Category Archives: Carbon dioxide

Opinion: Carbon capture in Montezuma Wetlands is a dangerous plan

[Note from BenIndy Contributor Kathy Kerridge: Here’s a great editorial that sums up the Montezuma Carbon Capture and Dumping project.  It proposes to link up to Valero in its second phase so we really need to keep an eye on this one in our own backyard. Please share.]

The Montezuma Wetlands in Suisun City, Calif. The Montezuma CarbonHub project would require a massive build out of underwater pipelines through San Francisco Bay. | Ray Chavez / Bay Area News Group.

Collect 1 million tons of Bay Area CO2, compress it, then transport it to injection site. What could go wrong? Plenty

SJ Mercury, by Chirag Bhakta, February 8, 2024

Last May, a Bay Area company curiously named Montezuma Wetlands submitted an application to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to build a “CarbonHub” in Solano County’s Montezuma Wetlands.

According to the proposal, the project would involve drilling a well for carbon injection and establishing an extensive expansion of submerged pipelines across San Francisco Bay. Almost immediately the project rightfully came under fire from our organization and many others due to the reality that such a venture would threaten public health, degrade the local environment and stall legitimate climate action.

Indeed, carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) — the process of trapping and storing climate pollution before it enters the atmosphere — has never worked in the real world and, in an ironic twist, has mostly been embraced by major polluters who see it as a way to claim they are cleaning up their act without changing anything.

According to the application, the Montezuma CarbonHub project’s initial plan is to rely on CCS to collect 1 million tons of CO2 from multiple power plants and industrial sources across the Bay Area. The CO2 would then be compressed and transported from capture sites to Montezuma’s existing offloading dock, directly across the confluence of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers from Antioch and Pittsburg, and then to the proposed injection location one mile north of the dock.

Threat of CO2 leaks

There are ample reasons to be skeptical of this scheme. For starters, CCS is an extremely expensive technology that requires significant investment and infrastructure, and there is no proven track record of it helping us reach our climate goals. In fact, most CCS projects have been total failures and the only carbon capture “successes” use the captured CO2 to get more oil out of existing wells.

In the Bay Area, there are no power plants or oil refineries currently using carbon capture technology, so it is hard to assess how the process will be successful at several different facilities. Worryingly, the Montezuma project would also require a massive buildout of underwater pipelines through San Francisco Bay, from Antioch to Richmond.

Further, the transportation and storage of captured carbon can lead to leaks, accidents and explosions that can result in severe health risks that often disproportionately affect communities already facing the effects of the climate crisis.

In 2020, a CO2 pipeline leaked in a small Mississippi town, resulting in the emergency evacuation of over 300 people and the hospitalization of 45. Victims were found unconscious, foaming at the mouth and experiencing other alarming symptoms. An even grimmer example dates back to 1986, when a natural release of massive CO2 quantities from Lake Nyos in Cameroon led to the displacement of oxygen for miles around and caused the tragic death of over 1,700 people.

Finally, CCS also threatens the lives of the other species we share our planet with. Any CO2 leak along the proposed 45-mile pipeline route could cause substantial harm to Bay Area ecosystems and species.

Air quality concerns

While these reasons are more than enough for the EPA to reject Montezuma Wetlands’s application, even if this scheme was successfully deployed, carbon capture will likely worsen the air quality in already overburdened communities. This is for the simple reason that the facilities would continue to spew pollution into the air. That means increasing levels of pollutants associated with asthma, poor birth outcomes, heart attack and cancer, exacerbating the already existing stark health inequities in California. Indeed, the Montezuma CarbonHub project’s location near disadvantaged communities highlights a persistent trend of environmental racism.

Adding to the complexity and danger is the current lack of comprehensive regulation surrounding CO2 pipelines. The federal pipeline agency, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, is undertaking an overhaul of safety regulations. However, these regulations are not expected to be ready until the end of 2024.

Upcoming public hearings on the Montezuma CarbonHub project by the Pacific Southwest EPA will provide an opportunity for Bay Area community members and experts to voice their concerns. Similar carbon pipeline schemes have already run into substantial opposition in the Midwest, thanks to grassroots organizers who have helped communities understand the risks of such projects.

However, halting this project in the Bay Area is not enough. Similar projects are being proposed across California, particularly in communities in the Central Valley, who are already disproportionately experiencing the effects of the drought, including dry and contaminated wells. And California leaders like Gov. Gavin Newsom and U.S. Representative John Garamendi must throw their full weight behind federal action, namely a national moratorium on the CO2 pipelines leaving their constituents at serious risk.

Our path forward must be focused on ending our reliance on fossil fuels and investing in clean, renewable energy systems. This means redirecting public and private funding from flawed climate scams like CCS toward proven solutions that are essential for building a sustainable and equitable future.

Chirag Bhakta is the California director of Food & Water Watch

California’s Oil Country Faces an ‘Existential’ Threat. Kern County Is Betting on the Carbon Removal Industry to Save It

[Note from BenIndy: The EPA and the Kern County Planning and Natural Resources staff have scheduled four joint workshops regarding the Kern County Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS), or ‘Carbon Removal,’ project described below. Tomorrow, Wednesday 17, from 3-5pm, is the FIRST VIRTUAL HEARING; find instructions for how to join HERE. While verbal comments will not be accepted during the virtual meeting, the public is welcome to join and ask questions in the chat. If you plan to join, follow the instructions at the link. Meanwhile, a group of Solano residents have assembled to fight a new CCS project proposed for a site in Montezuma Hills, Solano; that group’s next meeting is January 24.  You can learn more about this project at the Sunflower Alliance website. If you are interested in joining this group, email your contact details to benindy@mngl.ca and we’ll pass them on to one of the group members so you can connect. We have a long, hard slog ahead if we’re going to beat back these boondoggles.]

An oil pumpjack in Kern County, California.  Harika Maddala / Inside Climate News.

“We are at a very, very difficult crossroads.”

Inside Climate News, by Emma Foehringer Merchant and Joshua Yeager, KVPR, January 16, 2024

Omar Hayat sees the future in a patch of dirt near Bakersfield, California, where oil was discovered more than a century ago. That discovery paved the way for Kern County’s lucrative petroleum industry. Now, Hayat hopes to use the same dirt patch to launch a new business—one that may help California reach its ambitious climate goals.

Midwestern carbon capture boondoggle backed by Valero and BlackRock on hold after opposition

[Note from BenIndy: Both the Biden administration and Big Oil have been touting carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), sometimes called carbon dumping, as a way to address the climate crisis. However, many climate scientists and activists are seriously concerned about CCS’s sudden surge to the forefront of the climate conversation. Why are oil giants like Valero teaming up with BlackRock-funded concerns to build pipelines across America? Could it have anything to do with the billions of dollars in tax breaks on the table? On Friday, November 3, at 12 pm, Scientists Speak Up (a Stanford student group working to combat science misinformation) are hosting a discussion about CCS, how it actually supports oil and gas production as well as the chilling impact Big Oil and the Biden administration’s fixation on CCS could have on exploring more innovative or aggressive tech and mitigation. Finally, the discussion will touch on Big Oil’s disturbing, ever-growing influence in academic research. Click here to learn more about how to attend this important conversation and we will include a link with an event flyer at the end of this post. (The BenIndy was not asked to promote this event and is not affiliated with Scientists Speak Up in any way. We just thought the event looked very interesting and timely given a looming proposal to install a CCS pipeline in Solano County.)]

Carbon capture pipeline nixed after widespread opposition

A sign against a proposed carbon dioxide pipeline outside a home in New Liberty, Iowa, US, on Sunday, June 4, 2023. The Biden administration is all-in on carbon capture and storage. But the pipelines needed to move the greenhouse gas around face stiff local opposition. | Miriam Alarcon Avila for Bloomberg via Getty Images.

Navigator CO₂ says regulatory hurdles are too much to overcome.

The world is on lockdown. So where are all the carbon emissions coming from?

Tayfun Coskun / Anadolu Agency / Getty Images
Grist, by Shannon Osaka, Apr 27, 2020

Pedestrians have taken over city streets, people have almost entirely stopped flying, skies are blue (even in Los Angeles!) for the first time in decades, and global CO2 emissions are on-track to drop by … about 5.5 percent.

Wait, what? Even with the global economy at a near-standstill, the best analysis suggests that the world is still on track to release 95 percent of the carbon dioxide emitted in a typical year, continuing to heat up the planet and driving climate change even as we’re stuck at home.

A 5.5-percent drop in carbon dioxide emissions would still be the largest yearly change on record, beating out the financial crisis of 2008 and World War II. But it’s worth wondering: Where do all of those emissions come from? And if stopping most travel and transport isn’t enough to slow down climate change, what will be?

“I think the main issue is that people focus way, way too much on people’s personal footprints, and whether they fly or not, without really dealing with the structural things that really cause carbon dioxide levels to go up,” said Gavin Schmidt, a climatologist and the director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York City.

Transportation makes up a little over 20 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions, according to the International Energy Agency. (In the United States, it makes up around 28 percent.) That’s a significant chunk, but it also means that even if all travel were completely carbon-free (imagine a renewable-powered, electrified train system, combined with personal EVs and battery-powered airplanes), there’d still be another 80 percent of fossil fuel emissions billowing into the skies.

So where are all those emissions coming from? For one thing, utilities are still generating roughly the same amount of electricity — even if more of it’s going to houses instead of workplaces. Electricity and heating combined account for over 40 percent of global emissions. Many people around the world rely on wood, coal, and natural gas to keep their homes warm and cook their food — and in most places, electricity isn’t so green either.

Even with a bigger proportion of the world working from home, people still need the grid to keep the lights on and connect to the internet. “There’s a shift from offices to homes, but the power hasn’t been turned off, and that power is still being generated largely by fossil fuels,” Schmidt said. In the United States, 60 percent of electricity generation still comes from coal, oil, and natural gas. (There is evidence, however, that the lockdown is shifting when people use electricity, which has some consequences for renewables.)

Manufacturing, construction, and other types of industry account for approximately 20 percent of CO2 emissions. Certain industrial processes like steel production and aluminum smelting use huge amounts of fossil fuels — and so far, Schmidt says, that type of production has mostly continued despite the pandemic.

The reality is that emissions need to be cut by 7.6 percent every year to keep global warming from surpassing 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels — the threshold associated with the most dangerous climate threats — according to an analysis by the United Nations Environment Program. Even if the global lockdown and economic slump reduce emissions by 7.6 percent this year, emissions would have to fall even more the year after that. And the year after that. And so on.

In the middle of the pandemic, it’s become common to point to clear skies in Los Angeles and the cleaner waters of Venice as evidence that people can make a difference on climate change. “The newly iconic photos of a crystal-clear Los Angeles skyline without its usual shroud of smog are unwanted but compelling evidence of what can happen when individuals stop driving vehicles that pollute the air,” wrote Michael Grunwald in POLITICO magazine.

But these arguments conflate air and water pollution — crucial environmental issues in their own right! — with CO2 emissions. Carbon dioxide is invisible, and power plants and oil refineries are still pumping it into the atmosphere. Meanwhile, natural gas companies and livestock farming (think cow burps) keep releasing methane.

“I think people should bike instead of driving, and they should take the train instead of flying,” said Schmidt. “But those are small, compared to the really big structural things that haven’t changed.”

It’s worth remembering that a dip in carbon emissions won’t lead to any changes in the Earth’s warming trend. Some scientists compare carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to water flowing into a leaky bathtub. The lockdown has turned the tap down, not off. Until we cut emissions to net-zero — so that emissions flowing into the atmosphere are equivalent to those flowing out — the Earth will continue warming.

That helps explain why 2020 is already on track to be the warmest ever recorded, beating out 2016. In a sad irony, the decrease in air pollution may make it even hotter. Veerabhadran Ramanathan, a professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at University of California, San Diego, explained that many polluting particles have a “masking” effect on global warming, reflecting the sun’s rays, canceling out some of the warming from greenhouse gas emissions. With that shield of pollution gone, Ramanathan said, “We could see an increase in warming.”

Appreciate the bluer skies and fresher air, while you can. But the emissions drop from the pandemic should be a warning, not a cause for celebration: a sign of how much further there is to go.


Update: As of April 30, the International Energy Agency estimates that carbon emissions will fall by 8 percent this year. The IEA drew on more data than an earlier CarbonBrief analysis which estimated a drop of 5.5 percent.