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09-Lea-Carbon-Capture-Technology.md

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Policy Debate: Government-Subsidizing of Carbon Capture Technology

Should governments around the world subsidize the production of carbon-capture technology?

Main category: Environment and Natural Resources

Main groups

Supporting group

Name: Bipartisan bill, "FUTURE ACT" led by former Senator Heidi Heitkamp.

  • other supporters: Environmental Groups, business groups, Fossil Fuel companies.

URL with supporting evidence of supporting:

Opposing group

Name: Other environmental groups, such as Greenpeace,Sunrise Movement, National Resources Defense Council, Center for International Environmental Law, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.

URL with opposing evidence of supporting:

Policy estimates

Presented by supporting group

Evidence of supporters citing this report: Mentions IPCC report. https://www.climatedocket.com/2019/03/13/carbon-capture-fossil-fuels-ciel-report/

Title of report: Global Warming of 1.5C, Section 2.4 "Disentangling the Whole System Transformation," subsection 2.4.2.3 "Deployment of Carbon Capture and Storage."

Authoring Organization: The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

Authors (if any): Rogelj, J., D. Shindell, K. Jiang, S. Fifita, P. Forster, V. Ginzburg, C. Handa, H. Kheshgi, S. Kobayashi, E. Kriegler, L. Mundaca, R. Séférian, and M.V. Vilariño, 2018

URL of report: https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/chapter/chapter-2/

Main Benefits

- potential for capturing and storing 2,000 gigatons of carbon dioxide by 2050, world-wide.

Main Costs

IPCC had no mention of monetary costs (too broad on global scale), but found D.O.E. document: https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2019/10/f67/Internal%20Revenue%20Code%20Tax%20Fact%20Sheet.pdf

Overall:
  • Monetary: (for the United States)
  • \45Q tax credit\ (for businesses producing C02)
  • $50 per metric ton stored geologically
  • $35 for EOR, EGR, or CO2 utilized in another qualified manner, with the credit increasing annually until the full value is reached in 2026.
  • Not fully-proven technology
  • Risks of further environmental damage in storage process (leakage)
  • Vulnerable communities negatively affected

Presented by opposing group

Evidence of opponents citing this report: https://www.climatedocket.com/2019/03/13/carbon-capture-fossil-fuels-ciel-report/

Title of report: FUEL TO THE FIRE: How Geoengineering Threatens to Entrench Fossil Fuels and Accelerate the Climate Crisis

Authoring Organization: Center for International Environmental Law

Authors (if any): (Authored by aforementioned organization)

URL of report: https://www.ciel.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/CIEL_FUEL-TO-THE-FIRE_How-Geoengineering-Threatens-to-Entrench-Fossil-Fuels-and-Accelerate-the-Climate-Crisis_February-2019.pdf

Main Benefits

  • In the race to mitigate the effects of climate change and keep global warming to the maximum increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius, any technology, such as Carbon-Capture technology that limits or reduces the amount of Carbon Dioxide in earth's atmosphere is helpful; what matters is who is funding it, supporting it, and why.

Main Costs

  • Specific monetary costs not mentioned.
  • Cost to environment from: Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR)
    • Most large-scale CCS projects use captured carbon for Enhanced Oil Recovery;
    • potential for 40% more coal and up to 923 million additional barrels of oil in the US alone by 2040
  • Calculation of Gigatons of Carbon Dioxide released into atmosphere SOLELY from CCUS technology in the United States alone: - According to the EPA's "Greenhouse Gases Equivalencies Calculator": - 5.80 mmbtu/barrel × 20.31 kg C/mmbtu × 44 kg CO2/12 kg C × 1 metric ton/1,000 kg = 0.43 metric tons CO2/barrel - "923 million additional barrels of oil" in US (CIEL) = 923,000,000 [barrels] x 0.43 [tons of CO2/barrel] - = 396890000 (~ 396 million) more tons of C02 emitted by 2040 in the US alone
  • 0.39689 Gigatons C02 added by 2040 in US alone. 396 million/20 years = approximately 20 million tons of additional C02 added by the United States to the atmosphere per year from CCUS for EOR
  • CCS preserves existing energy and transportation systems with high social costs to society.
  • Requirement of abundance of energy for CCS leads to potential environmental externalities
  • Not proven to work on a mass scale