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California's carbon-capture controversy

Episode Summary

California's ambitious carbon-neutral plan includes a controversial method of capturing carbon from the air and depositing it underground. Can it work?

Episode Notes

Lawmakers want California to eliminate the state’s carbon footprint altogether by 2045. They’re taking all sorts of steps to get to that ambitious goal; from phasing out gas-powered engines in new cars and lawnmowers to electrifying home stoves. But there’s an even bigger plan ahead, one that environmental experts say could derail it all.

Today, we talk about California’s plan to pump carbon gas into the ground. It sounds like something out of a sci-fi novel, but that’s exactly what California says is key to be able to make the state carbon neutral. Can it work? Read the full transcript here.

Host: Gustavo Arellano

Guests: L.A. Times air quality reporter Tony Briscoe

More reading:

Pollution from California’s 2020 wildfires likely offset decades of air quality gains

How California will fight Supreme Court’s limits on EPA climate enforcement

Episode Transcription

Gustavo: Now more than ever, California sees itself as a leader on combating climate change. And not just in the United States, but the world. 

The latest push: eliminate the state's carbon footprint altogether by 2045. 

Lawmakers are taking all sorts of steps to get to that ambitious goal; from phasing out gas-powered engines in new cars and lawnmowers to electrifying home stoves. But there's an even bigger plan ahead. One, the environmental experts say could derail it all.

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I'm Gustavo Arellano. You're listening to The Times, daily news from the LA Times.

 It's Monday, July 11, 2022. 

Today, pumping carbon gas into the ground. It sounds like something out of a sci-fi novel, but that's exactly what California says is key to be able to make the state carbon neutral. Can it work?

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Gustavo: Joining me to talk about this as our air quality reporter, Tony Brisco. Tony, welcome to The Times. 

Tony: Hey, thanks for having me, Gustavo. 

Gustavo: So recently, the Supreme Court issued a ruling that made it a lot harder for federal agencies like the EPA to do these big moves to tackle climate change. What did the ruling say and what didn't it say?

Tony: This ruling has largely been seen as a blow to the federal government's ability to regulate greenhouse gases, these heat trapping gases that are emitted by power plants. And that's huge, uh, when it comes to looking at fossil fuel power plants, which still dominate much of the United States, which contribute greenhouse gases to our // environment and contribute to global warming. 

Gustavo: So if it took away the power from the federal uh government. What did it do for state government? 

Tony: For state governments, I would say it had a minimal effect, but it kind of reemphasizes, according to a lot of experts, the importance of states and deciding their own climate futures. And for a lot of environmental advocates, they're happy that many of the larger states, including the most populous state in the country, uh, California // has made very big climate goals.

Gustavo: And all of this is leading to California wanting to eliminate its carbon footprint completely by 2045. How did that bold and very, very specific target come about? 

Tony: So…

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Tony:  In 2006, the state legislature actually passed a law. 

tape: It's the most comprehensive state climate action plan so far. 

Tony: Essentially you're requiring a state program to lay out a roadmap essentially, of where we're going in terms of our goals to reduce greenhouse gases and eventually go carbon neutral.

tape: The bill tells industries such as utility and cement plants and refineries to cut emissions of gases like carbon dioxide by about 25% in 14 years. 

Tape: We wanna be the first to do our share. To say to the rest of the nation, let's all follow suit and let's work from the bottom up to get our congress and our government at the national level to play the pivotal role that it needs to play internationally.

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Tony: So it set a number of benchmarks. The first of which was in 2020. Where the goal was to say, Hey, let's get back to 1990 levels in terms of the amount of greenhouse gases that we're emitting. And we actually achieved that fairly easily. We, uh, achieved that benchmark years earlier, I think in 2016. The next hurdle is going to be a lot more difficult. It's in 2030 where we're hoping to get 40% below that 1990 threshold. And so…this plan is updated every five years. And so this plan that's currently being finalized this year by the state, sees us finally through to carbon neutrality by 2045, // which that's something that former governor, Brown, uh, laid out as a goal that California should be carbon neutral no later than 2045. So that makes that happen through a number of different avenues.

Gustavo: How do California officials say this carbon neutrality plan is going to actually work?

Tony: It's gonna be a big lift. This really calls for the widespread adoption of electric vehicles. We're gonna need to have, according to this plan, unveiled by the California Air Resources Board, 30 times the total number of zero-emission vehicles on the road. We're gonna have to have a fourfold increase in solar and wind energy. We're going to have to make sure that we're doing prescribed burning to protect our natural environments, which naturally sequester carbon dioxide, our forests. And the plan also calls for a 91% decrease in in-state petroleum demand.

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Tony: And one of the most controversial aspects of this kind of proposal that is being finalized by the state actually involves a very small segment of the state's carbon emission reductions, but it's absolutely essential, according to state officials, it's called carbon capture.

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Gustavo: We'll be back after this break.

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Gustavo: So Tony, you mentioned this idea of carbon capture. But I can't visualize it. So how does it work?

Tony: For the average person, uh, myself included, I feel like it's kind of a wonky concept, but essentially // if you imagine all this is, is a process of installing equipment to smoke stacks of different industry, which essentially capture that carbon. And once you have those emissions, it essentially, instead of those industries pumping that carbon into the atmosphere and warming the environment,  they're capturing these emissions and injecting them deep underground. And so that is essentially what carbon capture boils down to is capturing these emissions from smokestacks, from oil refineries, or hard to decarbonize sectors like cement and manufacturing, these very vital sectors to our economy and essentially pumping them underground instead of // into the environment.// There's also a similar technology that is called direct air capture // which would essentially use large fans to suck air in and filter out carbon. But that one is still kind of // emerging. It's still very, uh, on the way and has not yet really been proven to be a mainstream // commercially available option at this point.

Gustavo: So basically California wants to get a bunch of vacuums to suck up all this carbon dioxide from the air and then deposit it somewhere. What scale are we talking about? Like how much space will all of this take up? How many vacuums does it require to get carbon neutral? 

Tony: I guess the vacuums would be installed to a lot of different industrial areas and most notably to oil refineries. So you have to think of like the Bay Area and Los Angeles being these big refining hubs and essentially, uh, industry installing this equipment on top of these smokestacks. But then the question remains, well, once you've captured this carbon, where does it go? Where are you pumping it underground? How are you going to transport it to where it's going to be injected deep underground. State officials to this point have identified the Central Valley that is likely, um, the best place to inject these carbon emissions into // rocks that they have, or rock formations that they have deep underground. Or some of the old, or mature, oil wells that they have there.

Gustavo: Okay. So if this works, who could possibly be opposed to this? 

Tony: So believe it or not, there's actually a groundswell of environmental advocates and communities that are opposed to this. A lot of them raised concerns about safety in terms of where is this gonna be stored underground? How do we know that once these carbon emissions are being stored underground, that they'll stay there. I mean, we live in a very seismically, uh, active state, a very earthquake-prone state, and researchers have suggested that earthquakes could potentially make these underground reservoirs of carbon dioxide susceptible to leaks. So I think that that is a very fair question. And, you know, I think that they're also skeptical because I think a lot of community members and environmental advocates would rather just see direct cuts to this type of industry. If you want to phase out certain fossil fuel use, they would rather see that industry being phased out altogether rather than certain kinds of equipment being installed to capture that technology and allow them to continue carrying on. 

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Tony:  Another big question as a part of this is; why are companies motivated to pump this carbon underground? What kind of really led to that? And carbon dioxide is actually a very big commodity, believe it or not to oil companies. They pump carbon underground into very old oil Wells to flush out essentially the dregs, the very hardest to get to the very bottom portion of oil and they can extract millions of barrels of oil in these mature oil fields, which California has a lot. 

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 So a lot of environmental advocates are saying, are we simply trying to pump these carbon emissions underground to avert catastrophic climate change? Or are we doing this to extract more oil improve long fossil fuel use.

Gustavo: Wait….I thought the point of this plan was to go carbon neutral and wean us off of fossil fuels? 

Tony: Yeah, and I think that that's what really, you know, concerns a lot of people at this meeting is that, you know, in asking the California Air Resources Board, they've told me that their road to carbon neutrality under this proposal to become carbon neutral by 2045, they have not accounted for any of the emissions from carbon capture and sequestration being used in what's called enhanced oil recovery. So essentially they don't expect any of these companies to pump carbon underground to extract more oil. But there really is no framework at this point to prevent them from doing that. In fact, it's really incentivized through both federal and state grants that say if you're pumping carbon underground, whether you're extracting oil or not, we're gonna give you a tax break.

Gustavo: What are experts you're talking to saying about all this? 

Tony: One expert in particular, who is // very familiar with // the economics of this carbon plan essentially was saying that really there's no economic value to sticking carbon into the ground. You certainly would get tax incentives from the state and federal government if they're available, the only real incentive for these companies, the only real way that it becomes profitable is if they're extracting more oil. So that really raises a lot of eyebrows for environmental advocates, because currently there's about 17 proposals that have been submitted in the state of California in recent years to pump carbon underground as a part of this type of technology, carbon capture technology. And right now all of those proposals say that they're doing it solely to store this carbon underground, not for oil extraction, but a lot of people don't think that that's what ultimately will happen. 

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Most of, uh, these kinds of operations around the globe and, uh, within the United States, uh, use this as a way to extract more oil.

Gustavo: We'll be back after this break. 

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Gustavo: Tony, you were explaining how climate experts are worried about carbon capture because the oil industry is actually using it to extract more fossil fuels. So what are state officials planning in terms of policy around this technology?

Tony: So I think that a lot of folks are a little bit concerned //  about the lack of policy framework behind how this technology can be used and what essentially the, the guardrails are.

LIMON: There's a lot of questions that remain to be answered by the legislature in terms of how do you store it? How do you transport it? Who's liable? Who owns this technology?

Tony: So one, uh, state Senator in particular, Senator Monique Limón is proposing a bill that if these folks who are submitting these applications to pump carbon emissions underground, want to do so, they cannot pump these carbon emissions underground… 

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Tony: …to extract more oil. 

LIMON:That's how you ended up with Senate Bill 1314, which is pretty simple in clarifying and saying whenever, however, you all do carbon capture in the state, it shall not be used for enhanced oil recovery to her. 

Tony: To her, it was very simple. 

LIMON: If carbon capture is intended to be a climate strategy, it should not be in the business of creating more fossil fuels. 

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Gustavo: How important is this carbon capture to California's carbon neutral 2045 plan. Like if this part fails, can California even achieve that goal? 

Tony: It's interesting that you say that because I think that that's very uncertain. To a lot of the critics of carbon capture at these state plans. State officials have said that this is a very tiny segment of emissions. I think that if you look at the peak year that they have, //  it's gonna be like $14 million in like the peak year in terms of reductions that will be, you know, required from this segment over the long haul, it could be a couple hundred metric tons of carbon that need to be stored. But California officials are also in line with, uh, global climate experts that this is absolutely necessary to achieve our climate goals //  because there are going to be segments of the economy. Like for example, uh, the cement industry, we will need to build more buildings, // pave sidewalks, things like that. And this is an industry that requires high heat that can only come from the combustion of fossil fuels. So, is this an application that makes sense for that industry since there is no other viable alternative? That's an open question.

Gustavo: But does this actually solve the problem of carbon emission? Because I imagine if people know about this and it becomes bigger, they'll be like, oh, well we could emit all the carbon that we want, we don't have to switch over to electric vehicles. We could just continue driving our old cars because well, carbon capture's gonna take care of the whole problem. 

Tony: Yeah. And I think that, you know, on an industrial level, that's essentially what a lot of folks are concerned about // is if industrial operations can essentially emit the same amount of carbon as they were 20, 30 years ago today. And they're just putting it underground instead of the atmosphere. Does that make it better? Another important consideration is the fact that, although the greenhouse gases, the carbon emissions are going underground, the toxins associated with these facilities are still going to be, um, you know, emitted by these facilities. Um, so these are things that, you know, can contribute to lung cancer and a number of different ailments that are not being put underground.

Gustavo:  Finally Tony, from what you're saying, California is already on its way to implement these climate-friendly policies, but it's just California and failure at the national level still means a less stable environment for the state. So going back to the Supreme Courts’ ruling on the EPA, what are the implications for California moving ahead with this plan? 

Tony:  Yeah, that's the million dollar question. One critical flaw that folks have pointed out is the fact that this // climate plan really only accounts for in-state petroleum demand. And that includes refining oil for what Californians would need. //  But in reality, California refines oil for a number of surrounding states, including Nevada, Arizona. And I believe Utah. And so even if //  California is able to reduce petroleum demand in-state, the question is how much demand really comes from these neighboring states that we are still supplying.

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Tony:  California, like a lot of states, will now be kind of left to their own devices. It really makes each state decision that much more important. 

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Tony:  Whether that's more investment in incentivizing zero-emission vehicles. Whether that's more prescribed burning to protect our forests and habitats that naturally sequester,, carbon dioxide, or whether that's //  more investments in green energy like wind or solar. These things are going to be absolutely crucial to paving our way to  a carbon neutral future.

Gustavo: Tony, thank you so much for this conversation. 

TONY:  Thank you. 

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Gustavo: And that's it for this episode of The Times daily news from the LA Times.  Shannon Lin was the jefa on this episode and Mario Diaz mixed and mastered it. 

 Shannon Lin, Denise Guerra, Kasia Broussalian, David Toledo and Ashlea Brown. Our editorial assistants are Madalyn Amato and Carlos De Loera. Our intern is Surya Hendry.

Our engineers are Mario Diaz, Mark Nieto and Mike Heflin. Our editor is Kinsee Morlan. Our executive producers are Jazmin Aguilera and Shani Hilton. And our theme music is by Andrew Eapen. Like what you're listening to? Then make sure to follow The Times on whatever platform we use. Don't make us the Poochie of podcasts. Poochie won't go away.

I'm Gustavo Arellano. tomorrow with all the news and desmadre. Gracias.

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