Thanks so much for this report. Anyone who bothers to examine the details of carbon capture will conclude that it is nothing but a scam promoted by the fossil fuel industry. The technology is not economical at scale. As your article states, the only "successful" carbon capture facilities thus far are those that use the recovered CO2 for oil production. I fear that the rush to produce giant AI centers is going to neuter any honest efforts to reduce CO2 emissions.
The oil and gas industry (including pipeline builders) is rushing to monetize the enhanced 45Q incentives for CCS in the OBBBA. In Louisiana, their aggressiveness is creating pushback, even within the GOP. Grassroots groups are springing up to challenge the eminent domain cases that industry has used to secure right-of-ways for pipelines. Injection well sites are all over the map, as fossil giants like Exxon (see Denbury) scramble to build out a durable CCS infrastructure. And what makes it all worse is the dismantling of federal EJ policy and, potentially soon, the gutting of NEPA by the SPEED Act.
Let's stop calling these carbon capture projects and call them what they really are: tertiary oil recovery projects! If they use the captured carbon to pump into oil wells that are otherwise uneconomical, they compound the problem. Not only do they emit unknown amounts of leaked methane in the carbon extraction, they require unregulated pipelines for the CO2 to be pumped to old oil fields for further oil extraction. This is a nightmare: increased energy consumption, increased fossil fuel emissions, increased AI driven scams that drive misinformation and deception to new levels! Just stop this. We have more than enough data centers to provide for legitimate use of AI; build more and the owners will go shopping for new, even more dubious customers to feed their habit and we will all be drowning in their BS, if we aren't already.
Much like what they said about the effects of fossil fuel emissions causing green house gases decades ago. They know this is a con but they need to make money even more now that they're being shut out by other countries who're canceling contracts and shutting them down. They have to try and make that money up somehow to please their morbidly rich shareholders.
This is just more evidence that the United States is fast becoming a failed state. If you have the ability to secure your own power resources from the grid, do so. Power fluctuations and outages are becoming more frequent everywhere. The data centers are most certainly not helping. When that house of cards finally falls down, they will take a lot of us down with them.
Thanks so much for this report. Anyone who bothers to examine the details of carbon capture will conclude that it is nothing but a scam promoted by the fossil fuel industry. The technology is not economical at scale. As your article states, the only "successful" carbon capture facilities thus far are those that use the recovered CO2 for oil production. I fear that the rush to produce giant AI centers is going to neuter any honest efforts to reduce CO2 emissions.
The oil and gas industry (including pipeline builders) is rushing to monetize the enhanced 45Q incentives for CCS in the OBBBA. In Louisiana, their aggressiveness is creating pushback, even within the GOP. Grassroots groups are springing up to challenge the eminent domain cases that industry has used to secure right-of-ways for pipelines. Injection well sites are all over the map, as fossil giants like Exxon (see Denbury) scramble to build out a durable CCS infrastructure. And what makes it all worse is the dismantling of federal EJ policy and, potentially soon, the gutting of NEPA by the SPEED Act.
You mentioned the "ballroom" in passing... I found this compelling: https://substack.com/@thedreydossier/note/p-181700087?r=5iqhl
Let's stop calling these carbon capture projects and call them what they really are: tertiary oil recovery projects! If they use the captured carbon to pump into oil wells that are otherwise uneconomical, they compound the problem. Not only do they emit unknown amounts of leaked methane in the carbon extraction, they require unregulated pipelines for the CO2 to be pumped to old oil fields for further oil extraction. This is a nightmare: increased energy consumption, increased fossil fuel emissions, increased AI driven scams that drive misinformation and deception to new levels! Just stop this. We have more than enough data centers to provide for legitimate use of AI; build more and the owners will go shopping for new, even more dubious customers to feed their habit and we will all be drowning in their BS, if we aren't already.
Much like what they said about the effects of fossil fuel emissions causing green house gases decades ago. They know this is a con but they need to make money even more now that they're being shut out by other countries who're canceling contracts and shutting them down. They have to try and make that money up somehow to please their morbidly rich shareholders.
This is just more evidence that the United States is fast becoming a failed state. If you have the ability to secure your own power resources from the grid, do so. Power fluctuations and outages are becoming more frequent everywhere. The data centers are most certainly not helping. When that house of cards finally falls down, they will take a lot of us down with them.