Carbon Capture & Storage

The truth behind the fossil fuel industry's latest scam.

For decades, the fossil fuel industry has driven a global climate crisis through its extractive and polluting practices. While the industry rakes in trillions of dollars, it is Black, Brown, Indigenous, and low-income communities across California who bear the greatest health and economic burdens of these toxic operations.

These frontline communities experience unprecedented health impacts as a result of living near fossil fuel infrastructure. These impacts include higher rates of respiratory illness, reproductive harm, and cancer. Instead of taking accountability, these polluters are disguising their goal of continuing extraction with a new so-called green solution: Carbon Capture and Storage, or CCS.

CCS is a system designed to capture only carbon emissions at polluting facilities, pipe the carbon miles away, and bury it underground. On the surface, it sounds like a possible solution to the issue of greenhouse gas emissions contributing to the climate crisis. But if you take a closer look, it quickly becomes clear that CCS is just the industry's latest greenwashing scheme and will do far more to harm communities than protect them. 

The reality is that CCS is an unproven technology that doesn't actually reduce pollution. It is costly, ineffective, and detrimental to public health and safety. CCS does nothing to transition California away from polluting fossil fuel sites and it could put many communities in harm's way if there is a carbon pipeline burst or leak.

Currently, billions of taxpayer dollars are being funneled into harmful and ineffective carbon capture projects instead of investing in real solutions—such as solar, wind, regenerative farming, wetlands restoration, and traditional Indigenous land management practices.

Carbon Capture and Storage won't fix our climate problems. Real climate solutions deliver lasting, local benefits, not false job promises and health risks.

CCS is a Con—Why?

  • CCS technology is highly costly and burdensome to taxpayers.

    Companies with proposed CCS projects can get massive tax breaks from the federal government in the form of the 45Q tax credit. In the recently passed budget reconciliation bill, the 45Q tax credit increased for CCS projects that use the carbon for “enhanced oil recovery” meaning they inject the carbon back into the oil field to bolster the extraction process. Enhanced oil recovery defeats the purpose of CCS in the first place; for every metric tonne of CO2 stored in an oil field for enhanced oil recovery, two to five tonnes of CO2 are released into the atmosphere (source).

    The United States has spent 12 billion dollars of public money in investments towards carbon capture and fossil hydrogen projects (source).

  • Despite its promise, CCS technology has not been able to capture nearly enough carbon dioxide emissions to make a substantial impact on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. No CCS project has ever reached its target CO2 capture rate, according to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA). In many cases, due to the use of the captured carbon for enhanced oil recovery, CCS projects are actually increasing overall CO2 emissions (source).

    Carbon capture and storage has been widely criticized for its ineffectiveness. The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change)’s 2023 Synthesis Report concluded that carbon capture and storage in the fossil fuel sector is “one of the most expensive and least effective measures to cut emissions…After more than 50 years of investment, only 30 large-scale CCS projects are operating worldwide, capturing only 0.1% of emissions” (source).

  • CCS projects inherently ignore the wide array of toxic chemicals being released into the atmosphere along with CO2 at the polluting facility. By only capturing CO2, the facility operators are brushing aside the continued release of other air pollutants that severely negatively impact the health of nearby communities. Moreover, given the energy impacts of the CCS technology to function, there can actually be increases in CO2 and other toxic air emissions (source).

    Additionally, CCS projects require the transportation of captured carbon through pipelines to the site where the carbon will be stored underground. There are considerable risks associated with the build out of these pipelines throughout the state, which could total over 1000 miles of new pipelines (source). In 2020 in Satartia, Mississippi, 49 people were hospitalized after a carbon pipeline ruptured and many were left with long-term respiratory impacts. In some cases, first responder vehicles cannot respond to carbon pipeline emergencies due to the carbon dioxide in the air displacing the oxygen needed for combustion engines (source).

    CCS projects also put our groundwater and drinking water at risk, with the captured carbon potentially contaminating aquifers (source). And, if CO2 leaks into a water source it can form carbonic acid, which could lead to heavy metals and radioactive materials to leach out of the rock formations and contaminate the water (source).

  • CCS is a distraction from real climate solutions that create healthier and more equitable communities. Compared to CCS, wind and solar have the most potential for greenhouse gas emission mitigation while also being highly cost-effective (source).

    There are other forms of natural carbon sequestration that do not pose the same risks to communities, such as preserving and expanding natural and working lands, maintaining healthy soil, and restoring wetlands and riverbeds (source).

    We cannot rely on or trust the fossil fuel industry to have our best interests in mind; these schemes are meant to protect their tax subsidies, government giveaways, and profits, not to ensure our health and a real clean energy future.