Our carbon capture experiment is the antithesis of environmental justice

In communities already suffering most from the harms of the fossil fuel industry — adverse health impacts and shortened lifespans, ravaged ecosystems and the empty promises of economic prosperity — residents are paying twice to support the pipe dream of carbon capture. 

Not only are they paying for it by living next to dangerous leaky wells and pipelines, but they are also paying for it through massive tax breaks, loans and subsidies along with other American taxpayers. 

That’s why almost 10,000 people and 29 organizations have signed onto a letter urging the Internal Revenue Service to increase lax oversight of billions in tax credits flowing to oil and gas companies through President Biden’s landmark climate law — and to verify companies that receive the credits are actually reducing climate pollution. 

The expanded 45Q tax credit for carbon capture alone — passed as part of the Inflation Reduction Act — is estimated to cost taxpayers nearly $5 billion in the next five years. Moreover, the 45Q tax credit has been plagued by lax safeguards and fraudulent claims, with approximately 87 percent of the companies claiming the credits from 2010-2019 failing to comply with the EPA requirements. 

That wasteful spending is on top of $12.1 billion for new research and demonstration programs over the next five years as part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and up to $290 billion in new loan guarantee authority that carbon capture and storage projects could potentially qualify for while providing no real emissions reduction. This is despite the track record not being pretty — about 80 percent of carbon capture projects initiated between 1995 and 2018 have been canceled or put on hold. 

All this is reason enough to oppose carbon capture. But to add insult to grievous injury, this technology offers little if any net emissions reduction. 

First off, almost all captured carbon is used to produce more fossil fuels, through a process called “enhanced oil recovery” that leads to even more carbon pollution. Thirteen out of 15 existing commercial carbon capture and storage facilities capture carbon only to turn around and use it to fuel these enhanced oil recovery projects. When captured carbon is used to produce more oil and gas, the resulting emissions are as much as 25 times higher than the original amount of captured carbon. 

That’s hardly a solution to the pollution driving costly climate change in the first place.

Also, because the tax credit is offered based on how many tons of carbon are captured and stored, it offers a perverse incentive to emit and capture as much carbon as possible, instead of reducing net emissions. 

Essentially, oil and gas companies are using carbon capture to continue business as usual for the industry, expanding and hardening infrastructure that will lock us into oil and gas for decades to come. This is an environmental and economic injustice that only serves the interests of the fossil fuel industry. 

It’s no wonder communities across the U.S. — from the Gulf Coast to California, from West Virginia to Wyoming – are rising up against companies intent on building pipelines to ship captured carbon past their homes or inject it into the ground where they live.

If the current plans for carbon capture materialize, it would require up to 96,000 miles of new pipelines. Yet existing safeguards for carbon dioxide pipelines are decades out of date and fail to adequately address the dangers of leaks and ruptures, like the one in Sartartia, Miss., that sent 45 people to the hospital with serious health effects. 

For those living near pipelines and injection wells, carbon capture schemes are just the latest way the oil and gas industry is exacerbating generational sacrifice zones of environmental devastation overwhelmingly populated by Black, brown and low-income people. We must reject this federally subsidized racism and economic exploitation. 

We have all the tools to transition away from polluting oil and gas and the wasteful, expensive tech fixes that keep us hooked and subsidizing these polluters. Instead of throwing taxpayer money away on carbon capture, we should be investing in safe, affordable and scalable solutions like solar and wind power.

Rather than continuing to waste billions every year subsidizing technologies that fail to produce results while hurting communities, we can advance genuine climate solutions that actually work. 

Robert D. Bullard, Ph.D. is the founding director of the Bullard Center for Environmental and Climate Justice and a distinguished professor of urban planning and environmental policy at Texas Southern University. Steve Ellis is president of Taxpayers for Common Sense.