President Donald TrumpAdministration has taken a step this week to accelerate the development of projects that capture carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and manufacturing facilities and storing Underground CO2, technology known as Carbon capture and storageor ccs.
Trump called climate change a hoax, put a freeze on permits For clean energy and removed the United States International climate agreements. But CCS is climate technology that its administration wants to accelerate.
“Carbon management is a real luminous point in climate and energy policy,” said Jessie Stolark, executive director of Carbon Capture Coalition Trade Group Nowsweek. “Especially in terms of bipartite potential.”
Some of the best environmental officials of Trump’s office met on Tuesday to promote a faster permit of CCS projects in places that produce fossil fuels.
Saul Loeb / AFP via Getty Images
“Geological storage has so much meaning for our country”, interior secretary Doug Burgum said at an event on Tuesday with the administrator of the environmental protection agency Lee Zeldin.
Burgum and Zeldin joined the virginie-Western legislators to officially approve a program managed by the State for permits for CO2 underground storage in the state where coal and natural gas are dominant industries.
“We have to produce more energy here in the United States, which requires cooperative federalism and a reform permit,” said Zeldin.
Virginia-Western has become the fourth state approved by EPA to have a main control over underground CO2 storage permits via what is known as class VI injection wells. The other states – Louisiana, Northern Dakota and Wyoming – are also the main producers of fossil fuel.
Burgum, who was previously governor of Northern Dakota, said that his condition had implemented programs that draw gas greenhouses from the flow of waste in an installation that produces biofuels.
“We have authorized some of the largest injection wells to the United States without any risk for the environment,” he said. Burgum said state agencies can move faster than EPA to approve projects.
Senator Shelley Moore Capito, Virginia-Western Republican Who presides over the SenateThe Environment and Public Works Committee, said its state had relevant expertise to support work. For example, she said, the state is home to the National Laboratory of Energy Technologies of the Ministry of Energy, which has conducted research on CO2 geological storage.
“Virginians-Western people best know Virginia-Western,” said Capito. “They can formulate what will work.”
However, some people in Virginia-Western have opposed the state officials, however, control CO2 storage permits. Autumn Crowe, deputy director of the West Virginia Rivers Coalition, a non -profit group, said that the state environmental application agency is “already stretched” without the additional rapidly permit for the CO2 storage.
“EPA’s decision to grant the primacy of Virginia-Western on class VI carbon injection wells, despite a general public concern, puts our communities in danger,” said Crowe Nowsweek By e-mail. “The addition of monitoring of class VI wells without adequate guarantees endangers the quality of our waters, air and health of nearby residents.”
The Ohio River Valley Institute, a regional reflection group, said in a statement that the managers of Virginia-Western were struggling to adequately protect the groundwater from other types of underground waste injection.
Tom Torres, Director of the Hydrogen Program for the Institute, said by e-mail that people commenting on the EPA proposal to grant primary control to the State also raised the concerns that the state n ‘ has not funding and expertise to regulate carbon storage wells.
Instead of responding to these concerns, said Torres, the EPA has withdrawn the original proposals from reference to environmental justice, and sections mentioning concerns about “black, rural and unpreted communities” have been deleted.
The “recent reversal of the EPA in the abolition of references to potential disproportionate impacts only launched injustice at the heart of this approval,” said Torres. “We fear that the most vulnerable communities of Virginia-Western are too early the impact of this reckless decision.”
The coal industry of Virginia-Western has long praised the promise of the CCS to make coal, the highest high intensity of fossil fuels, a low-emission energy source. The industry nicknamed this “clean coal” and the slogan became an important part of Trump’s first presidential campaign in 2016.
But despite heavy federal expenses in the past 20 years, CCS has never made its way on a commercial scale for American coal power due to the prohibitive costs it added. The production and use of coal in Virginia-Western and elsewhere across the country continued a long-term drop, mainly due to competition from other cheaper fuel sources such as natural gas and renewable energies .
“I think that if you look at the greatest regulatory forces confronted with the coal fleet in the United States, (CCS) is not a panacea,” Stolark said the carbon capture coalition. “It’s not going to happen and save the day.”
Stolark said that CO2 storage will play a “central but complementary role” in climate policy according to Several studies on technologies This will be necessary to make net-zero emissions. She said that the CCS will be particularly important to combat pollution of heavy manufacturing such as steel and cement.
“These technologies are a platform to allow industries to produce the materials that the company requires,” she said.
However, the CCS remains controversial among climate researchers. Critics say that technology can be completed on fossil fuels and that the money spent on CCS with large tickets would be better spent to accelerate the transition to cleaner energy sources.
In a study published earlier this month in Environmental sciences and technology,, University of Stanford Civil and environmental professor Mark Jacobson and his colleagues have found that for most countries around the world, wind investments, solar energy and hydroelectricity would give better results than the money spent on the CCS.
“If you spend $ 1 for carbon capture rather than wind, water and solar energy, you increase CO2, air pollution, energy needs, energy costs, pipelines and total social costs, “Jacobson said in a press release accompanying the publication of the study. “It is much cheaper and more efficient just to replace the fossil source with electricity or heat provided by a renewable source.”