What Happens When A So-Called Climate Solution Risks Your Community’s Safety?

"The environmental injustice of a $4.6 billion carbon capture project in Louisiana."

"ST. ROSE, Louisiana — In the St. Charles Parish neighborhood, only a tall green chain-link fence stands between a block of homes and the future site of a facility that may, among other things, store carbon in efforts to limit planetary heating.

The $4.6 billion project is part of a new slate of federal efforts bolstering carbon capture and storage, or CCS, a controversial technology that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has identified as an important tool in mitigating climate change. This Louisiana-based plant probably wouldn’t have been possible without the passage of the historic climate change legislation that President Joe Biden signed into law in the summer of 2022. The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) dedicated $370 billion toward addressing the climate crisis, by far the largest federal investment in the issue. The IRA further solidified Biden’s commitment for CCS: The law increased tax credits for storing carbon that range from $50 per ton of CO2 to $85 per ton — a whopping 70 percent jump.

Biden’s IRA promises to be a bonanza for the CCS industry — and the stakes are high. If humanity fails to rein in climate change by either swiftly transitioning away from the dirty energy sources emitting greenhouses gasses or figuring out a way to neutralize them, then many parts of the world could become inhospitable by the end of this century."

Yessenia Funes reports for Vox August 9, 2024.

Source: Vox, 08/14/2024