Carbon Capture and Storage
Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) projects pull carbon dioxide from coal, natural gas and biomass power plants and also industrial operations – oil refining, cement, fertilizer, ethanol and more — for ultimate geologic storage. Virtually every major plan to address climate change through dramatic reductions in CO2 emissions assumes that CCS will be widely deployed in the next two decades. Unfortunately, even as major nations are counting on CCS technologies to cut emissions, they have not yet made the required investments.
Approximately 80 million tons a year of CO2 is sequestered annually in U.S. in oil fields and deep saline aquifers. However, deployment of CCS in the power and industrial sector has lagged for a number of financial and policy reasons. The STC CCS project is focused on advancing improved CCS financing and supportive federal and state policy.
Dan Reicher and Jeff Brown lead the project, building on Dan’s policy and finance work in the federal government and clean tech firms and Jeff’s background in energy project investment banking and clean power project development. Some of the Center’s work includes: financial analysis of the microeconomic impacts of various proposed federal CCS policies; estimating the fiscal cost of policy proposals; and working with states to make CCS a viable policy option for decarbonizing their power and industrial sectors. Policy options cover a spectrum from sequestration tax credits, investment tax credits, Master Limited Partnership eligibility, tax-exempt bond financing, and clean energy portfolio standards.