MOSCOW (MRC) -- A proposed tax credit hike for US carbon capture and sequestration projects being mulled by Congress could trigger a big jump in use of the climate-fighting technology to clean up industry, but environmentalists worry the scheme will backfire by prolonging the life of dirty coal-fired power plants, according to Hydrocarbonprocessing.
Carbon capture sequestration (CCS) is a technology that siphons planet-warming carbon dioxide from industrial facilities and stores it underground to keep it out of the atmosphere. The administration of President Joe Biden considers it an important part of its plan to decarbonize the US economy by 2050.
Under the proposal, embedded in the Biden administration’s USD1.75 trillion spending package, CCS projects would become eligible for an USD85 credit for each metric ton of carbon dioxide captured and stored, up from the current USD50-per-ton credit that the industry says is too low.
In the current tax credit regime, known as 45Q, CCS has languished. The United States currently has just a dozen operational commercial CCS facilities, along with a handful that have been suspended due to technological or economic problems, according to the Global CCS Institute.
The Clean Air Task Force, which advocates for carbon capture, cheered the proposal to boost the credit, saying it expects the change to lead to a spike in overall carbon capture capacity in the United States of 13-fold by the mid 2030s. It said the subsidy would also help the CCS industry lower costs and speed up deployment time, paving the way for growth in other countries keen to reduce emissions.
The currently existing facilities sequestered just 6.8 MM tons of industrial carbon dioxide underground in 2020, enough to offset the emissions from 1.5 MM passenger cars, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Additional CO2 was injected underground for so-called enhanced oil recovery, a controversial process that uses the gas to increase oil field pressure to push more oil out of the ground.
Some environmental groups expect the credit will have the unintended consequence of extending the lives of big polluters like coal-fired power plants, among the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitters, by giving them a new revenue stream.
Under the credit proposal, industrial facilities would be required to capture at least 50% of their carbon emissions to be eligible for the credit, with that threshold rising to 75% for power plants - thresholds green groups say are too low.
As MRC reported earlier, ExxonMobil has initiated the process for engineering, procurement and construction contracts as part of its plans to expand CCS at its LaBarge, Wyoming facility, which has already captured more CO2 than any other facility in the world. The expansion project will capture up to 1 MM metric tons of CO2, in addition to the 6-7 MM metric tons already captured at LaBarge each year.
We remind that ExxonMobil plans to build its first, large-scale plastic waste advanced recycling facility in Baytown, Texas, and is expected to start operations by year-end 2022. The new facility follows validation of ExxonMobil’s initial trial of its proprietary process for converting plastic waste into raw materials. To date, the trial has successfully recycled more than 1,000 metric tons of plastic waste, the equivalent of 200 million grocery bags, and has demonstrated the capability of processing 50 metric tons per day.
According to MRC's ScanPlast report, Russia's estimated PE consumption totalled 1,638,370 tonnes in the first eight months of 2021, up by 10% year on year. Shipments of all grades of ethylene polymers increased. At the same time, PP shipments to the Russian market were 989,570 tonnes in the first eight months of 2021, up by 30% year on year. Deliveries of homopolymer PP and block-copolymers of propylene (PP block copolymers) increased, whereas shipments of injection moulding PP random copolymers decreased significantly.
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