The Roundtable will provide independent research into carbon capture and storage technologies

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies aim to mitigate the effects of burning fossil fuels by capturing carbon dioxide from industrial smokestacks and storing it deep underground. The technology was developed forty years ago to enhance oil recovery from depleted oil fields, it was then introduced as a climate solution two decades ago, and has now returned to the spotlight with new federal subsidies promised for each ton of carbon dioxide injected underground.  

Charles Harvey, MIT professor of civil and environmental engineering, was part of the first US private company in 2008 to pursue CCS. Harvey has been a climate expert on the topic of CCS for more than two decades offering fact and science-based information for public knowledge. He joins Science Roundtable members and climate experts, Robert Bullard, Robert Howarth, Mark Jacobson, and Aradhna Tripat who will provide a unified voice among technical experts on the challenges with carbon capture and storage, elevating the science and data that show carbon capture is among the most expensive, least effective climate “solutions.”  None of the roundtable members accept funding from oil companies, enabling them to speak with a unique and unbiased voice.

“A more viable climate solution is to stop burning coal and gas,” says Harvey.

“What’s remarkable now is that we are in a position where we can produce cheaper electric power by just not burning anything, and not producing CO2,” adds Harvey.

The burning of fossil fuels is the largest contributor to global climate change with nearly 90 percent of all carbon dioxide emissions in the US. According to the International Monetary Fund, about $1.3 Trillion was spent on subsidizing the fossil fuel industry in 2022, the amount does not include the more than $5 trillion in health and environment damages related to the fossil fuel industry. The International Energy Agency recently issued a report about the trillions of dollars in savings if the world stops burning coal and gas and invests in renewable energy for power generation. A report from Oxford University quantifies how, including CCS in a path to net zero emissions, would add more than a trillion dollars in cost each year relative to the following a path to net zero with little CCS.  

Harvey thought carbon, capture and storage was a promising climate solution when he co-founded his company more than fourteen years ago, but in the end, it couldn’t compete with the effectiveness and rapidly falling cost of renewables.

“The idea at that time was that CCS technology could compete as a way to produce carbon-free electricity by capturing the carbon dioxide emissions emitted from power plants and bury these emmissions. Now every dollar invested in renewable energy — instead of CCS— will eliminate far more carbon emissions.”

Currently, Harvey says there are about 15 CCS projects operating in the U.S and many proposed projects that have been subsidized with government funding, but few are being built.

“There are billions of dollars being given to oil companies for CCS projects through these subsidies, but the technology is not turned on and, in some cases, the projects are demolished before ever turning on.”

The reason some of the projects are not turned on is that they would consume enormous amount of energy both to separate carbon dioxide from smokestack emissions and to inject it underground. This energy must be produced by either burning more fossil fuels, hence producing more emissions, or by renewables that would otherwise reduce emissions by replacing fossil-fuel energy on the grid.

Harvey says most of the 15 CCS solutions operating in the US are used for enhanced oil recovery, a process of injecting CO2 underground for the purpose of pushing out more oil. Most of the carbon dioxide that’s injected into the ground is not from burning oil or natural gas but is geologic carbon dioxide that was naturally sequestered underground for millions of years before it was pumped to the surface where methane is removed from it to sell as natural gas.  This carbon dioxide is then re-injected back underground to push out more oil and harvest the CCS subsidies.  Oil companies often promote CCS as a possible future application in industries like steel or cement, but in reality, the subsidies largely go to producing more oil and gas.

Health Impacts

In 2020, a CCS project in Mississippi experienced a pipeline rupture which created mass carbon dioxide poisoning that moved through the rural community of Satartia. More than 200 people were evacuated from the area and at least 45 people were hospitalized. Three years after the pipe burst, community members reported experiencing health impacts from the leak.

Besides health impacts, there are also environmental justice issues with CCS. Roundtable member and author, Robert Bullard, Distinguished Professor of Urban Planning and Environmental Policy at Texas Southern University and Director of the Bullard Center for Environmental and Climate Justice, has been a leading scientist for almost five decades on environmental justice. Bullard was the first to discover that toxic facilities like landfills, chemical plants, and incinerators were largely located in areas based on race and class. Many of the CCS proposed projects are located in small rural areas. Bullard is concerned about the health risks of having compressed gas injected under houses.

He is also concerned about dangerous air pollution in the communities where CCS is proposed.  CCS increases air pollution because CCS entails burning more fossil fuels to satisfy its energy needs. Most proposed projects are already located in minority communities.

Harvey and Bullard are currently working together to publish a journal article detailing the facts and science about CCS to stop philanthropic funding for CCS.

Clearer Standards

The goal of the Roundtable on Carbon, Capture, and Storage is to uncover information about CCS that is often hidden from public knowledge. Currently, CCS is seen as a climate solution for the fossil fuels emission problem and through its promotion of such, is slowing down the transition away from using fossil fuels.  But there is little to no verification that CCS reduces climate pollution yet will cost taxpayers an estimated $5 to $100 billion in the next decade, while renewable energy is cheaper, safer and available at scale.

There is also no real-world data about the costs of running, maintaining and monitoring large CCS projects.

Harvey’s latest research, funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, is to explore whether CCS projects contribute to true emissions reductions. Harvey’s work is unusual for CCS research projects because it is not funded by the oil industry and Harvey hopes to use this independence to develop economic models of CCS that better predict future deployment of CCS and the effects on greenhouse gas emissions.  In this way, his research can inform better economic models of the energy system and better predictions of carbon emmisons such as the scenarios used by the IPCC.

“Going back more than a decade, before we started the company 15 years ago, models  have predicted that that there would be rapid growth in carbon capture and sequestration,” says Harvey.

But the predicted growth in CCS did not happen. What Harvey thinks the models are missing in their calculations is the amount of energy it takes to power CCS.

“We plan to build a new predictive model of the cost of CCS and develop models that are realistic and useful for identifying the true cost and emission reductions of CCS projects.”