In a First, California Counts on Carbon Capture to Meet Its Climate Goals

by Anne C. Mulkern (E&E News Climatewire) State officials face criticism for their plan to reach net zero in part through carbon capture. They concede CCS is “uncertain.”

The regulatory board, known as CARB, wrote in an April analysis of its plan to speed up greenhouse gas emissions reductions that “deployment of CCS technologies” is a “critical [greenhouse gas] abatement measure.”

Despite his caveat, (California Air Resources Board spokesperson Dave) Clegern said that “CCS will be an important tool to help achieve the 48 percent emission reduction level by 2030.” CARB identified the goal as an interim step to carbon neutrality.

Carbon capture is one of several CARB strategies to fight climate change in the nation’s most populous state.

California’s plan to use CCS is occurring amid national controversy about reliance on the technology. The powerful Edison Electric Institute, which represents large electricity producers, sued the Biden administration in May arguing that EPA is improperly relying on CCS to meet national emissions goals.

EPA’s rule requires some new gas plants and coal-fired units to begin capturing emissions for permanent storage by 2032 or to close by 2039. EEI said the technology isn’t ready for use

The California analysis focuses on implications of making the state’s cap-and-trade program more stringent. The analysis is “an early snapshot” of an upcoming plan — possibly released as early as this summer — to upgrade the nation’s largest carbon market, Clegern said.

California’s reliance on CCS is championed by Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, a national political figure who touts his environmental record. In a letter to CARB Chair Liane Randolph in 2022, Newsom said, “It will not be possible to eliminate all emissions across our economy, so achieving carbon neutrality will rely on carbon sequestration.”

There are 15 pilot projects testing carbon capture at factories, including four in Texas, three in Kansas and two in Wyoming, the Congressional Budget Office reports.

No CCS projects exist in California. That’s in part because of permitting holdups, Clegern said.

The pilot projects reveal the current limits of the technology — and a problem with California’s CCS plan. Most of the pilots have capture rates below the level California assumed in its modeling and below what EPA wants at power plants.

The pilots capture 50 to 70 percent of the carbon emissions they’re targeting. Some recover less than 20 percent, IEEFA said.

California assumes a 90 percent capture rate in its estimate of greenhouse gas reductions.

California is planning for CCS to be installed on the “majority” of petroleum refining operations by 2030, according to CARB’s 2022 plan for how it will meet the state’s carbon-neutrality goal.

“It’s not remotely feasible to build on these timelines even if the refineries wanted to do this,” Cullenward (Danny Cullenward, climate economist and vice chair of California’s Independent Emissions Market Advisory Committee) said in an email. The facilities are not in either planning or permitting phases, he added.

Some industrial facilities and power plants emit high-purity streams of carbon from flues, making it “really inexpensive to capture from those sources,” Grove (Ben Grove, carbon storage manager with Clean Air Task Force) said.

A federal tax credit now available through the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 provides $85 per ton of carbon captured and stored permanently in geologic formations.

That’s more than enough to cover the cost of capturing and storing carbon from an ethanol plant, which would run about $50, Grove said. READ MORE