Today in POLITICO Energy’s podcast: Zach Warmbrodt breaks down what the GOP is trying to achieve by dedicating a month to scrutinizing how corporations integrate climate and social goals into their business plans. Power Switch is brought to you by the journalists behind E&E News and POLITICO Energy. It’s Tuesday - thank you for tuning in to POLITICO’s Power Switch. We can help places like China and India reduce emissions and come into compliance.” “If we’re successful,” he said, “not only can we deploy this technology, we can also export it internationally. At a recent news conference, EPA Administrator Michael Regan expressed confidence the technology was “within reach.” The Biden administration remains undeterred. Only one commercial-scale, coal-fired power plant used carbon capture in the U.S., and the project was mothballed in 2020, amid a drop in oil prices and the onset of the pandemic. are linked to ethanol production or natural gas processing. Most carbon capture and storage facilities in the U.S. Utilities trying to comply with the EPA’s proposal might find it makes more economic sense to retire their fossil fuel plants or switch to hydrogen-fired gas power, said Metin Celebi, a consultant with the Brattle Group.Īnd while EPA says carbon capture is an “effective mitigation measure” that power plants can employ readily, utilities are not convinced the technology is ready. “Our regulatory structure does not love the risk involved in new technology.”Īnother reason is cost. “This is an industry that is not generally incentivized to work with emerging technologies,” she told Carlos, Jason and Zach. investor-owned electric utility companies. New technology means new risks, and utilities don’t like that, said Emily Sanford Fisher of the Edison Electric Institute, which represents U.S. Utilities’ job is to keep the lights on and rates low. West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey (R) has pledged to challenge the rule in court. While shutting down more fossil fuel plants could help achieve the emissions cuts needed to avert the worst of climate change, some analysts worry that too many closures could destabilize the grid.Ī lack of appetite for carbon capture among utilities could also help conservatives persuade courts to strike down EPA’s proposed pollution standards as too onerous. Despite substantial federal subsidies and a proposed EPA mandate to cut power plants’ emissions, utilities are simply unenticed, write Carlos Anchondo, Jason Plautz and Zach Bright.Įven in Wyoming, where a 2020 law requires utilities to trap and store carbon rather than close coal plants, a major state power provider announced this spring it would retire plants instead of retrofitting them. and found that only one has active plans to adopt technology to snare their greenhouse gas pollution. POLITICO’s E&E News contacted the 10 companies that control the largest coal and natural gas fleets in the U.S. The country’s largest utilities may choose to shutter their fossil fuel plants rather than take advantage of the generous tax credits the Biden administration is offering for installing carbon capture. A study by The University of Michigan’s Global CO2 Initiative estimates that carbontech could utilize billions of tons of CO2 and result in trillion dollar markets by 2030 - with concrete, fuels, and aggregates having the greatest market potential.POLITICO illustration by Claudine Hellmuth/Photos by iStock An analysis done by Carbon180 found that the carbontech market could reach $1 trillion in the United States and almost $6 trillion globally. The companies profiled below have either found exciting ways to infuse CO2 into products like fuels and building materials (known as carbontech ) or have found new approaches to capture carbon altogether. Given the growing interest in the space, I want to highlight a number of companies with particularly unique approaches to capturing or utilizing CO2. In the days following, Lowercarbon Capital revealed a $350M carbon removal venture fund, the DOE announced $14M in funding for direct air capture (DAC) pilot projects, and 15 companies were each awarded $1M through Elon Musk’s $100M Carbon Removal XPrize initiative.Ĭarbon removal is certainly hitting its stride. A pioneering group of companies launched Frontier Climate - a nearly $1 billion Advance Market Commitment (AMC) to further catalyze the carbon removal market (I’ve written more about AMCs here and here ). April was a big month for carbon removal.
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