Hey, I'm Adam Allenton. I'm the host of a new show from Bloomberg Environment called The Business of Bees. Here's what you need to know about it. We travel around the country talking to people at every corner of the honeybee ecosystem. This is the largest managed pollination event on Earth. In fact, commercial beekeeping is more important to farming than ever before. But bees are also under threat from pesticides
and evasive pests and mysterious diseases. It's sort of like Christmas when you go to the hive in December and you open the lid, you just hope somebody's home. If you're interested in bees too, I think you might like the show. Look for us wherever you get your podcasts. Forget Carbon Neutral? Can we Go Carbon negative? This week on Parts Pervilion, we talk about the future of sucking greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere. Shalloam and welcome to
Parts per Billion, the podcast from Bloomberg Environment. I'm your host, David Show. You've probably heard a lot of talk recently about reducing carbon emissions. If we want to solve climate change, people say we've got to stop emitting so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. What if we could go even further than that, though, What if we could not just reduce our emissions but also take greenhouse gases out of the air. That's not just science fiction anymore. So called
carbon capture is actually becoming a reality. But the stance of the US government toward this new climate technology is a little murky. And here to get into the murkiness with us is Abby Smith, Bloomberg Environment's climate reporter. Thank you for being here, Abby, thanks for having me so explain the concept behind carbon capture technology. You know, I'm not a scientist, I gather neither are you, although there's nothing wrong with that, But you know, how does this work?
Can we actually do this? Is this something that's possible. I'm not a scientist to answer your question, your first question, but yes, the short answer is yes, we can capture the carbon being emitted from the smoke stacks of industrial facilities, everything from a coal fire power plants to small ethanol plants. And then companies like Carbon Engineering, a Canadian based company, are pioneering direct air capture, essentially sucking carbon directly out
of the atmosphere. So it's not just you know, taking what's coming out of the power plant, but actually just taking it from the just just the air, the ether. I guess that's right. That's what Carbon Engineering is doing, and some other small companies that are working on on direct air capture. I want to point out small small companies. These are tiny startups. Why are Why isn't this like the sort of biggest industry in the world given the scale of the climate problem. The short answer for that
is the cost. I think, you know, we are doing this now on a smaller scale. We are doing carbon capture from industrial facilities, and Carbon Engineering has a pilot facility and they're working on piloting that technology. But it is, you know, quite a lot of money to get these started. It's a large upfront capital investment. So while we are
doing carbon capture on the ground. According to the Global CCS Institute, there are forty three large scale projects in the world in twenty eighteen, but a lot of those are smaller projects there with natural gas processing facilities, there, with fertilizer production. They're not with the power plants. They're not with the large industrial facilities that we really need to get this technology rolling off the ground. And the
main reason is the cost. Well, so yeah, I mean that's I can see why that would be prohibitive if it's you know, we can do this, but it's just unbelievably expensive. But it sounds like, based on your reporting, that Congress is wanting to do something about that and to make the cost of carbon capture not so cost prohibitive. What's happening upon Capitol Hill? Yes, so Congress took a
huge step last year. In fact, group of four bipartisan senators really pioneered this extension and expansion of a tax credit incentive for carbon capture facilities. So that's Senator John Brosso, chairman of the Ronment Committee from a Republican from Wyoming. Senator Sheldon white House, Democrat from Rhode Island, extremely forward looking on climate policy. Senator Yeah, I mean he's known for Senator white House is known for giving a speech
on the Senate floor every week. I think where that's right. He says time to wake up. That's the big He has a big poster, this is time to wake up, and it's a different speech on climate change every week. That's right. Yes, he's a huge climate policy advocate and he has been also a longtime supporter of carbon capture technology. The other two senators surround out that four is former Senator from North Dakota Heidie Hike Camp and then West
Virginia Republican Senator Shelley Moore Capito. So they worked to get that law pass signed into the budget bill last year, and it could be a huge boost to carbon capture technologies. It gives a tax credit per ton captured. And the senators didn't stop there. Barasso and white House have continued to work on another bill called the Use It ap To,
which would in this session. In this session, yes, and so they're working on it would help expand carbon dioxide pipeline infrastructure and also give money for a direct air capture sucking that carbon right out of the atmosphere. So I get the sense that Senator Whitehouse and Senator Barrasso went from Rhode Island one from Wyoming. Don't really see, and a lot of things don't really work together that much. So it's pretty notable that they're working together on this
this bipartisan issue. However, the Trump administration sounds like they're a little more ambivalent what's going on with them. So the Trump administration view is a little complicated when you listen to some of the Trump administration officials speak, Rick Perry of DOE, Andrew Wheeler of EPA, David Bernhardt, they all talk about carbon capture. The Energy Department has been really out in front on this, talking a lot about
how they want to fund more carbon capture. Recent search they really want touristic Yes, they they really like this technology, but they're not really taking the full fledged steps to really get it there. So the prime example of this
is this tax credit that was passed by Congress. It really needs implementation rules to be written by the I R S, and the IRS has not really gotten moving on that, and it might be you know, we might be looking at another year down the road where these rules are of how to implement and take advantage of
that tax credit aren't written. Do you think that's for ideological reasons or do you think that's because the IRS is just so swamped that they are, you know, this backlog of all these things they need to do is or going to be both. My sources are telling me it's the latter, that they are really swamped implementing the tax cut bill, that they are really just understaffed and overworked.
But at the same time, there comes a point where all of these folks in this carbon capture industry, even the Energy Department Secretary Perry wrote to Stephen Minuchen asking him to prioritize this. There's a lot of pressure on the irs right now. So at some point you have to start asking the question, why aren't they prioritizing this, And let's finally take a step back and talk about
carbon capture technology overall. You know, I like talking about it because it seems like this futuristic thing that could solve climate change, which is like this, you know, intractable problem. Is that the case or is it kind of wishful thinking on the part of people who are worried about climate change such as myself. I don't think it's a wishful thinking at all. I think it's actually the opposite.
What the IPCC and what the International Energy Agency are saying is that carbon capture is needed for us to reach our Parisagreement goals, to reach the climate goals. So it's not a fantasy. It needs to be a reality. And you look at something like the IPCC's one point five degree report that came out last year, they say that there would have to be a carbon dioxide removal of one hundred gigatons to a thousand gigatons of carbon dioxide through the twenty first century. That's a large amount.
I don't even really, I'm not sure I quite know what a gigaton is. So it's it's quite a lot, and we need to get if we have any hope of meeting those climate goals. You know, folks, those agencies are saying we need to get rolling. We needed to get rolling yesterday. So I think, you know, it's not kind of this futuristic solution. It's something that everyone's saying we really need on the ground right at this moment. Could we see a situation where I mean, I guess
this is hypothetical, so anything is possible. But could we see a situation where we can emit as much carbon dioxide or as much greenhouse gases as we want and it won't matter because we can just use our you know, carbon capture air suckers like and suck it all out, And so it's we returned to sort of like a you know, pre nineteen fifty energy source. Is that possible, Well, that would require quite a lot of carbon capture, so that that would be at the scale that you know,
I don't think we could even imagine today. But you know, if we're in the land of hypotheticals, if you're capturing and sucking out as much carbon as you're emitting, you're still at that carbon neutral level. But I think we'd have to get to really really large scale of that technology to really make that a reality. And I think putting that much faith in carbon removal and carbon capture is probably not going to get you to those climicals.
You need some of the other stuff too. All right, Well, that was Bloomberg Environment's Abbie Smith talking about carbon capture technology. For more of a reporting, visit our website at newstot Bloomberg environment dot com. That website, once again is news dot Bloomberg environment dot com. Also, don't forget to use the hashtag parts per b to chat with us on social media. That hashtag, once again is parts per b. The episode of Parts per Billion was produced by myself
with help from Jessica Comes. Our editor is MRSA Horn and our audio engineers Nicholas Anzelata. The music for Parts Pavilion is a message by Jazzaar. Thanks for listening.