Carbon Capture Coalition & I³ Host Media Briefing on Carbon Management’s Role in Decarbonizing the Industrial Sector

Ahead of Climate and National Clean Energy Week, the Coalition and the Industrial Innovation Initiative (I³) co-hosted a September 19 media briefing on the role of carbon management technologies in addressing emissions in the industrial sector. During the briefing, Ben King of Rhodium Group, Daniel Rennie of Leilac Limited, Rohini Sengupta of United Airlines, and Kevin Pranis of LiUNA briefed members of the media on carbon management technologies and strategies that will be needed to decarbonize heavy industry sectors, including steel, cement, chemicals, and aviation. 

The briefing kicked off with a discussion of recent research that indicates that, without further policy mechanisms, industry will be the largest source of domestic emissions by 2030. Speakers then discussed the application of carbon management technologies in the cement, lime, and aviation sectors and organized labor’s role in these decarbonization strategies.  

The industrial sector, which includes the manufacturing of materials we rely on every day, including steel, cement, and chemicals and fuels, is on track to be the highest-emitting sector in the US by the beginning of the next decade. Carbon capture technologies will play a critical and complementary role in addressing emissions at industrial facilities and the use of these products, particularly the direct emissions from the conversion of raw materials to finished products, or so-called process emissions. We must ensure technologies like carbon capture are cost-effective and available to enable meeting our ambitious climate, energy production, and economic goals.

“[Changes in the US economy will] leave industry as the single largest emitting sector in the US economy by 2035,” said Ben King of Rhodium Group during his presentation on recent industrial sector research. “Current policy is good and a very important start, and we need a lot more, which is why there are blueprints out there that point us in the direction of where we need to be headed. We won’t get to deep decarbonization economy-wide, nor in the industrial sector, without substantially more ambitious climate policy action in the industrial sector and commensurate investments in these technologies that can help decarbonize industry.”

Certain industrial processes, such as converting lime into cement, have limited or no emissions reduction strategies beyond carbon capture. These emissions cannot be addressed by electrification alone but require a mix of pragmatic solutions, including carbon management technologies. 

“We’ve said that [cement] is a hard-to-abate sector but the reason why — it is all due to this stuff called limestone,” Leilac Limited CEO Daniel Rennie explained during his remarks on the process emissions inherent to cement production. “When it’s heated up, it releases almost half of its weight at CO₂. […] We’re in engineering studies with a number of companies to enable deployment to capture all the process emissions as quickly as possible.”

The recent enhancements to 45Q provide an additional incentive to deploy carbon management technologies in crucial sectors to decarbonize. The cost of deploying carbon management technology differs across industry sectors, depending on the concentration and purity of the CO₂ emissions. While estimates range depending on industry and facility type, it has become clear that the 45Q tax credit alone is not enough to incentivize the deployment of carbon management technologies across emitting sectors.

“The substantive majority of our greenhouse gas emissions comes from the consumption of jet fuel in our aircraft engine, so it is really a matter of fuel usage reduction and then replacement,” said Rohini Sengupta of United in her remarks on decarbonization in the aviation industry. “As we look at future generations of [sustainable aviation fuel] we start looking at opportunities to not only have more sustainable feedstock as the source of carbon for our SAF, but moreover how do we incorporate technology, particularly carbon capture, utilization, and sequestration technologies to bring down the lifecycle emissions of that sustainable aviation fuel.”

Carbon management in the industrial sector also provides a critical pathway for creating and retaining the high-wage jobs base that families and communities depend upon while positioning our nation’s industrial, energy, and manufacturing sectors for global leadership in achieving net zero emissions by midcentury. These sectors provide workers with a broad range of skill sets family-sustaining jobs that form the backbone of many regional economies.

“Industrial facilities make products that are absolutely essential to our work,” pointed out Kevin Pranis of LiUNA, during his remarks on the need to preserve jobs associated with industry. “Most of what we do involves steel and cement, asphalt and fuel. For our construction industry to succeed we need to figure out ways to decarbonize those materials, whether it’s our work in those facilities or the components to that work.”

Ben Finzel, President of RENEWPR, moderated the briefing, which concluded with a Q&A session with participating reporters. View the recording of the briefing here. 

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Convened by the Great Plains Institute, the Carbon Capture Coalition is a nonpartisan collaboration of more than 100 companies, unions, and 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.