Companies won’t invest in it; only taxpayers are funding it, and …
“The United States and other governments have little to show for these massive investments in carbon capture – none of the demonstration projects have lived up to their initial hype,” said Robert Howarth, professor of ecology and environmental biology at Cornell University. “It is instructive that industry itself invests very little in carbon capture. This whole enterprise is dependent on government handouts,”
the Guardian reported on August 29, 2024 (read story here). And …
“With time running out to curtail climate catastrophe, critics of CCS and hydrogen say public money should be focused on proven, less risky solutions such as plugging leaky oil wells, energy efficiency for buildings, transport electrification and renewables that will speed up the green transition.”
Who benefits from these subsidies? Why, oil companies, of course. What, exactly, is carbon capture? The basic idea is to capture CO2 from industrial processes and sequester it underground, so it doesn’t get into the atmosphere (read details here). Wikipedia says environmental activists criticize it as “a false solution to the climate crisis.”
If you’re a Republican in Congress, there is no climate crisis, but it’s better to give taxpayer money to oil companies than spend it on child care or school lunches, even if that spending is totally wasted. For the rest of us, there’s the option to vote for somebody else.