A bipartisan push has emerged in the Senate supporting carbon capture and use, to supplement existing authority for CO2 capture and sequestration. Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Bill Cassidy (R-La.) on Feb. 28 unveiled the Captured Carbon Utilization Parity Act (CCU Parity Act). An analysis by the BakerHostetler national law firm said the legislation “would increase the tax credit available for carbon capture and utilization to match the tax credit available for carbon capture and sequestration for both the direct air capture and the power and industrial sectors.”
The 2022 Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act provided tax credits for carbon capture, but higher amounts for storing the carbon than for using it is some way. The 2022 law offers a credit of $85/ton for power plant and industrial facilities to capture carbon and $180/ton for direct air capture “For dedicated secure geologic storage of CO2 in saline or other geologic formations.” A $60/ton and $130/ton tax credit is offered “For carbon utilization projects to convert CO or CO2 into products.”
The BakerHostetler analysis commented that “the increased tax incentive for carbon utilization would give stakeholders in carbon capture projects greater flexibility in developing economically feasible CCUS projects.”
In a press release, Sen. Whitehouse said, “While we’ve made progress on lowering emissions with the Inflation Reduction Act, the world is on track to well overshoot the climate goals of the Paris Agreement. We are going to need robust investment in both carbon utilization and sequestration to lead the planet to safety.”
A fact sheet from Whitehouse says, “Establishing parity for utilization will further incentivize the deployment and innovation of carbon capture technology and low/zero-carbon products. According to the Global CO2 Initiative Roadmap (2016), CCU has the potential to reduce current annual global CO2 emissions by up to 10%, including by addressing the industrial sector that accounts for 24% of U.S. GHG emissions. Further, CCU promotes a circular economy, keeping materials in circulation for as long possible.”
A 2019 report from the International Energy Agency outlines five “key categories of CO2-derived products and services: fuels, chemicals, building materials from minerals, building materials from waste, and CO2 use to enhance the yields of biological processes.” All of these “face commercial and regulatory barriers. CO2 use can support climate goals where the application is scalable, uses low-carbon energy and displaces a product with higher life-cycle emissions. Some CO2-derived products also involve permanent carbon retention, in particular building materials. A better understanding and improved methodology to quantify the life-cycle climate benefits of CO2 use applications are needed.”
The IEA concluded, “The market for CO2 use is expected to remain relatively small in the short term, but early opportunities could be developed, especially those related to building materials. Public procurement of low-carbon products can help to create an early market for CO2-derived products and assist in the development of technical standards. In the long term, CO2 sourced from biomass or the air could play a key role in a net-zero CO2 emission economy, including as a carbon source for aviation fuels and chemicals.”
Two years ago, Lux Research, a Boston-based market research firm, published a report, CO2 Capture & Utilization: The Emergence of a Carbon Economy, concluding, “The global market size for CO2 utilization will reach a market value of $70 billion by 2030, increasing to $550 billion by 2040,” with “the adoption of CO2 utilization in the buildings, chemicals, materials, fuels, and food sectors.”
An example of what could lie ahead for carbon capture and use comes from Lehigh University, where researchers have found at laboratory scale that direct air capture of CO2, using filters with a sorbent of a polyamine-copper compound ( Polyam-N-Cu2+ ), “exhibits a high CO2 capture capacity at the ultradilute concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, nearly two to three times greater than most of the [direct air capture] sorbents reported to date.”
An article in Fast Company, reporting on the Lehigh research, says, “After the filter fills up with carbon dioxide, running seawater through the material creates another chemical reaction, producing sodium bicarbonate, or baking soda. The baking soda could, in theory, be dumped into the ocean. (Whether or not this can be done safely—or legally—is still unproven, but if it can, the alkalinity of the baking soda could help counteract ocean acidity, another impact of climate change.)”
–Kennedy Maize
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