Carbon Capture Coalition Hosts Online Briefing to Highlight Release of 2023 Federal Policy Blueprint

On April 24, the Carbon Capture Coalition released its 2023 Federal Policy Blueprint, a roadmap of essential, common-sense policy, regulatory, and implementation related recommendations for the 118th Congress and the administration to adopt as they support the responsible scale-up of the carbon management industry in the remainder of this decade. 
 
Thanks to robust and sustained bipartisan congressional support, the United States now provides the most forward-looking policies in the world for the deployment of carbon management technologies. However, there is still much work to be done to ensure the historic investments made in carbon management throughout the past several years translate to widescale project deployment. 
 
“I hope you all have heard certainly from Brad Crabtree, myself, our Secretary, White House colleagues, and from the president himself just how much we think that carbon management is an absolutely indispensable part of our 2050 net zero strategy. I hope that comes through not only in the words we use but more importantly the actions that we take in the collaboration that we have with all of you” declared David Turk, the Deputy Secretary for the Department of Energy, during the briefing. Deputy Secretary Turk noted both the scale of deployment necessary and the support carbon management technologies have received, noting that “this is an unprecedented opportunity for those of us who’ve worked in this area for quite a few years, and I’m a firm believer success begets success, so the more we have expanded successes, the more we have successes at scale, that’s going to allow a lot more successes to happen on this front. Thank you for everybody’s efforts on the policy blueprint, which has a lot of smart policy suggestions, the demand side support being absolutely critical, and for continuing to work on these carbon management technologies to drive those costs down even further.”  

Alongside Deputy Secretary Turk, the panel included Jennifer Holmgren, the President and CEO of LanzaTech, and Shannon Heyck-Williams, Associate Vice President of Climate and Energy for National Wildlife Federation. Jennifer Holmgren highlighted the importance of the priorities outlined in the Blueprint from the perspective of a carbon reuse company like LanzaTech, noting “the policy work that [the Coalition is] doing is really important [in terms of] how 45Q is deployed and how utilization versus sequestration are accounted for.” Shannon Heyck-Williams spoke on the role that carbon management must play in the broader conservation picture, stressing that “We’re at the point now with climate change and certainly will only increasingly be at this point where we have an excess of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and need to actively take steps, in addition to planting trees, restoring our wetlands, and other natural solutions, to turn to technology to actually pull some of that excess CO₂ out of the atmosphere to give us more time to adapt and to take other strategies as part of a full suite of approaches to climate change.” 

In addition, Coalition staff provided an overview of the crucial priorities advocated for in the blueprint. Coalition Executive Director Jessie Stolark highlighted the policy priorities contained in the blueprint, stating that it “offers a comprehensive and common sense vision for Congress and the Administration as they look to further support the deployment of these technologies to meet our shared objectives.” The panel and ensuing Q&A were moderated by Ben Finzel, President of RENEWPR. 

You can view our release event recording here. To read the Carbon Capture Coalition’s 2023 Federal Policy Blueprint click here. You can view the Summary for Policymakers 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, 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.