Qatar raises carbon capture ambitions, touting green credentials

CARBON CAPTURE IS NEITHER GREEN NOR CLEAN

By Bloomberg  

Wednesday, January 13, 2021

Qatar Petroleum will build facilities capable of capturing and storing more than seven million tonnes per year of carbon dioxide in the tiny peninsular nation by 2030, the company said in a statement.

The world’s biggest liquefied natural gas producer is increasingly touting its environmental credentials. LNG is less polluting than oil and coal but suppliers are still facing pressure to reduce emissions as nations seek to meet strict climate targets.

Energy Minister Saad Sherida Al-Kaabi previously announced plans for a two million tonnes per year facility in 2019.

In November, QP signed the world’s first long-term LNG deal that details pollution. Each cargo shipped to the buyer in Singapore will detail how much carbon was emitted in its production.

In addition to carbon capture projects, QP plans to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases it emits from its LNG plants by 25% and upstream operations by 75 per cent by 2030, according to the statement.

It also intends to reduce the amount of gas it burns off in its operations, known as flaring, by at least 75 per cent by 2030 and reduce methane leaking to 0.2 per cent by 2025.

© 2021 Bloomberg L.P.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for CARBON CAPTURE (plawiuk.blogspot.com)

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for CARBON CAPTURE IS NEITHER GREEN NOR CLEAN (plawiuk.blogspot.com)

Battle over carbon capture as tool to fight climate change

BY DREW COSTLEY

1 of 18

The Marathon Petroleum Refinery is seen in Reserve, La., Thursday, Dec. 2, 2021. Last year, Congress pledged $3.5 billion to carbon capture and sequestration projects around the United States, which has been called the largest federal investment ever by advocates for the technology. But environmental justice advocates and residents of legacy pollution communities are wary of the technology, with many calling it a "false solution." (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)


Polly Glover realized her son had asthma when he was nine months old. Now 26, he carries an inhaler in his pocket whenever he’s out and about in Prairieville, Louisiana, part of Ascension Parish.

“He probably needs to leave Ascension quite frankly,” Glover says, but he hasn’t because “this is his home and this is our family and this is our community.”

The parish is part of the 85-mile (137-kilometer) span between New Orleans and Baton Rouge officially called the Mississippi River Chemical Corridor, more commonly known as Cancer Alley. The region’s air quality is some of the worst in the United States, and in several places along the corridor, cancer risks are much higher than levels considered acceptable by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Glover says the air is “terrible” where she lives, but there’s also great biodiversity — osprey, eagles, migratory birds, deer, rabbits, fish and alligators — among the region’s lakes, rivers and wetlands. The environmental advocate has been working for 30 years to preserve the place she’s loved since childhood.

That’s why she is wary of anything that might make air quality worse or threaten wildlife — and her biggest fear now is that a $4.5 billion plant designed to capture climate-changing carbon and make clean-burning hydrogen fuel will actually do more harm to the Lake Maurepas basin.

The blue hydrogen energy plant (BLUE MEANS IT USES NATURAL GAS TO CREATE H2) is slated to be built and operated by Air Products and Chemicals, a multinational petrochemical company. The company says the plant will capture airborne carbon emissions created during production and put them safely underground — a process called carbon capture and storage.

“Sometimes I think people think you’re kind of bubbling this in at the bottom of the lake,” said Simon Moore, vice president of investor relations, corporate relations and sustainability at Air Products. “You know, this is a mile below the Earth’s surface, where the geological formation of the rock has this porous space, which simply absorbs the CO2.”

Still, Glover is worried. “I’m not a scientist. I’m a mom who cares,” she said. “We have got to be better stewards of the environment and while reducing carbon emissions is necessary, injecting them into the basin is not the answer.”

There are several other carbon capture and storage projects proposed or in the works throughout the U.S., including in Louisiana, Texas, Minnesota, Michigan, Iowa and California. Companies behind them maintain they can successfully remove carbon from the air to reduce pollution, then safely transport and store the carbon underground — or do both.

In some cases, oil and gas companies are banking on this new technology to either help build new profit centers, such as plants that make hydrogen, or extend the lifespan of their fossil fuel facilities.

Carbon capture and storage projects are gaining traction since Congress approved $3.5 billion for them last year. The Global CCS Institute, a think tank seeking to advance these projects globally, called it the “single largest appropriation of money for CCS in the history of the technology.”

In the latest report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world’s top scientists said carbon capture and storage technology has to be part of the range of solutions to decarbonize and mitigate climate change. But they said solar and wind energy and electricity storage are improving faster than carbon capture and storage.

Opponents of carbon capture and storage maintain the technology is unproven and has been less effective than alternatives such as solar and wind at decarbonizing the energy sector.

“Carbon capture is neither workable nor feasible,” said Basav Sen, climate justice policy director for the Institute for Policy Studies, a progressive think tank based in Washington, D.C. “It’s merely an excuse for the fossil fuel industry to keep operating the way it does.”

A study in late 2020 by researchers from the University of California, San Diego, found over 80% of 39 projects that have sought to commercialize carbon capture and storage ended in failure. The study cited lack of technological readiness as a top factor

But even if the technology was deployed successfully, several critics say the projects would pose threats to the public health of communities long plagued by air and water pollution.

First, they said any project that prolongs the lifespan of an existing industrial facility presents additional environmental harm by extending the amount of time it pollutes a community, which the IPCC report confirms.

Second, they noted that since carbon capture would require more energy to power the equipment, it would result in more air pollution because the technology can only catch a portion of the carbon emitted by a facility.

Howard Herzog, a senior research engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and pioneer of carbon capture and storage technology, disputed this in an interview with the Associated Press. But he acknowledged there is a risk in transporting and storing carbon.

In 2020, a pipeline carrying compressed carbon dioxide ruptured in the town of Satartia, Mississippi, which caused over 40 people to get hospital treatment and more than 300 to evacuate. The incident is cited by experts, advocates and residents who live near proposed carbon capture and storage projects to illustrate potential dangers of transporting carbon long distances.

Injecting carbon underground for storage could end up contaminating aquifers, according to Nikki Reisch, director of the climate and energy program for the Center for International Environmental Law.

Over 500 environmental organizations, including the law center, signed an open letter published in the Washington Post in July 2021, calling carbon capture and storage a “false solution.”

In response, the Carbon Capture Coalition, which advocates the technology, released its own letter in August with over 100 signatories. They pressed Congress to include investment in carbon capture and storage in any upcoming legislation.

Matt Fry, a state and regional policy manager with the Great Plains Institute, a Minneapolis-based climate and energy think tank, told AP the technology is essential to meeting mid-century climate goals.

“The potential for a completely decarbonized, electrified world is a reality,” Fry said. “But we’re going to need to transition to get there. And it’s going to require carbon capture to address those emissions.”

At the point of capture, Herzog said, the technology poses a “very low” threat to public health. “There’s always a chance of some mishaps,” he added, “but on the overall scale of chemical plants, (the technology) is fairly benign.”

Still, residents near proposed projects worry.

In California’s Central Valley agricultural region, Chevron, Microsoft and Schlumberger New Energy are collaborating to build a facility in the town of Mendota that will create energy by converting agricultural waste into carbon monoxide and hydrogen gas, then mixing it with oxygen to generate electricity with the promise of capturing 99% of the carbon from the process.

Chevron said it plans to inject the carbon “underground into nearby deep geologic formations.”

That’s concerning for Nayamin Martinez, who lives in the valley and is director of the Central California Environmental Justice Network. “That worries us a lot,” she said. “What does that mean in terms of risk for contamination of drinking water?”

Creighton Welch, a spokesperson for Chevron, said the process they plan to use is safe. “CO2 capture, injection, and storage are not new technologies and have been conducted safely for decades,” Welch said.

Back in Louisiana, Glover and other residents also fear carbon capture technology will affect the water. The carbon dioxide captured at the Air Products and Chemicals facility will be stored in sites such as under Lake Maurepas, an important wetland.

Kim Coates, who lives on the lake’s northeast side, said it’s a buffer between the Gulf of Mexico and residents. But she said she’s witnessed generations of destruction to that ecosystem through industrial development and, more recently, hurricanes and tropical storms.

Now Coates fears more of the same if carbon is stored under the lake. “We’ve seen the destruction over time with no one looking forward to what was going to happen in the future,” she said.

___

Follow Drew Costley on Twitter: @drewcostley.

___

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

THE REALITY IS THAT CCS IS NOT GREEN NOR CLEAN IT IS GOING TO BE USED TO FRACK OLD DRY WELLS SUCH AS IN THE BAKAN SHIELD IN SASKATCHEWAN
https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-myth-of-carbon-capture-and-storage.html

ALSO SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=CCS

Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill 'Doubling Down on Support for Carbon Polluters' With $25 Billion in Subsidies, Critics Warn

"We need massive investments in proven renewable solutions, not carbon capture fantasies."

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) speaks at an "End Fossil Fuel" rally organized by Our Revolution near the U.S. Capitol on June 29, 2021 in Washington, D.C. Demonstrators called on Congress to take action in ending fossil fuel subsidies. 

(Photo: Anna Moneymaker via Getty Images)

KENNY STANCIL

August 3, 2021

While Democratic leaders have described the Senate's bipartisan infrastructure bill as "a significant down payment" toward addressing the climate emergency, environmental justice advocates are warning that the proposed legislation—which reportedly includes billions of dollars in potential new subsidies for dirty energy projects disguised as solutions—threatens to prolong the life of the planet-wrecking fossil fuel industry.

"The Senate is proposing that we spend tens of billions of dollars propping up fossil fuel corporations."
—Mitch Jones, Food & Water Watch

Citing an analysis by the Center for International Environmental Law, The Intercept reported Tuesday that "the latest draft bill would make fossil fuel companies eligible for at least $25 billion in new subsidies." According to the news outlet, public money would go toward unproven technologies, including carbon capture and so-called clean hydrogen, that are "sold as dream fixes for ending the nightmare of the climate crisis without the colossal political hurdle of dislodging the fossil fuel industry from the U.S. economy."

Given that energy policy experts have called for transitioning as quickly as possible to a completely renewable energy system, critics warn that investments of the kind included in the bipartisan infrastructure bill could exacerbate coal, gas, and oil extraction, condemning vulnerable populations and future generations to the most catastrophic effects of the climate emergency.

"We will never be able to meet the Paris agreement if we fund these kind of programs," Jim Walsh, senior policy analyst at Food & Water Watch, told The Intercept, referring to the international climate accord that seeks to limit global temperature rise this century to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels by cutting the emission of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in half by 2030 on the way to "net-zero" by 2050.

The bipartisan infrastructure bill "would support the development of four petrochemical hubs that would create profit incentives for greenhouse gas emission production and would be focused on finding new ways of integrating fossil fuels into our economy for transportation, energy, petrochemical development, and plastics," according to Walsh. He added that "this deal envisions a world where we will use fossil fuels into perpetuity."

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.)—the same lawmaker who has made more than $4.5 million from his family's coal business since joining the Senate in 2010 and received praise from an ExxonMobil lobbyist for weakening the climate provisions in President Joe Biden's infrastructure proposal—is the chief architect of the energy-related measures in the bipartisan infrastructure bill.

An amended version of Manchin's Energy Infrastructure Act—which progressives denounced last month for proposing to spend 70 times more on fossil fuels than renewables—"will serve as the legislative text for key portions" of the bipartisan infrastructure bill, according to the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources that the West Virginia Democrat chairs.

Food & Water Watch policy director Mitch Jones said Tuesday in a statement that the bipartisan infrastructure bill "is not a down payment on real climate action—it is doubling down on support for climate polluters."

"The Senate is proposing that we spend tens of billions of dollars propping up fossil fuel corporations—this is on top of the $15 billion these companies already receive every year from the federal government," said Jones. "A substantial share of this new money—about $12 billion—would go to promoting carbon capture, which does absolutely nothing but extend the life of the fossil fuel era."

Some progressive critics have characterized carbon capture and storage (CCS) and carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) as polluter-friendly schemes that allow the fossil fuel industry to benefit from additional public subsidies while undermining efforts to slash emissions as thoroughly and rapidly as possible.

In addition to the possibility of leaks and contamination, progressives warn that large-scale sequestration efforts are "false solutions" that could legitimate further fossil fuel extraction and forestall robust climate action. If CCS is treated as an alternative to ambitious mitigation and adaptation policies, critics argue, then it could divert attention from the pressing need for decarbonization.

Other progressives, including Christian Parenti, associate professor of Economics at John Jay College, City University of New York, have argued that even if we stopped emitting carbon dioxide today, the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is so high that certain negative consequences can only be avoided if carbon is removed.

However, Parenti, who has long emphasized the need to "euthanize the fossil fuel industry," stresses that the state should only implement CCS or CCUS as public utilities to strip excess carbon from the atmosphere while the rest is kept underground—not to justify a continuation of the status quo.

In addition to carbon capture, the bipartisan infrastructure bill includes billions of dollars in public funding for "hydrogen fuel made from natural gas and 'low emissions buses' that could run on fuels including hydrogen and natural gas," The Intercept reported. "It also encourages subsidies that go unquantified in the legislation, for example urging states to waive property taxes for pipelines to transport captured carbon."

According to The Intercept:

So-called clean or "blue" hydrogen would use carbon capture and storage to neutralize the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the process. Another type of the fuel, called "green" hydrogen, uses electricity drawn from renewables.

Neither "blue" nor "green" means of hydrogen production, however, are widely used. For instance, only two facilities in the world have tried to commercially produce decarbonized "blue" hydrogen. As a result, 96% of hydrogen fuel globally comes from carbon-intensive means of production, according to a 2019 report. Research out of Stanford and Cornell universities indicates hydrogen produces more climate-warming gases than simply using natural gas directly.

At a time when "the survival of the fossil fuel industry depends on its ability to convince the public that corporations are taking steps to address the climate crisis," The Intercept noted, "ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell, and Chevron, just to name a few, have touted their investments in hydrogen and carbon capture."

The irony, as the news outlet pointed out, is that "long-shot, industry-supported 'climate' projects" and "the rapid scale-up of renewable energy sources already proven to meaningfully slow down the spiraling climate crisis" both depend on government subsidies. The key difference, however, is that "wind and solar work as climate fixes right now, while carbon capture and 'decarbonized' hydrogen do not."

Jones emphasized that "while handing money to dirty energy companies might help win votes in the Senate, it fails the only test that matters: Whether or not we are taking meaningful action to address our mounting climate crisis."

"Throwing away money is not going to reduce emissions," he added. "We need massive investments in proven renewable solutions, not carbon capture fantasies. If the Senate cannot manage to get this right, climate champions in the House will need to strip out these wasteful dirty energy subsidies."

BIPARTISAN INFRASTRUCTURE BILL INCLUDES $25 BILLION IN POTENTIAL NEW SUBSIDIES FOR FOSSIL FUELS

Alleen Brown
Aug. 03 2021, 11:00 AM

Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images

THE SENATE’S NEW bipartisan infrastructure bill is being sold as a down payment on addressing the climate crisis. But environmental advocates and academics are warning the proposed spending bill is full of new fossil fuel industry subsidies masked as climate solutions. The latest draft bill would make fossil fuel companies eligible for at least $25 billion in new subsidies, according to an analysis by the Center for International Environmental Law.

“This is billions upon billions of dollars in additional fossil fuel industry subsidies in addition to the $15 billion that we already hand out to this industry to support and fund this industry,” said Jim Walsh, Food and Water Watch’s senior policy analyst. Scientists say that to meet the goals of the international Paris climate accord, the U.S would need to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 — and be well on the way there by 2030. With subsidies that keep fossil fuel industries going, Walsh said, “We will never be able to meet the Paris agreement if we fund these kind of programs.”

Just as concerning is the new economy the subsidies could entrench, said Walsh, through the creation of new fossil fuel infrastructure. “This would support the development of four petrochemical hubs that would create profit incentives for greenhouse gas emission production and would be focused on finding new ways of integrating fossil fuels into our economy for transportation, energy, petrochemical development, and plastics.”

In short, he added, “This deal envisions a world where we will use fossil fuels into perpetuity.”

Industry-Backed “Climate” Projects

The subsidies would go toward technologies sold as dream fixes for ending the nightmare of the climate crisis without the colossal political hurdle of dislodging the fossil fuel industry from the U.S. economy. Such technologies include carbon capture and decarbonized hydrogen fuel. Both purported solutions in practice help fossil fuel companies mask the continued release of climate-warming gases. Neither of the technologies are currently commercially viable at a large scale, so the energy industry requires government help to carry out what critics see as a public relations scheme.

The bill includes billions of dollars for carbon capture, utilization, and storage; hydrogen fuel made from natural gas; and “low emissions buses” that could run on fuels including hydrogen and natural gas. It also encourages subsidies that go unquantified in the legislation, for example urging states to waive property taxes for pipelines to transport captured carbon.

The devil is in the details. The vast majority of clean-sounding hydrogen is made from natural gas and produces the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide as a waste product. The process itself requires energy, typically supplied by burning more natural gas, which also produces greenhouse gases. Meanwhile, carbon capture and storage are promoted primarily as a means to clean up continued emissions from fossil fuel processing facilities. Carbon capture would do nothing to resolve the array of severe environmental problems caused upstream by drilling, fracking, and mining — let alone the downstream burning of the fuels for energy.

The survival of the fossil fuel industry depends on its ability to convince the public that corporations are taking steps to address the climate crisis. Hydrogen and carbon capture, utilization, and storage have been two of the industry’s key strategies for achieving that goal. Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell, and Chevron, just to name a few, have touted their investments in hydrogen and carbon capture.

While long-shot, industry-supported “climate” projects depend on government subsidies, so does the rapid scale-up of renewable energy sources already proven to meaningfully slow down the spiraling climate crisis. Put simply, wind and solar work as climate fixes right now, while carbon capture and “decarbonized” hydrogen do not.

Yet the Democrats and Republicans pushing the infrastructure compromise are choosing to give the fossil fuel industry a lifeline instead of providing funding for proven renewable energy technology. Even bill provisions that facilitate renewable energy development contain language that could allow funds to go instead to fossil fuel industry “solutions.”

“Any legislation funding carbon capture and storage or use or direct air capture is legalizing the funding of scam technologies that merely increase air pollution death and illness, mining and its damage, and fossil-fuel infrastructure, and they have no provable carbon benefit,” said Mark Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University. “By far, the best thing to do with the subsidy money for this is to purchase wind, solar, and storage to eliminate fossil fuels.”
Little-Understood Technologies

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., hopes to finalize the latest $550 billion bipartisan iteration of the infrastructure bill by the end of the week. The legislation will also have to make it through the House and will ultimately be complimented by hundreds of billions in additional provisions to be hammered out though a separate process called reconciliation, which requires no Republican support.

President Joe Biden kicked off the process with his own blueprint, the $2.5 trillion American Jobs Plan. Republicans, however, didn’t come up with the carbon capture and hydrogen spending: Many of the industry-friendly proposals were part of Biden’s plan from the start. “It’s truly bipartisan, which makes me cringe,” said Walsh.

The bill is moving fast, and the billions in funding are set to become law at a time when policymakers and the public still lack a firm grasp on how the technologies work.

Hydrogen has become the latest darling of the fossil fuel industry. So-called clean or “blue” hydrogen would use carbon capture and storage to neutralize the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the process. Another type of the fuel, called “green” hydrogen, uses electricity drawn from renewables.

Neither “blue” nor “green” means of hydrogen production, however, are widely used. For instance, only two facilities in the world have tried to commercially produce decarbonized “blue” hydrogen. As a result, 96 percent of hydrogen fuel globally comes from carbon-intensive means of production, according to a 2019 report. Research out of Stanford and Cornell Universities indicates hydrogen produces more climate-warming gases than simply using natural gas directly.

The infrastructure bill calls for a national strategy to put “clean hydrogen” into action, including four regional hydrogen hubs. The provision explicitly ties one hub to fossil fuels and calls for two others to be near natural gas resources.

Likewise, the carbon capture measure in the bill ties government investment to areas “with high levels of coal, oil, or natural gas resources.”

Existing carbon capture projects have repeatedly run into problems, including a heavily subsidized Chevron facility dubbed the largest carbon capture project in the world, which was attached to a liquid natural gas export facility in Australia and recently deemed a technological failure. Exacerbating the problem is that there is no real market for captured carbon — except to use captured gases to produce even more oil from old wells. While the legislation puts money toward creating new uses for the trapped gases, large-scale markets are a far-off prospect.

Some proponents argue that carbon capture and hydrogen fuels could ultimately be beneficial for the climate if used for narrow purposes, like capturing carbon from steel production. But there is nothing in the bill preventing the fossil fuel industry from using the purportedly climate-friendly technologies to shore up its image while continuing to release emissions — a tactic known as “greenwashing.”

Environmental justice groups are clear about where they stand. Biden’s Environmental Justice Advisory Council issued a report in May that included carbon capture and storage among a list of technologies that will not benefit communities. Separately, a group of hundreds of organizations, ranging from Ben & Jerry’s to 350.org, sent a letter to Democratic leaders on July 19 urging them to resist energy strategies reliant on carbon capture, utilization, and storage.

The letter reads, “Investing in carbon capture delays the needed transition away from fossil fuels and other combustible energy sources, and poses significant new environmental, health, and safety risks, particularly to Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities already overburdened by industrial pollution, dispossession, and the impacts of climate change.”

Refinery-based carbon capture plan in the running for Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund cash

VPI and Phillips 66 proposal Humber Zero is submitted alongside region-wide project

By David Laister Business Editor (Humber)

8, OCT 2020
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Phillips 66 Humber Refinery at South Killingholme. (Image: Phillips 66)

A second major bid has been made to government to accelerate the Humber’s decarbonisation.

Humber Zero, a joint carbon capture initiative from Vitol Group and Phillips 66, has been submitted.

It will sit alongside Zero Carbon Humber’s £75 million application for support to create a pan-region CCS and hydrogen network as part of the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund.

The two major projects are being brought forward with the aim of transforming one of the most carbon intensive areas to become an exemplar for the world, protecting and creating thousands of jobs.

Humber Zero is focused on the refining cluster, and can work with the wider proposal or stand alone.

It involves the complex Humber Refinery and the adjoining combined heat and power plant, VPI Immingham, which is now owned by Vitol. Developed by Phillips 66, it currently provides electricity and steam to both the former owner and neighbouring Total Lindsey Oil Refinery, and is regarded as one of the most efficient generators in Europe.


  

Jonathan Briggs, project director for Humber Zero. (Image: Humber Zero)

Further details of the bid are anticipated shortly for the scheme unveiled back in May, with hopes to be operational by the mid-2020s.

Jonathan Briggs, director of Humber Zero, said: “We have put the bid in, and it is a joint bid between VPI and P66. We are very excited about it and working on a successful project, at scale, to aid decarbonisation.”

A reduction of eight million tonnes of CO2 emissions a year has been identified, with potential for more and the integration of hydrogen, with near neighbour Uniper looking at that phase, which may target future funding pots.

The grand plan would see post combustion capture on two of the three existing generators at VPI Immingham and selected processing units at the Humber and Lindsey refineries. It would be combined with the development of a hydrogen hub producing green and blue hydrogen to serve the third generator and local industry.
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Uniper, the new name for what was E.on’s fossil fuel generation portfolio, is also part of Zero Carbon Humber, with a 600MW gas-fired power plant at North Killingholme.

The anchor project in that scheme is Equinor's Hydrogen to Humber (H2H) Saltend project, which will establish the world’s largest hydrogen production plant with carbon capture at Saltend Chemicals Park.

They are two of 12 partners, including Associated British Ports, British Steel, Centrica Storage Ltd, Drax Group, Mitsubishi Power, National Grid Ventures, PX Group, SSE Thermal, Saltend Cogeneration Company Ltd and the University of Sheffield’s Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre.

Decisions on backing are anticipated in December.

SEE CARBON CAPTURE IS NEITHER GREEN NOR CLEAN

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=CCS

Study: World must adopt CO2-catching science to meet climate goals

Thursday's report said the technology offers a cost-effective pathway for low-carbon hydrogen production and can remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. File Photo by Ryan Tong/EPA-EFE

Sept. 24 (UPI) -- A global energy watchdog said in a report Thursday that governments and polluters must quickly embrace carbon capture and storage technologies to have any chance of meeting future climate goals.

The International Energy Agency said carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) technology must have a key role in trapping global-warming emissions

"Carbon capture, utilization and storage is the only group of technologies that contributes both to reducing emissions in key sectors directly and to removing [carbon dioxide] from the atmosphere to balance the emissions that are the hardest to prevent -- a crucial part of reaching the net-zero emissions goals that a growing number of governments and companies have set for themselves," IEA said in a statement.

The major report, titled "CCUS in Clean Energy Transitions," said the technology can be used with existing energy infrastructure, such as power and industrial plants, and can provide solutions for heavy industries like chemicals and aviation.

RELATED California to ban the sale of gasoline-powered cars by 2035

The report said the technology offers a cost-effective pathway for low-carbon hydrogen production in many regions and can remove CO2 from the atmosphere.

"The scale of the climate challenge means we need to act across a wide range of energy technologies," IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol said. "Carbon capture is critical for ensuring our transitions to clean energy are secure and sustainable."

Birol noted that world governments buying into the strategy is "essential" to creating a viable market for the technology.

RELATED Study highlights carbon sequestration services provided by U.S. forests

"But the industry must also embrace the opportunity," he added. "No sector will be unaffected by clean energy transitions -- and for some, including heavy industry, the value of CCUS is inescapable."

The IEA said there are existing plans to build more than 30 CCUS facilities worldwide at a cost of $27 billion, more than twice the total of investments pledged in 2017.

upi.com/7041052

CCS 

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/search?q=CCS

IS NEITHER GREEN NOR CLEAN IT CREATES METHANE FOR FRACKING OLD WELLS

AND USE IN THE BAKAN SHIELD

SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2014/10/the-myth-of-carbon-capture-and-storage.html

Hydrogen power is gaining momentum, but critics say it’s neither efficient nor green enough

FRI, JAN 7 2022
Catherine Clifford@IN/CATCLIFFORD/@CATCLIFFORD

CNBC

KEY POINTS

When you burn hydrogen, you generate energy in the form of heat, and the only by-product is water, making it a clean source of energy. However, it requires energy to make the hydrogen in the first place.

Hydrogen is part of climate discussions for hard-to-decarbonize sectors like trucking, airplanes and as a store of electricity.

But critics say pursuing green hydrogen as a fuel source is not the best solution for combatting climate change because it’s inefficient and is often created with carbon-emitting energy sources.


The Linde AG logo on a liquid hydrogen tanker truck taking a fuel delivery at the Linde hydrogen plant in Leuna, Germany, on Tuesday, July 14, 2020.
Rolf Schulten | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Hydrogen is the simplest element, and the most abundant substance in the universe.

When hydrogen burns, it generates energy in the form of heat, and the only by-product is water. That means energy created from hydrogen generates no atmosphere-warming carbon dioxide, making it one of many potential energy sources that could help reduce carbon emissions and slow global warming.

But creating hydrogen and transforming it into a useful format requires energy — and that energy is not necessarily renewable. That process is also inefficient and expensive compared with other forms of energy, renewable or not. Many critics say the hydrogen industry a way for oil and gas giants to stall the adoption of pure renewable energy sources like solar and wind, giving them a “green” cover while still maintaining demand for their products.

Despite the debate, companies and the U.S. government alike are pushing forward the continued development of the hydrogen industry.

“In my travels around the world I can’t name a country that hasn’t expressed excitement about hydrogen,” John Kerry, special presidential envoy for climate, at the Department of Energy’s Hydrogen Shot Summit last August. “From Saudi Arabia to India to Germany to Japan we’re setting up hydrogen partnerships around the world to advance this critical technology that every country understands has the opportunity to play a vital role in the clean energy transition.”

Hydrogen may grow into a multitrillion-dollar global market, said Kerry, although he warned China wants to dominate it.

28 August 2021, Brandenburg, Prenzlau: A hydrogen tank is located in the Enertrag hybrid power plant in Brandenburg. At the Enertrag hybrid power plant, green hydrogen is produced from wind power and fed into the gas grid.

Photo by Fabian Sommer/picture alliance via Getty Images

What is green hydrogen, blue hydrogen, and so on?

Producing hydrogen takes energy because hydrogen atoms don’t exist on their own — they are almost always stuck to another atom, often another element. (On earth, hydrogen is particularly abundant in the form of water, or H2O.) Creating pure hydrogen requires breaking those molecular bonds.

In the energy business, people refer to hydrogen by an array of colors to as shorthand for how it was created.

One may of making hydrogen is a process called electrolysis, when electricity is passed through a substance to force a chemical change — in this case, splitting H2O into hydrogen and oxygen.

Green hydrogen is when the energy used to power electrolysis comes from renewable sources like wind, water or solar.

VIDEO15:25 Green hydrogen could help us cut our carbon footprint, if it overcomes hurdles

Blue hydrogen is hydrogen produced from natural gas with a process of steam methane reforming, where natural gas is mixed with very hot steam and a catalyst. A chemical reaction occurs creating hydrogen and carbon monoxide. Water is added to that mixture, turning the carbon monoxide into carbon dioxide and more hydrogen. If the carbon dioxide emissions are then captured and stored underground, the process is considered carbon-neutral, and the resulting hydrogen is called “blue hydrogen.”

But there’s some controversy over blue hydrogen because natural gas production inevitably results in methane emissions from so-called fugitive leaks, which are leaks of methane from the drilling, extraction and transportation process.

Methane does not last in the atmosphere as long as carbon dioxide, but it is much more potent as a greenhouse gas. Over 100 years, one ton of methane can considered to be equivalent to 28 to 36 tons of carbon dioxide, according to the International Energy Agency.

Grey hydrogen is made from natural gas reforming like blue hydrogen, but without any efforts to capture carbon dioxide byproducts.

Pink hydrogen is hydrogen made with electrolysis powered by nuclear energy, which does not produce any carbon dioxide emissions. (Although nuclear energy creates radioactive waste which must be stored safely for thousands of years.)

Yellow hydrogen is hydrogen made with electrolysis from the energy grid. The carbon emissions vary greatly depending on the sources powering the grid.

Turquoise hydrogen is hydrogen produced from methane pyrolysis, or splitting methane into hydrogen and solid carbon with heat in reactors or blast furnaces. Turquoise hydrogen is still in its nascent stages of being commercialized, and its climate-conscious value depends on powering the pyrolysis with clean energy and storing the physical carbon.

The color system is a bit simplistic and needs to be updated and made more specific, said Daryl Wilson, the executive director of the coalition of the Hydrogen Council, an organization of industry CEOs.

“The color scheme is not helpful in in the sense that it’s not getting to the key point, which is what are the environmental attributes of the hydrogen being produced,” Wilson told CNBC. “The key issue is there has to be a methodology for tracking and declaring the specific CO² intensity of whatever hydrogen you’re working with.”

Proponents say hydrogen is versatile, but expensive

Hydrogen is already a key component of chemical industrial processes and in the steel industry. So making clean hydrogen to use in those industrial processes is critical to reducing carbon emissions, says Jake Stones at market research firm Independent Commodity Intelligence Services (ICIS).

But as an energy source itself, hydrogen’s big advantage is its versatility according to Sunita Satyapal, who oversees hydrogen fuel cell technology for the Department of Energy.

“It’s often called the Swiss Army knife of energy,” she says.

Clean hydrogen would be useful in decarbonizing industrial heavy transportation like trucking, big industrial boats, and planes, according to Stones.

It’s less interesting for smaller consumer vehicles, as battery-powered cars are being adopted much more readily. But bigger vehicles require larger batteries, which increases their weight, which in turn increases their energy use. Hydrogen can be a way around that conundrum.

Hydrogen can also be used as a way to store energy from intermittent renewable sources, which are intermittent -- the sun isn’t always shining and the wind isn’t always blowing. Instead, utilities can convert the excess energy into hydrogen and then use it for energy later on, as an alternative to battery storage.

Hydrogen “can be stored underground for as long it needs to be, much the same as natural gas, and on a seasonal basis,” Stones told CNBC.

A hydrogen-powered vehicle during refueling at the newly opened hydrogen fueling station, operated by Saudi Aramco, in the Air Products New Technology Center in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, on Sunday, June 27, 2021. Saudi Aramco outlined plans to invest in blue hydrogen as the world shifts away from dirtier forms of energy, but said it will take at least until the end of this decade before a global market for the fuel is developed.
Photographer: Maya Siddiqui/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The main drawback of hydrogen is its expense. Making hydrogen from natural gas costs about $1.50 per kilogram, said Satyapal. Clean hydrogen costs about $5 per kilogram.

Last June, the Department of Energy launched a program called the Hydrogen Shot, which aims to reduce the cost of clean hydrogen to $1 per one kilogram in one decade.

Driving down the price of clean hydrogen “would be a huge step toward solving climate change,” said billionaire Bill Gates, the founder of Breakthrough Energy Ventures, at the Department of Energy’s Hydrogen Shot Summit. “The goal of cutting premium by 80 percent is a fantastic and ambitious goal,” he said.

There are three primary pathways the Department of Energy sees as how to get the cost of clean hydrogen down from about $5 per kilogram to $1:
Improving the efficiency, durability and manufacturing volume of electrolyzers.
Improving pyrolysis, which generates solid carbon, not carbon dioxide as a byproduct, Satyapal said.
“Advanced pathways,” which is a bit of a catch-all for experimental technologies. One example is photoelectrochemical approach (PEC), where sunlight and specialized semiconductors are used to break water into sunlight and hydrogen.

Skeptics say it’s inefficient and impractical

While green hydrogen could be critical to decarbonize heavy industry, power ships and planes, and perhaps store energy, it is not efficient to use more broadly as an energy source, says Robert W. Howarth, professor of ecology and environmental biology at Cornell University.

Howarth is one of the 22 members of the New York Climate Action Council, a group charged with developing an implementation plan for the law mandating New York’s decarbonization plan. In summer of 2020, natural gas industry stakeholders suggested using blue hydrogen in the existing natural gas pipeline infrastructure to heat homes.

But Howarth and Stanford professor Mark Jacobson published a research paper in August showing that was a bad idea.

“The bottom line is that blue hydrogen has huge emissions and cannot be used except at low percentages in the current gas system,” Howarth told CNBC. “It is far cheaper to instead move to electrically driven heat pumps for heating.”

Other critics say the problems with hydrogen are more fundamental.

The process of producing hydrogen, compressing it, and then turning that compressed hydrogen back into electricity or mechanical energy is grossly inefficient, according to Paul Martin, a chemical process development expert and member of the Hydrogen Science Coalition.

“It’s worth putting up with a lot of problems with a battery because for every one joule you put in, you get 90% of it back. That’s pretty great,” Martin told CNBC. In producing and storing hydrogen, you get only 37% of the energy back out. “So 63% of the energy that you said, is lost. And that’s best case.”

But the idea of using hydrogen as a fuel is bogus, said Martin, who calls himself a life-long environmentalist.

“The people that are really behind this hydrogen push are the fossil fuel industry, because without it, what are they going to do? The fossil fuel industry without fossil fuels is basically the petroleum chemicals and materials business, which is about 25% of the current business.”

Still, Martin thinks pursuing green hydrogen is important for all its other uses, like industrial processes and the Haber-Bosch process, which converts hydrogen and nitrogen to ammonia to use in fertilizer. The Haber-Bosch process is credited with massively increasing food production and helping to feed the earth’s exploding population over the last 100 years.

“I don’t want people to think I’m anti-hydrogen. I think making green hydrogen is super-important,” Martin said.

“But it’s also super important to use it for the right things and not dumb things.”

CARBON CAPTURE NEITHER CLEAN NOR GREEN 2

Mayor of Estevan, Sask., frustrated with lack of carbon capture decisions
By The Canadian Press in News, Politics | June 5th 2019

The mayor of a southeastern Saskatchewan city says he's frustrated by a lack of government announcements on the future of a technology that would allow coal-fired power plants to stay open.

Roy Ludwig of Estevan says he wants carbon capture and storage capacity expanded to the Shand Power Station and to an additional unit at Boundary Dam where it already exists.

The technology takes emissions produced by burning fossil fuels and stores them primarily underground.

The one unit at the Boundary Dam that uses carbon capture is being allowed to stay active beyond 2030 — the year Saskatchewan has agreed with Ottawa to shut down most of its coal-fired plants.

Last year, SaskPower cited the low cost of natural gas when it decided against expanding the technology to at least two other Boundary Dam units and to study the feasibility of doing so at Shand instead.

Ludwig said people living in his city are nervous and he wants to see the province expand the technology to keep coal miners working.

"We support this provincial government and we expect them to support us," Ludwig said in an interview with The Canadian Press.

"We will continue to press the government, but it is frustrating that we haven't had those announcements, 'cause we absolutely need those announcements."

Premier Scott Moe has said carbon capture and storage is part of a conversation taking place about cleaning up Saskatchewan's emissions profile.

"You don't just commit to a technology," he said on the last day of the spring legislative sitting in May.

Ludwig has a background in the coal industry and expects the decision to shut down both units at Boundary Dam by 2024 instead of retrofitting them with carbon capture technology to put 100 coal mining jobs at risk.

"That's going to be huge," he said. "These are all people that have well-paying jobs and have families in our community."

Farming, oil and gas, and coal mining are staple industries in the city, Ludwig said.

Estevan has formed a committee with local leaders to look at what businesses can be expanded or attracted to the area in the face of a move away from coal.

Officials are also in talks with different cannabis producers to develop greenhouses for growing product and are looking to expand into warehousing, Ludwig said.

About 200 kilometres to the west, the town of Coronach is also looking to hire a consultant to help broaden its economy.

"Honestly we don't even know where to begin," said mayor Trevor Schnell.

It looks like hundreds of jobs could be lost in about 10 years, he said, and Coronach needs to be prepared.

A request for proposals posted to the province's buying and selling website says the Poplar River Power Plant and the Westmoreland Coal Mine have been the main employers in the southern region for decades.

"The socio-economic impact of their proposed shutdown will affect over 300 workers directly, as well as a yet undetermined impact on trading area businesses/communities within a 100-km radius," the online document reads.

"The quality of life and emotional state of local and regional residents are already being impacted."

SEE MY POST(S) ON CARBON CAPTURE NOT GREEN NOR CLEAN 

Why the EPA’s new carbon emissions rules will win in court

BY ETHAN BROWN, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 06/12/23 

THE HILL

FILE – Steam billows from a coal-fired power plant Nov. 18, 2021, in Craig, Colo. The Supreme Court on Thursday, June 30, 2022, limited how the nation’s main anti-air pollution law can be used to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. By a 6-3 vote, with conservatives in the majority, the court said that the Clean Air Act does not give the Environmental Protection Agency broad authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants that contribute to global warming. 

(AP Photo/Rick Bowmer, File)


With the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) releasing tough new carbon emissions standards and the state of West Virginia’s promising a rematch in court, one might think the EPA has gone rogue. It hasn’t.

On April 12, the EPA unveiled new vehicle emissions standards that would mandate auto manufacturers lowering the carbon dioxide emissions from their vehicles to a company-wide average of 82 grams per mile by 2032. Only a month later, the EPA announced new emissions standards for power plants, requiring natural gas plants to capture 90 percent of their emissions by 2035 and coal plants to capture 90 percent by 2030 (unless they have set plans to retire).

West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey has already expressed a desire to sue the EPA on both rules, setting up the potential for high-profile cases akin to last summer’s West Virginia v. EPA, in which the Supreme Court overturned the Obama-era Clean Power Plan. But unlike the Clean Power Plan, these new emissions standards are right in line with past legal precedents. The EPA neither overreached nor underreached. If the conservative Supreme Court justices were to strike down these new standards, they would be contradicting the very decision they made last summer.

While the EPA’s “toughest rules yet” may sound doomed before the high court, the EPA merely executed its duties under the Clean Air Act. As an executive agency, the EPA does not make new laws. Its job is to enforce existing laws. The Clean Air Act mandates that the EPA establish regulations that protect public health from harmful source air pollutants, as long as there is a “reasonably available control measure,” or technologically and economically feasible way to reduce emissions from that particular pollutant. As such, the EPA must remain on the lookout for new innovations that could efficiently lower air pollution and update its rules accordingly.

The inclusion of carbon dioxide in the EPA’s regulatory scope came about due to the Supreme Court’s 2007 ruling in Massachusetts v. EPA. The Court found that the Clean Air Act required the EPA to regulate carbon dioxide as a climate-warming pollutant. However, economically feasible carbon dioxide regulation presents some challenges, since carbon emissions currently exist across nearly every sector. The EPA can’t just phase out carbon dioxide the way it might for a more obscure harmful pollutant — it has to carefully interpret the Clean Air Act to determine its precise obligation in the much larger space of climate policy.

This is where last summer’s Supreme Court decision in West Virginia v. EPA provided further clarity. In the 2015 Clean Power Plan, the EPA attempted to regulate the entire electric grid as if it were one source of carbon emissions, proposing a strategy called “generation shifting” whereby the electric grid would shut down coal and gas plants and shift toward solar and wind farms. While such a transition would prove beneficial to the climate, the Supreme Court found that the Clean Air Act did not give the EPA the authority to regulate power plants out of existence. The Clean Air Act instructs them to regulate emissions at each source, not across the entire electric grid.

Following the West Virginia v. EPA verdict, the agency has meticulously worked within the court’s guidelines. It has concentrated on “regulating emissions at the source” — tailpipes, power plants, etc. The new rules are technology-neutral, recommending ideas such as electric vehicles, carbon capture and storage, and green hydrogen, while allowing companies to make their own decisions. In addition, the EPA projects over $1 trillion in economic benefits from the tailpipe rule and $64 to 85 billion in economic benefits from the power plant rule.

Of course, these regulations have their flaws. The standards are quite restrictive, may be difficult for some companies to meet and would require the use of technologies that are not yet developed at the necessary scale. And anytime an agency issues a regulation, a future president can repeal it and replace it with their own version, leaving these standards vulnerable. Since decarbonization will take decades to achieve, it is worrisome to rely too heavily on policies without broad, bipartisan support.

But the EPA doesn’t have the power to impose taxes, invest in new technologies, or create new innovative approaches to climate legislation. Its job is to enforce the Clean Air Act. The court rulings on Massachusetts v. EPA and West Virginia v. EPA,coupled with rapid technological developments, resulted in the EPA having a mandate to create standards in line with the ones recently proposed.

If the agency didn’t do that, it could have faced trouble as well. Massachusetts v. EPA arose specifically because the EPA was neglecting to regulate carbon emissions. And after proposing the far less stringent Affordable Clean Energy Rule in 2019, an appeals court vacated the law in 2021, stating that the agency fundamentally misunderstood the Clean Air Act. It is quite literally against the law for the EPA to refuse to make these standards or make them more relaxed than the Clean Air Act intended.Feehery: The limits of bipartisanshipPress: Doom for Don: Trump is political toast after indictment

Some experts have suggested that, rather than questioning the EPA’s authority under the Clean Air Act, a legal challenger could argue that these clean energy and transportation technologies are “unproven.” But none of the questions surrounding these technologies are substantial enough to strike down the new standards. In fact, leading auto manufacturers such as Ford and GM have voluntarily set ambitious targets to transition to electric vehicles; natural gas giants such as ExxonMobil, Chevron and ConocoPhillips have made large investments in carbon capture; and coal company Peabody Energy touts carbon capture as a “win-win” solution. Energy and auto companies already support the technologies necessary to fulfill the EPA’s requirements. Challenging these technologies’ feasibility in court would run completely counter to the industries’ own behavior.

While some observers have caused a stir by branding the EPA as a history-defying trailblazer marking new territory for the climate movement, in reality these new standards are nothing more than an agency doing its job. That’s remarkable — even exciting — in the sense that clean energy and electric vehicles have become economically feasible to the point of prompting these stringent emissions rules. But the standards themselves align with the law and clearly follow last summer’s decision in West Virginia v. EPA. If the six justices who signed the West Virginia decision last summer still believe in their verdict, the EPA should have no problem fending off a challenge and getting back to work.

Ethan Brown, a writer and commentator for Young Voices, is the creator and host of The Sweaty Penguin, an award-winning comedy climate program presented by PBS/WNET’s national climate initiative “Peril and Promise.” Follow him on Twitter @ethanbrown5151.

A LOT OF POLLUTION FOR TWO GREEN POLITICIANS

Military aircraft set to fly over Ottawa before and during Biden visit

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Fighter jets and helicopters will be over the region as early as Wednesday

CBC News · Posted: Mar 21, 2023

Royal Canadian Air Force CF-18 Hornets, such as the one pictured here, may be seen or heard over Ottawa before and during U.S. President Joe Biden's visit this week. (Andrew Vaughan/The Canadian Press)

Ottawa residents can expect to see or hear military aircraft over the city before and during U.S. President Joe Biden's visit this week.

CF-18 Hornet fighter jets and CH-146 Griffon helicopters may be over the region as early as Wednesday, according to a news release from the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD).

The aircraft will provide security throughout Biden's visit to Ottawa on Thursday and Friday.

NORAD encouraged civilian pilots to consult Nav Canada's webpage for information on where and when flight restrictions due to the visit will be in effect.

Former U.S. president Barack Obama was the last sitting U.S. president to make an official state visit to Ottawa.

Obama, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton all made Canada their first foreign stop upon taking office, while Reagan and George W. Bush made it their second.

Former U.S. president Donald Trump only made one official visit to Canada during his time as president, attending the 2018 G7 Leaders' Summit in La Malbaie, Que.

Trudeau set to pick a lane in green-incentive race against Biden

Brian Platt, Bloomberg News

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government is about to decide which low-carbon industries should be winners in Canada’s bid to stay competitive with President Joe Biden’s generous new industrial policy in the U.S.

Trudeau’s finance chief, Chrystia Freeland, insists she’ll keep overall spending in check in the March 28 budget. But she’s also raised expectations around the money she’s prepared to pump into green subsidies.

Canada’s choice is to “invest aggressively in the clean economy of the 21st century” or be “left behind,” Freeland told reporters Monday.  

The spending plan will have an ambitious package of incentives geared toward a few industries, according to government officials who were granted anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

Some of those sectors are well known and have already received significant funding, particularly carbon capture, electric-vehicle supply chains, and hydrogen production. But clean power generation will also be emphasized in the budget, the officials said, as Canada expands its electricity grid to help the oil-rich nation meet its net-zero emissions goals.

Leveling the playing field with the U.S. is a daunting — likely impossible — task because the tax incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act are uncapped, meaning the spending could top US$1 trillion over the next decade.

And it’s not just the dollar figure. Biden’s approach allows any firm to tap into production tax credits. By contrast, Canada typically requires companies to apply for incentives or it negotiates bespoke deals for large factories, as it did with Volkswagen AG last week.

“The U.S. is offering very clear incentives that are available to everyone,” Michael Bernstein, executive director of Clean Prosperity, a climate policy think-tank, said in an interview. “If Canada is only putting in place a tailored approach for a select set of companies, we’re simply not going to take advantage of this massive opportunity that’s in front of us.”

Clean Prosperity released a report last month detailing the gap between the U.S. and Canadian incentive regimes for specific industries. In cases such as carbon capture, the gap is relatively small. For other industries, it’s a chasm. The paper found that U.S. tax credits for a battery plant equate to around C$2 billion (US$1.5 billion) annually over what Canada currently offers.

Given the government is now constrained by sharply higher debt-service costs on its pandemic spending, Trudeau is being forced to pick his lanes. Freeland acknowledged that recent turmoil in global financial markets is adding another headwind, but said Canada faces a generational opportunity to invest in its green industries.

Government officials remain tight lipped on exactly what’s in store but suggest it will involve new types of incentive programs, not just doubling down on the existing approach.

Canada currently relies heavily on negotiating up-front capital grants, often through what’s known as the Strategic Innovation Fund. One option could be to expand these agreements to make them richer and include more infrastructure, such as connecting the facilities to a clean source of power.

But if Freeland does opt for more broad-based incentives, there are other tools available.

One would be production subsidies similar to what the U.S. is offering, but with tighter constraints to limit their fiscal impact. This could mean restricting them to specific industries, or capping the overall amount that can be claimed.

Although this would be the simplest solution, it would also be a departure from Canada’s usual practice. Finance officials generally resist using broad tax measures as incentives, preferring to have more control over how the money is spent.

Goldy Hyder, president of the Business Council of Canada, nonetheless believes the finance department is considering production incentives. If they come, the subsidies will be “very targeted, very specific, probably even to projects exclusively, because they can be very expensive,” he told reporters last week.

Another potential measure is using contracts for differences, where the government provides a backstop to its carbon pricing regime. This could take the form of a guaranteed minimum price for selling carbon credits from de-carbonization projects. Oil-sands companies including Suncor Energy Inc. and Cenovus Energy Inc. see this as a potential subsidy for the operating costs of carbon capture.

The problem is that such contracts are complex. If they’re made widely available and markets are flooded with carbon credits that collapse their price, the cost to the treasury could be enormous. On the other hand, restricting access may make them ineffective as an incentive.

Trudeau’s strategy to stay competitive with the U.S. was nonetheless in action when Volkswagen announced it would build its first non-European battery plant in Canada. Neither the government nor the company released dollar figures yet, but Trudeau hinted he had to put significant money on the table.

“We need to make sure that the financial incentives are there to make us competitive around the world,” the prime minister told reporters last week.