Plans to Capture CO2 from Coal Plants Wasted Federal Dollars, Watchdog Says

upstart writes:

Plans To Capture Co2 From Coal Plants Wasted Federal Dollars, Watchdog Says - The Verge:

The Biden administration wants to shove more money into projects that are supposed to capture CO2 emissions from power plants and industrial facilities before they can escape and heat up the planet. But carbon capture technologies that the Department of Energy has already supported in the name of tackling climate change have mostly fallen flat, according to a recent report by the watchdog Government Accountability Office.

About $1.1 billion has flowed from the Department of Energy to carbon capture and storage (CCS) demonstration projects since 2009. Had they panned out, nine coal plants and industrial facilities would have been outfitted with devices that scrub most of the CO2 out of their emissions. Once captured, the CO2 can be sent via pipelines to underground storage in geologic formations.

That's not what happened. The DOE doled out $684 million to coal[sic] six coal plants, but only one of them actually got built and started operating before shuttering in 2020. Of the three separate industrial facilities that received $438 million, just two got off the ground. Without more accountability, "DOE may risk expending significant taxpayer funds on CCS demonstrations that have little likelihood of success," the GAO says.

To stop that from happening, the GAO says there ought to be more congressional oversight of DOE-funded demonstration projects. The GAO report also recommends that the DOE do a better job of choosing which projects to fund and that the DOE should establish more consistent "scopes, schedules, and budgets" for projects.

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