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infrastructure investment and jobs act
Big Oil to Benefit From Biden's Carbon Capture Tax Credits: Report
"Our report clearly lays out the way carbon capture tax credits rig the system in favor of the oil and gas industry to the tune of billions of dollars," one expert said.
Sep 18, 2024
As the U.S. moves to invest in climate solutions, is the money going toward projects that will meaningfully reduce emissions and transition the nation's energy system away from fossil fuels?
A report released Wednesday by worker-owned corporate accountability and environmental justice research organization Empower found that just 34 carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects in Texas could receive between $3.2 billion and $33 billion in annual tax subsidies.
At the same time, most of the carbon dioxide pipelines in the state are managed by the major oil and gas companies like Kinder Morgan, Occidental Petroleum, and ExxonMobil that played a disproportionate role in creating the climate crisis in the first place.
"Carbon capture and storage is the most expensive and least effective carbon mitigation solution. It's really not where we need to be investing our money," said Paige Powell, the policy manager at Commission Shift, at a press briefing announcing the new research. "And the public dollars coming from the federal government to fossil fuel companies are our dollars, our taxpayer dollars that could be better spent elsewhere."
"I think it's important for us to ask ourselves, if carbon capture is receiving so much public dollars, why is there little public input?"
For its report, Empower turned up 98 carbon dioxide-related projects in the state of Texas, including 47 pipelines and 13 Class VI Geological Storage projects. These projects are currently primarily funded through tax breaks and U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) subsidies; the report authors found little evidence of any private investments.
"Our report clearly lays out the way carbon capture tax credits rig the system in favor of the oil and gas industry to the tune of billions of dollars," Empower's Samuel Rosado said in a statement. "Public funding and tax breaks are the largest sources of revenue for CCS projects. Without the massive federal investment, the private sector deems most CCS projects unprofitable."
The main tax credit for CCS is the 45Q tax credit, which assigns a dollar amount for every metric ton of carbon dioxide captured and permanently stored. While this credit was first created by the Energy Improvement and Extension Act of 2008, the Inflation Reduction Act expanded it, raising the credit to $85 per metric ton. At the same time, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act earmarked more than $8 billion for the DOE's CCS programs.
"These are the key bills that were enacted that enabled CCS to be at least more financially available than it previously was," Rosado said in the briefing.
Yet climate and accountability advocates are concerned that the money is being misdirected.
Powell noted that CCS technology had been around for 50 years, but had failed to advance.
"All of these projects have been largely unprofitable, and they haven't expanded the way that renewables and other climate solutions have, primarily because the technology is problematic," Powell said. "It's unsafe, it's fraught with mechanical failures, and not to mention wildly expensive when compared to other climate solutions."
Dominic Chacon of the Texas Campaign for the Environment said that industry boosting of CCS amounted to a form of "greenwashing."
"It is essentially a marketing PR branding ploy to downplay the obvious risks associated with fossil fuels, to try and rebrand this industry as something that we need for the future," Chacon said.
Autumn Hanna, the vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, noted that there was a history of fraud in past allocation of CCS subsidies.
"A Treasury investigation found that from 2010 to 2019, 90% of tax credit claimants failed to comply with IRS [Internal Revenue Service] and EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] requirements," Hanna said in a statement. "Instead of throwing good money after bad, we should focus our limited resources on climate solutions we know are safe and effective."
At the same time, most federal CCS subsidies actually ended up going toward injecting carbon dioxide into depleted oil wells in order to extract even more oil, which is currently the only profitable use of the technology.
"Continuing to funnel these subsidies and tax breaks to the oil companies, which mostly use it to extract more fossil fuels, really weakens its supposed climate benefits," Hanna said in the briefing.
In Texas specifically, there are concerns about the safety of CCS infrastructure and its impact on ecosystems and communities, given the state's weak regulatory culture.
"We need to chart a new course here in Texas and in Washington to incentivize climate solutions that actually work."
"Our state oil and gas regulator, the Railroad Commission of Texas, is reluctant to oversee the industry in a way that protects people and the environment," Powell said.
The Empower report found that 19 CCS projects overlap with at least 24 million acres of water, threatening both coastal and river environments. The report authors also ran into a lack of transparency.
After filing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests to the Environmental Protection Agency to access data about CCS projects, they received documents with entire pages redacted on the behest of the companies and with the permission of the EPA.
"This is very dangerous when it comes to corporate accountability and transparency on environmental issues, because entire pages were redacted from FOIA requests and public information requests that are incredibly important for communities and safety in these communities," Rosado said.
The advocates called for greater transparency and accountability around public financing for untested and expensive climate solutions.
"I think it's important for us to ask ourselves, if carbon capture is receiving so much public dollars, why is there little public input?" Chacon asked. "There is no public transparency on this technology."
Hanna called for putting "the breaks on the whole thing until we start to really answer some big questions that are out there instead of just autopilot expansions and extensions that carry huge costs and, again, leave us with these big questions and this lack of transparency and oversight."
Community organizations in the Lone Star State are petitioning the EPA to reject the Texas Railroad Commission's request to have primary oversight over CCS projects in the state.
"Allowing Texas to continue down this path is irresponsible and only serves oil and gas interests. That's why it's critical that the Environmental Protection Agency not hand over regulation of dangerous CCS projects to the Railroad Commission of Texas, which has shown that it's in the pocket of fossil fuel companies, which stand to profit while putting our communities at risk," Powell said in a statement. "We need to chart a new course here in Texas and in Washington to incentivize climate solutions that actually work."
To that end, Commission Shift is also urging concerned residents to comment on new EPA draft permits for CCS projects in the Permian Basin.
"Let them know we need an extension to review the permits and that we really just don't want these here in the Permian, it's not the right place for all these projects," Powell said.
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'Climate Time Bomb': Infrastructure Law Funds Highways Over Public Transit
"If we want to tackle congestion and the climate crisis, instead of offering platitudes, the next transportation bill needs to offer clean mobility options, like transit, car share, active modes, and electrification," said one analyst.
Feb 29, 2024
The law that the Biden administration has heralded as "a once-in-a-generation investment in America's infrastructure" that would help to "build a clean energy economy" has led to an explosion in state-level spending on highway expansion, leading one transportation advocacy group to project on Wednesday that the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law will result in more emissions from transport than if it hadn't passed.
The law, officially known as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), gave state transportation officials discretion over how to spend money distributed by the $1.2 trillion package, but Transportation for America warned in a new analysis of 57,000 projects that the law has revealed itself to be a "climate time bomb," with more than half of the funds—about $70 billion—so far spent on resurfacing and expanding highways.
Only about $25 billion of the money dispersed to states has been spent on transit and passenger rail, even as Americans clamor for more public transportation options.
As Inequality.orgreported last week, a 2023 nationwide survey found that 71% of respondents believed the U.S. "should be shifting funding from highways to public transit," and 70% said such a shift would be better for people's "health, safety, and economy."
"Considering the billions of federal dollars already spent on highway expansion projects, it's going to take more than self-congratulation over the bill's historic funding to undo the environmental harms."
Just 18% said building more highways and highway lanes would reduce traffic, cutting down on greenhouse gas emissions—of which transportation is already the biggest source globally and in the United States.
Transportation for America found that unless states change course, highway expansions paid for by the IIJA will lead to more than 178 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions by 2040 and will be only slightly offset by emissions-reducing measures in the law.
"While the IIJA could have been a win for the environment, across the country, states have instead used this once-in-a-generation level of funding to expand roadways the same way they've been doing for years," wrote Corrigan Salerno, a policy associate for the group. "Considering the billions of federal dollars already spent on highway expansion projects, it's going to take more than self-congratulation over the bill's historic funding to undo the environmental harms."
The group noted that the Biden administration advised states to prioritize highway repairs over expansion, but states including Texas and California have forged ahead with plans to increase congested roads' capacity for more vehicles.
"So much of the decision making falls to state departments of transportation," Mary Buchanan, research and policy manager at TransitCenter toldThe Guardian. "There are essentially 50 opportunities to get this right, I guess, or to potentially get it wrong, in terms of how money is being spent."
The analysis was released a day after an Indiana state House committee approved a bill delaying implementation of dedicated bus lanes in Indianapolis to "study the transportation option," with Republicans in favor of the bill saying the state needs to have an "overall conversation about road funding."
One Democratic lawmaker who has advocated for more public transit options in the city "broke into tears," according to local public broadcasting affiliate WFYI, as he called the decision "really, really, really bad public policy."
Indianapolis residents had testified for months against the bill, WFYI reported.
Salerno called on the Biden administration and the U.S. Congress to "explore every means available" to reduce transportation emissions.
"Congress needs to get real—the largest and most growing sector of emissions is transportation," Salerno wrote. "If we want to tackle congestion and the climate crisis, instead of offering platitudes, the next transportation bill needs to offer clean mobility options, like transit, car share, active modes, and electrification—not just the same strategies that got us in this position in the first place."
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The 5th National Climate Assessment Is a Call to Urgent Action
The congressionally mandated assessment finds that the climate crisis is already increasing the number of deaths, injuries, and illnesses in every region of the United States.
Nov 15, 2023
I’ve read dozens of harrowing stories about extreme heat this year, but there’s one I just can’t shake. Ramona and Monway Ison, who were in their 70s, died along with their dog Belle from heat-related causes the very night they were approved for a loan to fix their broken air conditioner. The A/C in their mobile home had been out for days during a brutal heatwave. But due to limited income, mobility issues, and a belief that they were used to the Texas heat, the couple stayed put—and perished as a result.
Heatwaves and other climate-fueled extremes are coming for us all, but they’re coming faster and harder for people with intersecting vulnerabilities like the Isons. That’s one of the main messages from the Fifth National Climate Assessment, released Tuesday by the Biden-Harris administration. The congressionally mandated assessment of the current and future risks of climate change finds that the climate crisis is already increasing the number of deaths, injuries, and illnesses in every region of the United States. Systematic racism, discrimination, and disinvestment are exacerbating these harms, particularly in low-income households, communities of color, and Indigenous communities.
For example, the report repeatedly invokes the threat of heat to workers—particularly farmworkers, who toil for long hours outdoors for little pay. Anyone who’s spent hours doing yard work or outdoor exercise has an inkling of how rough the heat can be. But regular exposure to high temperatures combined with insufficient access to food, drinking water, indoor cooling, and healthcare is a recipe for tragedy. Even workers who don’t die from heat face lost work hours and high healthcare costs.
Cutting emissions will help households like the Isons survive the summers of the future, but adaptation is needed to protect people now.
Lest you think farmworkers dying in the heat is a sad problem, but not your problem, think again. As the assessment states, “These effects on farmworker safety and productivity influence the broader economy through reduced agricultural output and higher food prices.”
So, what’s to be done?
One: We need to drastically reduce the pollution from fossil fuels that’s heating our climate up to dangerous levels. Although the United States still has a lot of work to do to meet its national commitments, historic investments through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 and the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 will help move us in the right direction.
Policies that cut climate-changing pollution—known as mitigation—also protect our health by cleaning up the air. In fact, the assessment finds that “The economic value of avoided hospitalizations and premature deaths from mitigation activities is larger than the cost of implementation.”
Two, and just as importantly: We need to reduce the risks of climate impacts that we’re already experiencing today and prepare for additional impacts in the future. This set of actions, known as climate adaptation, is admittedly complex and getting harder the warmer the world gets. Policymakers, funders, and the private sector have also moved far more slowly on adaptation than on mitigation.
But relying solely on mitigation is not an option. Per the assessment, “Even if greenhouse gas emissions fall substantially, the impacts of climate change will continue to intensify over the next decade.” Cutting emissions will help households like the Isons survive the summers of the future, but adaptation is needed to protect people now.
The National Climate Assessment offers multiple adaptation options to protect health, including:
- Making healthcare systems more resilient to climate shocks, such as hurricanes, mass casualty heatwaves, or wildfires.
- Enhancing surveillance of climate-related health harms, including infectious diseases and heat-related illnesses. As the old saying goes, you can’t manage what you can’t measure.
- Early warning systems to help people better understand smoke exposure. A warning system would have been particularly useful this summer, when Canadian wildfires created historically smoky conditions in cities like New York and Washington, D.C.
- Heat-related adaptation, including increased access to affordable, energy-efficient cooling and workplace heat protections.
However, none of these options are sufficient on their own. For example, the Isons would probably still be alive today if their A/C was repaired more quickly or if they had spent a few days with a neighbor. But we can’t air condition our way out of the growing threat of extreme heat, and instead need to rethink how entire neighborhoods and cities are laid out. Similarly, occupational heat standards are essential to protect the workers repairing our roads, delivering our packages, and growing our food. But heat standards will only get us so far without tackling the exploitative labor practices that force heat-vulnerable workers to choose their job over their lives.
In other words, adaptation will have to be nothing less than transformational. That will require upending the historic laws, policies, and practices that are putting Americans in harms’ way and keeping them from living their full, productive, joyful potential. And it requires getting started now.
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