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There’s about to be a big boom in
carbon capture projects
Many of the projects on the horizon are still tangled up with oil and
gas
![](images/images_10_20_2022/pic2.jpg)
The Hawiyah Natural Gas Liquids Recovery Plant, operated by Saudi
Aramco in June 28, 2021. The plant is designed to process 4 billion
standard cubic feet per day of sweet gas as pilot project for carbon
capture technology.
Photographer: Maya Siddiqui / Bloomberg via Getty Images
The business of capturing carbon dioxide
from industrial emissions is booming around the world. The technology
is gaining popularity as a way for companies to limit the pollution
they produce that causes climate change. But even as it grows, the
carbon capture industry is holding tight to its ties to oil and gas.
Across the globe, the capacity to capture
and store planet-heating carbon dioxide has grown by 44 percent over
the past 12 months, according to a new
report from
think tank Global CCS Institute, which advocates for carbon capture
and storage (CCS). That includes projects to scrub CO2 out of
smokestack emissions from a veritable pantheon of the most notorious
pollution sources: power plants, natural gas processing plants, oil
refineries, hydrogen producers, cement and steel factories, and
petrochemical and synthetic fertilizer manufacturers.
Right now, there are only 30 CCS facilities
operating and 11 under construction. But 153 more carbon capture and
storage projects are in development, according to the Global CCS
Institute. Of the 196 projects in the pipeline
globally, 61 new projects got started in 2022 alone.
61 new projects got started in
2022 alone
Looking at the report’s list of CCS
facilities either operating or in the works in 2022, The Verge
found that a majority of projects are tangled up with oil and gas.
Roughly 60 percent of the projects are either backed by
fossil fuel companies and / or aim to capture emissions from fossil
fuel power plants, petrochemical facilities, and fossil fuel-adjacent
industries like
industrial
fertilizer and
hydrogen production that are major gas consumers. And 30 of the
facilities already use or plan to use the captured carbon for a
process called
enhanced oil recovery, in which fossil fuel companies shoot the
CO2 into the ground to push up hard-to-reach oil.
With those numbers, it’s no wonder that some
environmental groups are skeptical of carbon
capture as a climate fix. Many are worried that the
technology will only deepen economies’ reliance on fossil fuels rather
than help to usher in an age of cleaner energy sources. In the US,
that
includes Food & Water Watch, The Indigenous Environmental Network,
and Friends of the Earth.
There are several reasons why groups like
these say carbon capture tech isn’t a cure-all for fossil fuels. For
starters, it doesn’t typically capture 100 percent of the CO2 a
pollution source like an industrial plant generates.
With those numbers, it’s no
wonder that some environmental groups
are skeptical of carbon capture as a climate
fix
For instance, a
plan to build a carbon capture facility at Louisiana’s biggest
source of industrial greenhouse gas emissions, an ammonia plant, is
supposed to capture 2 million metric tons of CO2 annually when
complete — even though the plant produced 10 million metric tons of
the greenhouse gas in a single year. And that’s just taking CO2 into
consideration. The ammonia plant also lies within Louisiana’s “cancer
alley,” an 85-mile “chemical corridor” pockmarked with refineries
and petrochemical plants that pump out air pollutants that have been
linked to higher cancer rates in the state.
“Projects like this serve as a vehicle for
greenwash at a massive scale,” Carroll Muffett, president and CEO of
the nonprofit Center for International Environmental Law,
told The Verge last week after the Louisiana project was
announced.
Using renewable energy sources like solar
and wind — instead of pairing coal, oil, and gas with carbon capture
as a bandaid — can prevent pollution that heats up the planet and
poisons communities. To be sure, there’s some optimism for carbon
capture as a last-ditch effort to decarbonize industries that can’t
turn to solar and wind as easily to fire up a furnace, for instance.
And there are other efforts to remove some of the CO2 emissions we’ve
historically pumped into the atmosphere directly out of the air — some
of which
have started to break away from the fossil fuel industry.
But those uses for carbon capture and
removal still make up a smaller portion of carbon
capture projects in the pipeline. For now, it seems that carbon
capture tech is primarily
helping fossil fuels maintain their foothold in our energy economy
— even in efforts to clean up the mess they’ve created.
Green Play Ammonia™, Yielder® NFuel Energy.
Spokane, Washington. 99212
www.exactrix.com
509 995 1879 cell, Pacific.
exactrix@exactrix.com
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