Carbon Capture Coalition submits recommendations to Biden

The Carbon Capture Coalition on Jan. 21 sent a memo to President Biden’s climate team that includes a targeted list of climate, energy, infrastructure and related federal policy recommendations for the first 100 days of his administration.

“Acting on these recommendations will ensure that carbon capture plays the necessary role in the Biden administration’s stated goal of meeting a 100 percent clean energy economy and net-zero emissions by 2050, while generating new economic opportunities and good-paying union jobs and ensuring that affected communities and workers are not left behind in this transition,” the CCC wrote in the memo.

According to the CCC, the U.S. currently has 13 commercial-scale carbon capture facilities that have a combined capacity to capture approximately 25 million tons of carbon dioxide annually. Those projects represent approximately half of all commercial-scale carbon capture projects operating worldwide.

In addition to climate benefits, the memo stresses that carbon capture projects will also help create jobs. The CCC cites one analysis that predicts that capture deployment at industrial facilities and power plants and the deployment of associated carbon dioxide transport infrastructure in 21 states can support an annual average of up to 68,000 project jobs and 35,800 ongoing operational jobs over a 15-year period while capturing 592 million metric tons of carbon dioxide annually.  

In the memo, the CCC calls for legislative actions to further enhance the Section 45Q tax credit to allow for a direct pay option and further extend the commence-construction window; provide low-cost federal financing, grants and front-end engineering and design studies to enable deployment of large-scale carbon dioxide transport and storage infrastructure; fully fund robust authorizations for U.S. Department of Energy cost-share programs for carbon capture research, development, and demonstration contained in the Energy Act of 2020; and enhance other existing federal incentives to further enable the financing of carbon capture, use and removal projects. The memo also calls on Biden to take executive action to prioritize actions to maximize benefits of carbon capture projects to affected communities; coordinate federal actions to scale up regional hubs for geologic storage of carbon dioxide; and include carbon capture and removal in international climate agreements.

A full copy of the memo can be downloaded from the CCC website.