A technology touted by the oil and gas industry as a way to keep drilling but with a lower carbon footprint is facing new opposition from Republican lawmakers in Louisiana, the U.S. epicenter of the push for carbon capture and sequestration.
Environmentalists have long questioned the cost, risks and effectiveness of CCS. But now their critique is being echoed by fossil-fuel friendly Republicans, who increasingly are pressed by homeowners around Louisiana’s Lake Maurepas and elsewhere to stop the roughly 30 CCS projects planned for the state.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis recently called CCS “a scam,” criticizing state GOP lawmakers for pushing the technology.
CCS aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by trapping carbon dioxide emissions from industry and injecting them deep underground— or underwater — for permanent storage.
The oil and gas industry also uses CO2 for so-called enhanced oil recovery, which entails injecting pressurized carbon dioxide into wells to free trapped oil, a technique that accounts for about 2% of the nation’s production.
Louisiana lawmakers take aim at CCS
This month, the Republican-controlled Louisiana Legislature will debate a bevy of bills to limit or kill CCS; one is a proposed yearlong moratorium and another is an outright ban.
“The House is going to be driving this train. They must have 12 bills over there which aren't all that friendly to carbon capture and storage,” state Sen. Bob Hensgens, chairman of the Senate Natural Resources Committee, told reporters during a briefing on CCS ahead of this year’s legislative session, which started April 14.
Jackson Voss, climate policy coordinator for the New Orleans-based nonprofit Alliance for Affordable Energy, doesn’t think any of the anti-CCS bills stand a chance given the strong lobbying power of the oil and gas industry in Louisiana. And if they were to get traction this legislative session he believes Republican Gov. Jeff Landry would use his influence to block them from ever hitting his desk.
“The anti-CCS position remains an outlier among Republican office-holders, for now, nationally and otherwise,” he said.
As part of his crusade to eviscerate climate-friendly U.S. policies, President Donald Trump may be poised to claw back hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. Department of Energy funding for a form of CCS called direct-air capture, which pulls carbon from the ambient air. Reuters reported in late March that two direct air capture hubs in Texas and Louisiana — promised over $1 billion in subsidies under the administration of former President Joe Biden — were on a kill list circulating within the DOE.
One advocacy group is defending the economic merits of CCS, insisting it still enjoys broad bipartisan support.
“I think there’s a lot of different things that are kind of fueling the backlash. I think cost is a big piece,” said Jessie Stolark, executive director of the nonpartisan advocacy group Carbon Capture Coalition. “We’re in a conversation, at least at the federal level, around deficit and deficit reduction so I think that’s driving some of it.”
Stolark also characterized the Republican backlash as a possible response to the Biden administration, which supported CCS as part of an aggressive push to lower greenhouse gas emissions that fuel climate change.
“I think there is also a kind of a knee jerk reaction to the prior (presidential) administration and how they were messaging the purpose and what these programs can do,” she said.
Louisiana is one of just three states granted full authority from the federal government to approve CCS projects within their borders.
Mike Moncla, president of the Louisiana Oil and Gas Association, said Louisiana needs to push forward with its CCS projects if it wants to remain competitive with neighboring states like Texas, which is seeking primacy as well from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to permit the injection wells used for underground CO2 storage.
“They (Texas) will be happy to take on this industry, along with huge projects like Meta and Hyundai that have CCS pieces to their projects,” Moncla said, referring to a proposed multi-billion-dollar data center and an automotive plant both planned for Louisiana.
Moncla said he has heard no indication that the federal tax credits that were part of Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act would be eliminated by Trump.
Future unclear for CCS tax credits
The IRA increased tax credits to permanently store carbon from $50 per ton to $85 per ton. The law also offers a $180-a-ton tax credit to developers of direct air capture projects. The fate of those and other clean-energy tax credits remains unclear.
Said Stolark: “We have been, as a coalition, engaging a lot over the last six months with lawmakers and with the administration around these technologies and really making the case that these technologies fit very well within the administration's American energy dominance framework.”
The opposition to CCS in Louisiana has come from the predominantly Black communities already overburdened with industrial pollution in the southeast corridor of the state known as “Cancer Alley.” Predominantly white communities around Lake Maurepas, a recreational estuary between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, and elsewhere also have expressed opposition to the projects under consideration by the state’s Department of Energy and Natural Resources.
Concerns around carbon capture include the potential for earthquakes and groundwater contamination. In recent incidents, CO2 has leaked through pipeline breaches, forcing evacuations and emergency room visits.
The public has also raised concerns over property rights and eminent domain tied to CO2 pipelines and injection wells. There has also been opposition to a proposed project to inject up to 50 million tons of carbon dioxide over a 12- to 20-year period under the Kisatchie National Forest in Louisiana.
State Rep. Danny McCormick, a Republican whose district is tucked in the northwest corner of Louisiana, authored two bills dealing with CCS. HB396 seeks to outlaw CCS in the state. HB522 seeks a year-long moratorium on CCS until the risks to safety and property rights can be studied.
“Mine (bills) are completely from a private property rights standpoint,” McCormick said. “I don't think (CO2) ought to be stored under state lands, because the majority of the people of Louisiana don't support it. And I don't think it should be stored under a person's private property if they wish for it not to be stored there.”
‘Let the people have their voice’
State Rep. Charles Owen, a Republican representing a district in southwest Louisiana, filed three separate proposals to give parishes the option to opt out of having CCS projects through parish council votes or local elections.
“We're gonna do our best to hear those concerns and address the ones that we can,” Rep. Brett Geymann, chair of the House Natural Resources and Environment Committee, told reporters. “Let the people have their voice, be heard, and we'll see what happens.”
Other proposals would remove eminent domain authority from CCS projects (HB380), and a Senate bill would require the commissioner of conservation, a state office tasked with regulating local industry, to weigh the concerns of local governments about CCS more heavily in its decisions.
Geymann said the committee will hear debate on all CCS-related bills on April 30.
Voss finds the new criticism CCS is getting from Republicans, like DeSantis, interesting and in line with state leaders who are tying CCS with the left’s climate activism.
“I suspect we are still some years away from Republicans turning against CCS, but Republicans are extremely sensitive to the concerns of their base, and even more sensitive to the most prominent conservative activists that base listens to,” he said, naming conservative TV personality Tucker Carlson and Trump aide billionaire Elon Musk as examples.
“If those people start making similar criticisms about CCS,” Voss added, “I suspect there could be a meaningful shift unless President Trump intervenes in favor of CCS.”
Floodlight is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powers stalling climate action.