon capture projects.
Even the landmark Inflation Reduction Act, which invests in clean energy solutions, increased and extended tax breaks for CCS projects, which could cost taxpayers between $3 billion and $100 billion over the next decade, according to estimates. Despite these massive subsidies, CCS has a track record of failure and false starts.
CCS was on everyone’s lips at COP; its many proponents were busy hosting panels and lobbying governments, leaders, anyone who’d listen. My colleagues and I represented U.S. frontline activists fighting CCS projects and other environmental degradation, which overwhelmingly risk the lives and communities of Americans already vulnerable to pollution, especially Black and brown and low-income people. Big Oil and Gas, with government assistance, plans to compound that risk by running all of this costly, dangerous CCS infrastructure squarely through those same communities that can least afford the risk.
We have less than a decade to get climate change under control and set the world on a path toward a liveable future for our children and grandchildren. That means doubling down on our investments in solar and wind — two renewable, abundant resources that are already economically beating dirtier sources like fossil fuels and coal on cost.
We can’t afford to throw money away on pricey tech fixes that should be reserved for the industries hardest to decarbonize when we have real, affordable clean energy solutions today.