Carbon Capture Coalition Hosts Virtual Media Briefing on Carbon Reuse 

In November, the Carbon Capture Coalition co-hosted a media briefing on carbon reuse with the Bipartisan Policy Center featuring speakers from Coalition member organizations and the federal government. Speakers focused on key issues facing the growing carbon reuse sector, including the potential pathways, climate benefits, economic impacts, policy drivers, and federal support.  

Carbon reuse also referred to as carbon conversion or its statutory term, utilization, is the reuse of carbon oxides captured from industry, power facilities, and directly from the atmosphere to convert into a wide variety of useful products. Since reusing the carbon stores the captured carbon in forms of products, carbon reuse complements large-scale carbon storage within the full suite of carbon management technologies in helping meet midcentury climate goals. However, under the current 45Q statute, there is a $25 per ton disparity between those projects that reuse carbon emissions versus those that securely and permanently store the captured carbon.  

This disparity effectively disincentivizes the development and deployment of relatively nascent carbon reuse technologies, essentially acting similarly to a new tax on such operations. This disparity rises to $50 per ton in relation to direct air capture projects. Creating parity for carbon reuse with the geologic storage credit is a necessary and important step to provide commercial certainty to this nascent but growing sector and to support full decarbonization of the economy.    

At the briefing, industry experts highlighted the market potential on the scale of billions of dollars across reuse pathways in building materials and fuels. In addition, speakers highlighted the potential benefits of carbon reuse in both climate mitigation and creating highly skilled jobs to sustain local economies. Overall, the speakers provided a holistic rationale for the importance of carbon reuse as a significant technology within a full suite of carbon management technologies and highlighted the importance of enacting the bipartisan, bicameral CCU Parity Act.  

The panelists included: 

• Ian Rowe, Acting Division Director, CO₂ Removal and Conversion, US Department of Energy  
• Martin Keighley, CEO, CarbonFree 
• Natalia Sharova, Policy Manager, Air Company 
• Sangeet Nepal, Carbon Removal and Reuse Specialists, Carbon Capture Coalition 
• Savita Bowman, Senior Policy Manager, ClearPath 
• Xan Fishman, Director of Energy Policy, Bipartisan Policy Center 

“This [carbon reuse] is a solution that shifts our focus merely from managing carbon to actively repurposing it for good. This creates a paradigm shift in our approach to how we view carbon, and certain products have the potential to store carbon permanently in concrete and polymers. This prevents the associated carbon emissions from staying in the earth’s atmosphere or entering into the atmosphere through combustion of natural gas from industries or power facilities,” said Savita Bowman of ClearPath during her remarks on the climate benefits of carbon reuse.  

“We want to get rid of carbon from the atmosphere, but we cannot live without carbon. We need carbon in a lot of things we do, we build, and the products we use. We need to resource the carbon from the carbon dioxide either in the atmosphere or going out to the atmosphere from industrial processes,” said Martin Keighley of CarbonFree during his remarks on the economic impacts of carbon reuse. “Industrial carbon dioxide emissions represent just over 20 percent of all emissions, so these are a major part to tackle, and we cannot tackle these without these carbon capture and utilization industries.” 

“Carbon reuse is an important complement to large-scale carbon storage from a climate perspective. It creates value-added market as well as carbon reuse opportunities for facilities capturing CO₂ while also creating long-term circular supply chains,” said Natalia Sharova of Air Company during her remarks on the economic impacts of carbon reuse. “Importantly, carbon reuse technologies create new manufacturing industries and diversify manufacturing feedstocks that our economy relies on, reduce our dependence on carbon-intensive products, and create well-paying jobs.” 

“Right now, the biggest driver for utilization comes from the 45Q tax credit recently enhanced as part of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). There are also grants that the federal government has for utilization that came from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL). Lastly, demand-side rules like procurement standards from the government for preferring goods that utilize CO₂ can help [drive utilization],” said Xan Fishman of the Bipartisan Policy Center during his remarks on policy drivers for carbon reuse. Xan further mentioned in his remarks about the Captured Carbon Parity (CCU) Act, “This [CCU Parity Act] is a bipartisan legislation, and this bill would raise the carbon utilization [tax] credit level up to be on parity with sequestration.” 

“FUTURE Act in 2018 provided $35 per metric ton for carbon utilization, and in 2022 increased the credit value to $60 per metric ton for utilization from industry and power facilities. BIL had $310 million dedicated to the Carbon Utilization Procurement Grant Program to provide that money to eligible entities to apply for federal government funds to procure products made from carbon dioxide,” said Ian Rowe from the Department of Energy. 

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

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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, reuse, and storage from industrial facilities, power plants, and ambient air. Members of the Coalition work together to advocate for the full portfolio of policies required to commercialize a domestic carbon management sector and inform policymakers as well as stakeholders on the essential role this suite of technologies must play in achieving these shared objectives.