Senators carbon capture tax credits are a false solution to climate crisis

Bid to expand tax credits a giveaway to oil and gas industry

WASHINGTON, D.C. – A group of Senators today will reintroduce legislation aimed at expanding and extending tax credits for carbon capture and sequestration. Previous attempts to extend the 45Q tax credit for carbon capture would have disproportionately benefitted oil and coal interests. Sens. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.), Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), and John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) will lead the effort to reintroduce the legislation, which stalled in the last Congress.

The reintroduction comes after the news in late June of Southern Company suspending their project to gasify coal into fuel after $7.5 billion had already been spent.

In response to the reintroduction, Lukas Ross, Friends of the Earth’s Climate and Energy Campaigner, issued the following statement:

Senators haven’t learned the simple lesson of Southern Company’s disastrous Kemper plant: these projects do not make economic or environmental sense. If even a coal tycoon like Bob Murray can admit carbon capture has failed, Senators claiming to respect the seriousness of the climate crisis must do the same.

Today’s push for ineffective and expensive carbon capture and sequestration is another taxpayer subsidy for wealthy energy executives. Even worse, this legislation enables the ignorant and dangerous energy rhetoric coming from the White House.

Expert contact: Lukas Ross, (845) 741-5639, [email protected]
Contacto de comunicaciones: Patrick Davis, (202) 222-0744, [email protected]