Carbon Capture Gets Federal Money, But Is It Needed?

to hopelessness and despair. And I think that's why a lot of people, myself very much included, like to talk about carbon capture technology. It feels hopeful to consider the possibility of sucking greenhouse gases out of the air and reversing not just stopping, but reversing the damage that we've already done to the planet. And you know who else

is a fan of carbon capture. The United States Congress tucked deep into the most recent COVID relief bill that the President signed last month was four hundred four twenty seven million dollars for the Energy Department to do research into carbon capture technology. Bloomberg Laws. Bobby McGill wrote about this funding provision in the bill, and he says a lot of climate scientists and climate activists actually aren't too

excited about it. I spoke with him about where this money is actually going to be spent, and also about what carbon capture actually is. Carbon capture often to a lot of folks, means that, you know, it's something that you it's a method of containing the emissions from coal fired power plants and oil and gas operations. But that's not really what this is about. Carbon dioxide removal means removing CO two from the atmosphere as a way to

mitigate climate change. Yeah, I mean, this is like futuristic stuff. And as you mentioned, you know, the reason why we're talking is because the latest stimulus bill had a provision tucked deep inside it that gave half a billion dollars to the Energy Department to research this. What's the Energy Department going to be spending this money on. Well, it's going to be spending this money on a task force.

It's going to be spending this money on, you know, basically trying to figure out how much CO two needs to be removed from the atmosphere. The thing is, though, that scientists already have a pretty good idea of how much CO two may need to be removed from the atmosphere. So it's unclear as to what this task force is actually going to accomplish in the next few years. But it is a you know, it's it's half a billion dollars.

It's quite a bit of money for research, but it's also not necessarily going to remove any CO two from the atmosphere. Well, it's interesting you mentioned you put it that way because you know, yes, I mean, half a billion dollars is half a billion dollars, it's nothing disneeze at, but in terms of the federal budget, like, it's not really not that much. I mean, but you said this is like one of the biggest outlays of federal money toward carbon capture research, right, Like ever, I mean, is

that true? Right? I Mean, here's the thing. The reason this is so con is that and you know, there is bipartisan support for this. There are you know, plenty of Democrats and Republicans are interested in this in part as a as a climate mitigation strategy. But it's controversial because it's not it's not entirely agreed on that it's necessary that's because none of this means anything unless you

stop emitting carbon dioxide in the first place. And so, you know, some of the scientists I talked to were like, well, removing CO two that that sounds good, but you've got to prioritize the thing that most that a lot of folks don't want to do right now in any sort

of serious way, which is to stop burning oil. Well, let's really get into that, because I mean, that's one of the reasons why I wanted to talk to you about this, and one of the reasons why I like talking about carbon capture is because to me, at least, it feels like one of the few climate change stories that is optimistic that you know, it's sort of offers hope that maybe we cannot just stop the damage to

the planet but reverse it. But you know, it sounds like, based on everything you're saying and everything that was in your story, it's really not the case. Well, here's here's

the thing. Carbon dioxide removal was a little bit of the elephant in the room of the Paris Climate Agreement because the science that's behind the Paris Climate Agreement suggests that if CO two concentrations of the atmosphere reach a certain point by mid century, we're going to need to begin removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere on a mass scale.

And the problem with that is that there's no the technology for this has never really been proven to work at a mass scale, and you would have to potentially, you know, to meet the most ambitious goal of the Paris Climate Agreement, you would have to potentially remove decades of carbon dioxide pollution from the atmosphere. It's not known if that's even possible, and whether it's possible or not, it won't make a bit of difference unless you stop

emitting carbon dioxide in the first place. One of the other reasons that this is controversial is that you know a lot of There are plenty of scientists who say that you know, despite the fact that this may be necessary at some point, a lot of carbon capture proponents could see this as a way to continue to use

oil and gas and coal. If you know that you can emit and then or you can burn this for electricity and energy, and you can store the emissions and prevent it from getting into the atmosphere, it could breathe new life into the fossil fuel industry right. And that's actually I'm glad you brought that up because that's something I wanted to get into, which is that you know, this made its way, This half a billion dollars made its way into the stimulus bill, which means it has

bipartisan support. You know, who are the legislators that are backing this. I get the sense that, you know, there are a lot of Republican lawmakers who are very pro fossil fuels who are into this, right. So you've got Lisa Murkowski, for one thing, she from Alaska, Republican. You know, she is one of the most vocal proponents of oil

and gas development on the north slope of Alaska. On the other side of the aisle, you've got folks like Sheldon Whitehouse who are climate hawks and you know, wants to aggressively cut emissions, and you know, this is something it's kind of like nuclear power. You get folks on both sides of the aisle UH supporting it as a climate measure, but you know there's also UH incentives in

there for for industry. Yeah, I mean there are not a lot of and I know John Burrosso, who was the outgoing head of the Senate Environment Committee senator, a Republican senator from Wyoming, very very pro fossil fuel industry, also is a big fan of carbon capture. So not a lot of things that Murkowski, Verasso, and white House agree on, this is one of them. I mean, finally, do you see more money going towards this in the future.

I mean, it's tough to say. We have a new president and new Congress coming in, but it seems like if we can get bipartisans support for this for you know, half a billion dollars, this could be going somewhere, we could get more money in the future. Is that possible? I would I would assume. So, I mean there's no indication. I mean, given that you know that four hundred and forty seven million dollars may not seem like a lot of money in terms of the of the federal budget,

but it's it is a substantial amount of money. And ultimately, it comes down to this, It's it's not proven that this is needed. It's also not proven that it's not needed. And you know, climate change is such an all hands on deck situation that and you know, it seems so unlikely that we're going to you know, cut emissions to the degree that's necessary within the timeframe that's required to

you know, meet two degrees. Uh, you know, it's it's going to be it's going to be likely that this this research is critical and and a lot of people are researching this and and uh there was a sort of a roadmap for you know, research on carbon dioxide removal that came out from the National Academy of Sciences two years ago, and uh it sort of paves the

way for this kind of this kind of research. And you know, there some some pretty uh significant voices in the climate community were are are calling for this and and so you know, if it turns out it is necessary, we theoretically the countries need to have a plan for

how to deploy this kind of technology. And there are many different, very complicated technologies, but you know, climate change is kind of an all hands on deck situation and this certainly would seem to be a part of that, and I would imagine that the Biden administration would want to continue to support it. That was Bloomberg Law reporter Bobby McGill speaking about carbon capture technology. And that's it for today's episode of Parts per Billion. If you want more,

Environmental News. Check us out on Twitter. We use the handle at environment just that, just at environment, nothing else. I'm at David B. Schultz on Twitter. If you want to discuss anything with me, I'll take all comers. Today's episode of Parts per Billion was produced by myself and Josh Block. Special assistance on this episode came from Anna Yugananov. Parser Billion was created by Jessica Coombs and Rachel Daegel. The music today's episode is a Message by JESR and

Nightwalk by Polo County and Benoit Mitdrakowski. They were used under a Crenitive Commons license. Thank you everyone for listening. This is Adam Allington and I'm here to announce a new season of Uncommon Law, a narrative podcast series from Bloomberg Law Wow, My co host and I will speak with African American attorneys and hear their perspectives on how big law is for in some cases, isn't adapting to

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