Carbon Capture GOLD RUSH

Past efforts to capture carbon dioxide so it doesn’t worsen climate change have been small-scale and littered with expensive failures. But supporters say the new tax incentives in the US Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) are transformative enough that, combined with the lessons of the past 20 years, the technology is finally ready to take off.

- Amanda Kolson Hurley

Lehigh Hanson Inc., one of the largest concrete makers in the US, says early this year it will start running a new cement plant in Mitchell, Indiana, that could capture 95% of its carbon dioxide emissions by 2028. If successful, the project would demonstrate that one of the world’s most polluting industries can go almost carbon neutral.

Air Products Inc., in Allentown, Pennsylvania, is starting work on a $4.5 billion facility just south of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, that could become the world’s biggest carbon sequestration operation.

CarbonCapture Inc., in Los Angeles, expects to pull 5  million metric tons of CO2 a year directly from the air by the end of the decade. Similarly, Drax Group, a British-based bioenergy and carbon capture company, is taking investors’ money for plants that would suck 12 million metric tons of CO2 out of the atmosphere.

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) refers to processes that separate CO2 from other gases (such as nitrogen and oxygen) and sequester the CO2 to keep it out of Earth’s atmosphere. Humans have been doing this for decades but not at anywhere near the rate that could help stop the planet from catastrophically overheating. It simply would’ve cost too much.

The IRA, passed by Congress in August, includes major revisions to the 45Q carbon capture and storage tax credit that should change this math. “Show me the money, and we’ll show you the projects,” says John Thompson, a director at the Clean Air Task Force, an environmental research group in Boston. “That’s what’s happening now.”