Carbon Capture

The Nation’s First Commercial Carbon Sequestration Plant Is Leaking

October 23, 2024 Juanpablo Ramirez-Franco, NPR Illinois. Educate! Carbon Capture, Carbon Dioxide, Illinois, Leaks, pollution

A row of executives from grain-processing behemoth Archer Daniels Midland watched as Verlyn Rosenberger, 88, took the podium at a Decatur city council meeting earlier this month. It was the first meeting since she and the rest of her central Illinois community learned of a second leak at ADM’s carbon dioxide sequestration well beneath Lake Decatur, their primary source of drinking water. “Just because CO2 sequestration can be done doesn’t mean it should be done,” the retired elementary school teacher told the city council. “Pipes eventually leak.” ADM’s facility in central Illinois was the first permitted commercial carbon sequestration operation in the country.

Violations Discovered At Nation’s First Carbon Capture And Storage Project

September 14, 2024 Sharon Kelly, DeSmog. Educate! Carbon Capture, Carbon emissions, False Solutions, Fossil Fuels

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) found multiple Safe Drinking Water Act violations at the nation’s first carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) storage project, PoliticoPro’s E&E News reported today. The Decatur, IL, project, run by Archer-Daniels-Midland (ADM), violated rules meant to protect against leaks of captured carbon, the EPA wrote in a notice of violation issued on August 14th. The EPA said it had inspected three ADM wells in mid-June — one used for storing captured carbon dioxide and two used to monitor for leaks and other problems. ADM told E&E News that the violations relate to corrosion in one of the two monitoring wells — a problem that ADM said it had discovered back in March.

Fire Reveals How Oil Industry Environmental ‘Solution’ Spurs Climate Crisis

August 14, 2024 Sharon Kelly, DeSmog. Educate! Carbon Capture, climate crisis, Energy, False Solutions, Fires, Oil and Gas

The trouble began at Piñon Midstream’s Dark Horse Treating Plant in Jal, New Mexico, on November 25, 2023, with an unexpected loud “pop” in the early afternoon, the company would later tell state regulators. A poisonous mix of flammable gasses hissed out from a pipeline feeding into the plant. Within a minute, a worker radioed in to the plant’s control room that a dense cloud of vapor had enveloped part of the plant. Within two minutes, Dark Horse was ablaze in what the company would later call an “intense and sustained fire.” Within 15 minutes, more pipes ripped open, and a towering fireball tore through the plant.

Canceled Canadian CCS Project Deemed ‘Not Economically Feasible’

May 12, 2024 Taylor Noakes, DeSmog. Educate! Canada, Carbon Capture, Carbon emissions, climate crisis, Energy, False Solutions

Capital Power Generation has canceled a $2.4 billion carbon capture and storage (CCS) project at their Genesee Generating Station, claiming it is “technically viable but not economically feasible.” The project aimed to capture and sequester up to 3 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions from the Genesee Power Plant, located southwest of Edmonton, Alberta, a plant that’s in the process of being converted from coal to natural gas. Julia Levin, associate director of National Climate with Environmental Defence, characterized the cancellation as yet another failure for carbon capture.

Local Governments And Grassroots Activists Stop Carbon Capture Pipelines

November 15, 2023 Taylor Noakes, DeSmog. Resist! Carbon Capture, climate crisis, Joe Biden, Pipelines

Players in the carbon dioxide pipeline industry canceled major pipeline projects in recent weeks, marking an inauspicious start to President Biden’s ambitious plans to develop carbon capture infrastructure as a key emissions mitigation tool. It is welcome news to CO2 pipeline opponents, however, which have included a wide spectrum of interest groups united in their concerns over pipeline safety. “I think what the cancellation shows is that people have had enough of fossil fuel infrastructure being forced upon them,” said Lorne Stockman, research co-director with Oil Change International. “It doesn’t surprise me that communities are standing up to these projects and occasionally winning.”

Fossil Fuel Companies Made Bold Promises To Capture Carbon

September 28, 2023 Michael Buchsbaum and Edward Donnelly, DeSmog. Educate! Carbon Capture, Carbon emissions, climate crisis, Fossil Fuels, Oil and Gas

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) was high on the agenda at New York Climate Week last week, where critics of the technology raised concerns it would be used to extend the life of the fossil fuel industry. For years, experts have pointed out that CCS has been primarily used to pump more oil out of the earth, using a process known as enhanced oil recovery (EOR). Burning that oil emits far more carbon dioxide (CO2) than what is captured, and therefore CCS doesn’t represent a viable solution to tackle climate change, critics argue. At a news conference after the one-day UN Climate Ambition Summit on September 20, Tzeporah Berman, chair of the Fossil Fuel Nonproliferation Treaty Initiative, said: “The oil companies acknowledged this year that they will not meet their bogus net zero commitments.

South Dakota PUC Denies Application For Navigator CO2 Pipeline

September 8, 2023 Caleb Barber, Mitchell Republic. Educate! Carbon Capture, Environment, Pipelines, South Dakota

Pierre, SD - The South Dakota Public Utilities Commission on Wednesday, Sept. 6, unanimously denied Navigator CO2 Ventures' project application to build a CO2 pipeline in the state, determining that the company did not seem to be fully intent on complying with the law of the land if its application for the Heartland Greenway Pipeline was approved. "The burden of proof is on the applicant," Commissioner Kristie Fiegen said. "Here, they have raised their hand and have chose to not comply and have asked for an exemption from local laws." Navigator responded to the decision saying it will evaluate the written decision of the Public Utility Commission once issued and determine its course of action in South Dakota thereafter.

The Battle To Stop Air Products’ Carbon Capture Project Grows

February 19, 2023 Julie Dermansky, Desmog. Resist! Air Pollution, Carbon Capture, climate crisis, green washing, Oil and Gas Industry

Where the Tickfaw River leads into Lake Maurepas in South Louisiana, a coffin containing a plastic skeleton is fastened to pilings rising out of the water. “Save Lake Maurepas From Impending Death by Air Products,” a sign above it states. This arresting visual captures the sentiments of opponents of a plan to develop the world’s largest carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) project under the lake. Air Products, a global hydrogen manufacturing company, is proposing to build a $4.5 billion “Clean Energy Complex” to manufacture blue hydrogen and an accompanying carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) project, that would be operational by 2026.

Big Oil’s Secretly Validating Critics’ Concerns About Carbon Capture

February 15, 2023 Dana Drugmand, DeSmog. Educate! Carbon Capture, climate crisis, Environment, ExxonMobil, Oil and Gas, Oil and Gas Industry

Last February, ExxonMobil announced it would further expand its only active carbon capture and storage (CCS) operation in the United States, located at a gas processing facility in LaBarge, Wyoming. Shute Creek is the world’s largest CCS project and has been operational for over 30 years. Although the oil giant publicly touts carbon capture as a “proven” climate solution, its own early foray reveals just how flimsy of a fix the technology really is — and how expensive, both for taxpayers and the climate. For starters, at Exxon’s Shute Creek, nearly all of the CO2 separated from the extracted fossil gas either has been sold, for a profit, to other drillers to use for squeezing out hard-to-recover oil elsewhere (a process called enhanced oil recovery) or vented back into the atmosphere.

Carbon Capture Project Is ‘Band-Aid’ To Greenwash $10 Billion LNG Plant

February 4, 2023 Matthew Green, DeSmog. Resist! Carbon Capture, climate crisis, Gas export, greenwashing, Texas

As the Mexican Día de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, festivities drew to a close, Dina Nuñez called to order a meeting of women grassroots activists in a modest home in the heart of Port Isabel, Texas. Top of her agenda: how to stop a Houston-based oil and gas company from building a $10 billion project to export liquefied natural gas on a nearby stretch of coast. For Nuñez and her friends, the fight against the scheme — known as Rio Grande LNG — is about protecting their community from air pollution; preserving shrimping and tourism; and defending habitats for pelicans, endangered ocelots, and aplomado falcons at the project site on unspoiled wetlands between Port Isabel and the larger city of Brownsville. The claim by developer NextDecade to be building the “greenest LNG project in the world” has thrust the women to the forefront of a global struggle.

Direct Air Capture: Five Things You Need To Know About This Climate Scam

January 21, 2023 Oakley Shelton-Thomas and Mia DiFelice, Food and Water Watch. Educate! Air Pollution, Carbon Capture, climate crisis, False Solutions

We know that the window is quickly closing for us to slash emissions and avoid climate change’s worst effects. So it’s easy to get excited about direct air capture: technology designed to suck carbon dioxide straight from the atmosphere. But oil and gas companies have vested interests in DAC. As a kind of carbon capture and sequestration technology, DAC projects will receive hefty federal tax credits. Now, DAC boosters are drumming up hype that masks real problems — notably, that direct air capture is a scam that won’t help solve the climate crisis. With time running out on climate change, we can’t waste resources on this dangerous and speculative technology. Here are five reasons why.

Native Americans And White Farmers Form An Unlikely Alliance

October 26, 2022 Gretchen Morgenson, NBC News. Resist! Carbon Capture, Indigenous Activism, North Dakota, Pipelines, South Dakota

South Dakota - Since 2010, Joye Braun, a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux tribe in Eagle Butte, South Dakota, has fought the construction of oil and gas pipelines in her region, working to protect sacred places where her forebears hunted and fished and lived and died. In many of those battles, Braun came up against white ranchers and farmers who supported the pipelines and received fees from the developers for the use of their land. Today, Braun is opposing a huge new pipeline that would transport carbon dioxide across five Midwestern states — Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, and North and South Dakota. But this time she finds herself in an unusual alliance with white landowners who are also against the pipeline, like Ed Fischbach, a South Dakota farmer.

Greenwashing, Subsidies And Carbon Pricing

August 31, 2021 Will Dubitsky, Green Transition. Educate! Carbon Capture, climate crisis, Energy, greenwashing

There is a growing chorus in favour of carbon capture and storage technologies (CCS) by fossil fuel firms and governments. In brief, CCS technologies capture emissions from fossil fuel extraction and production. The captured emissions are buried in no longer economically viable oil or gas wells to render them productive once more over a longer period of time. For spent oil wells, this is known as enhanced oil recovery (EOR). One of the reasons many of the oil and gas majors are on the bandwagon for a price on carbon is because they believe that a high carbon price would render CCS “economically viable,” provided CCS is accompanied by outrageous government subsidies. Considering CCS removal of carbon comes to about US$120/U.S. ton, a high carbon price would allow the industry to pursue business-as-usual, while concurrently appearing to be committed to a green economy.

An Effective Low-Tech Way To Slow Climate Change

February 26, 2021 Beverly Law and William Moomaw, The Conversation. Create! Carbon Capture, climate crisis, Forests

Protecting forests is an essential strategy in the fight against climate change that has not received the attention it deserves. Trees capture and store massive amounts of carbon. And unlike some strategies for cooling the climate, they don’t require costly and complicated technology. Yet although tree-planting initiatives are popular, protecting and restoring existing forests rarely attracts the same level of support. As an example, forest protection was notably missing from the US$447 million Energy Act of 2020, which the U.S. Congress passed in December 2020 to jump-start technological carbon capture and storage. In our work as forest carbon cycle and climate change scientists, we track carbon emissions from forests to wood products and all the way to landfills – and from forest fires.

Congress Extends Tax Breaks for Clean Energy — and Carbon Capture

February 11, 2018 Georgina Gustin, Inside Climate News Create! Carbon Capture, Clean Energy, Solar Energy

Some of the tax breaks, like one that restores a tax credit for home geothermal heating and cooling, which can cost tens of thousands of dollars to install, should make a significant difference to individuals trying to lower their carbon footprints. The credit is 30 percent if the system is installed between 2017 and 2019, then drops to 26 percent in 2020 and 22 percent through 2021. Others, like the carbon capture and sequestration provision, offer complicated and uncertain benefits to costly technologies that might or might not pay off—and that are hotly debated in environmental circles. Senators with widely divergent views of climate policy, including Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, favored it. Bob Perciasepe, president of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (C2ES), praised the tax cuts for promoting low-carbon sources of energy, which he called "critically necessary to the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050."

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