World’s Scientists Once Again Reaffirm the Essential Importance of Carbon Capture and Removal in Meeting Midcentury Climate Goals

On April 4, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released the third installment of its Sixth Assessment Report, WGIII Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change to guide international efforts to limit warming. The following statement can be attributed to Madelyn Morrison, External Affairs Manager for the Carbon Capture Coalition:  

“In today’s IPCC report, the world’s scientific community once again reaffirms the essential importance of carbon management technologies, including carbon capture and removal, in fulfilling our climate obligations.  

“Prepared by hundreds of scientists and reviewed by governments, this consensus report underscores the critical role that carbon capture and removal technologies and infrastructure must play in managing emissions from existing industrial facilities and power plants, offsetting emissions from hard-to-abate heavy industry, aviation and other sectors, and eventually removing legacy CO2 emissions from the atmosphere. 

“To achieve carbon capture and removal at climate scale, Congress must deliver the full portfolio of federal policy support for carbon management in any forthcoming budget reconciliation legislation, including a direct pay option for the 45Q tax credit, a ten-year extension of the commence construction window, increased credit values for industry, electric power and direct air capture technologies, and reduced annual CO2 capture thresholds to boost innovation and expand eligibility. When paired with unprecedented technology demonstration and infrastructure investments in the recently-enacted Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, these transformative and bipartisan enhancements to the 45Q program would, if implemented, result in an estimated 13-fold increase in carbon management capacity and annual CO2 emissions reductions of 210-250 million metric tons by 2035. 

“Today’s IPCC report sounds an urgent call to action. Congress must build upon the success of the bipartisan infrastructure bill by promptly enacting pending improvements to the 45Q tax credit to help deploy carbon capture, direct air capture and carbon utilization technologies at scale to meet net-zero emissions goals. We cannot afford to delay economywide commercial deployment of carbon management technologies and infrastructure, if midcentury global temperature targets are to remain within reach.” 

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Convened by the Great Plains Institute, the Carbon Capture Coalition is a nonpartisan collaboration of more than 90 companies, unions, conservation and environmental policy organizations, building federal policy support to enable economywide, commercial scale deployment of carbon management technologies. This includes carbon capture, removal, transport, utilization, and storage from industrial facilities, power plants, and ambient air.