| The Biden administration is betting big on companies’ ability to snatch up greenhouse gases from power plants before they can warm the Earth. EPA's proposal to slash climate pollution from power plants is expected Thursday. It could set limits so stringent that coal- and gas-burning plants must either capture their pollution as it's released or shut down altogether, as my colleagues have reported in recent weeks. EPA says carbon capture is a market-ready technology, but only one power plant in the world is using it at scale — in Canada. And energy analysts have concerns about mass deployment, especially when it comes to capturing pollution from natural gas plants, which could be especially expensive, Brian Dabbs, Carlos Anchondo and Christa Marshall write. Plus, the majority of captured carbon today is used as a kind of lubricant for oil production, leaving environmentalists worried that the technology could perpetuate fossil fuel use. The administration says it intends for the bulk of future captured carbon to be permanently stored underground — raising other potential environmental concerns, such as earthquakes. A history: The sole large carbon capture effort operating at a U.S. power plant was the Petra Nova project near Houston. It shut down in 2020 due to a pandemic-related plunge in oil prices. While numerous planned projects have arisen in the last 15 years, all failed to go anywhere. One reason is cost. Plus, there’s no economic penalty for simply letting your carbon dioxide waft into the atmosphere. “For a long time, it was a difficult industry because you were capturing something that was free to emit. It is always more expensive to capture CO2 than release it,” said Adam Goff, senior vice president for strategy at 8 Rivers Capital, a developer of carbon capture technologies. “There wasn’t really a business case.” Changing the game: Billions of dollars in last year’s climate law, coupled with EPA’s upcoming rules — not to mention a smattering of pledges from fossil fuel companies to bring their net carbon emissions to zero — could change all that. The U.S. has more than a dozen proposed capture projects, including several with target start dates before 2030 — though none have started construction yet. Concerns remain: The challenge for carbon capture developers is not just the cost of retrofitting power plants with the technology, but also transporting the greenhouse gas — typically through a pipeline — to its ultimate resting place. Siting pipelines is a massive regulatory undertaking, and communities are already resisting the idea of having carbon stored nearby. Landowners, also hesitant, are pushing for greater federal accountability in case injecting millions of tons of CO2 into the earth fouls their groundwater, triggers earthquakes or otherwise causes problems.
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