The Great Carbon Capture Scam
(Greenpeace International)* — We know that oil companies hid knowledge of global heating for decades, but the captains of petroleum also schemed to turn the ecological crisis into a profit centre. The industry devised a plan to swindle money from the public purse by pretending to address the climate issue while using subsidies to increase oil production. If one had no moral compass, one might say their scam was a stroke of genius.
Red herrings and red flags
In 2006, the German Federal Ministry of the Environment determined that there was “no direct cost advantage for technologies using fossil fuels [i.e. carbon capture] … compared to advanced renewable energy technologies,” and a year later, the Australian Environmental Protection Agency recommended that the Gorgon project should not proceed due to environmental risks.
EnergyWashington Week revealed, as reported by Oil Change Internationaland the US Environmental Protection Agency, that “A power plant equipped with a CCS system … would need roughly 10 to 40% more energy than a plant of equivalent output without CCS.” More energy consumption yields more CO2emissions, not less. These warnings and recommendations were ignored.
The American Petroleum Institute continued to promote carbon capture, although their own consultant report on “Carbon Dioxide Enhanced Oil Recovery” warned that “the amount of infrastructure necessary to perform geologic storage on a meaningful level is equivalent to the existing worldwide infrastructure associated with current oil and gas production.”
To reverse global heating, CCUS would require doubling the world’s petroleum infrastructure, built up over the previous century, a near impossibility with costs running into the trillions. Furthermore, that infrastructure would require massive mining, transport of materials, cement, steel, and carbon-intensive fabrication, yielding more emissions.
In 2007, as these nagging problems surfaced, BP scrapped a £500-million carbon capture scheme in Scotland. In the US, a “clean coal” CCS project in Mississippi, behind schedule and billions over budget, closed, and the Petra Nova CCS plant in Texas—promising to capture 1.6 million tonnes of CO2 annually—missed its targets over three years of operation and shut down in 2020. The Carbon Capture and Sequestration Technologies program at MIT closed due to the technology’s ecological damage and unviable economics in 2016. By the end of 2020, more than 80% of US CCUS projects had failed.
Meanwhile, Western Australia’s Environmental Protection Authority concluded in 2019 that Chevron should be held accountable for venting gas from the Gorgon project and for failing to capture and store the project’s emissions as promised and required.
Quest for dollars
According to a January 2022 study by Global Witness, Shell’s Quest plant in Canada’s tar sands, is emitting more carbon than it is capturing, with the same annual carbon footprint as 1.2 million gas-powered vehicles. Shell’s scheme, one of the biggest boondoggles of carbon capture chicanery, uses the hydrogen produced to refine thick, toxic bitumen into synthetic crude, creating more carbon emissions. The project also emits methane, a much more potent greenhouse gas.
Global Witness found that although Shell’s Quest plant was capturing 4.81-million tonnes of carbon annually (Mt/yr), it was emitting 12.47 Mt/yr in greenhouse gases from on-site and supply chain emissions and from the power required to operate the CCS system. The plant therefore annually is responsible for some 7.66-million tonnes of greenhouse gases, even after the CCUS bookkeeping tricks.
Shell originally promised to capture 90% of emissions, had to admit failure, and changed their target to 65%, but according to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, the Quest plant failed to reach its target every year from 2015 to 2020.
Upon awarding the Quest project a Canadian-dollar $834-million subsidy (US$654-million, €571-million) Canada’s Ministry of Natural Resources Joanna Sivasankaran claimed that CCS was “an important tool on the pathway to reaching Canada’s ambitious climate goals,” to reach “net-zero by 2050.” However, since the Quest project emits more than it captures and increases tar sands production, the dirtiest, most carbon-intensive petroleum product on Earth, these “ambitious climate goals,” remain unattainable and appear preposterous.
Four hundred international scientists, academics, and energy analysts signed a letter to the Canadian government asking that they halt the subsidy scam. “Deploying CCUS at any climate-relevant scale,” they wrote, “carried out within the short timeframe we have to avert climate catastrophe without posing substantial risks to communities on the front lines of the buildout, is a pipe dream.”
The letter warned that CCUS is “not a negative emissions technology,” with billions of taxpayer dollars used to boost oil production. The scientists and scholars warned of the health impacts to local communities, that the tax subsidies would tie Canada to “dependence on dirty tar sands,” and that the project would add some 50 million metric tons CO2 emissions annually by 2035.
According to Lubicon Cree citizen Melina Laboucan-Massimo, the tar sands project yields “elevated rates of cancers, as well as elevated rates of respiratory illnesses … contamination to the water, destruction and complete fragmentation of the Boreal forest.”
According to Reuters, 26 commercial CCS facilities around the world capture about 40 million tonnes of CO2 each year. To put that in perspective, the world emits about 36.4-billion tonnes of CO2 each year.
That means that after 50 years of CCS development; after billions of dollars in subsidies; after all the hype, deceits, tax breaks, and guarantees; the oil industry captures about 0.1% of annual CO2 emissions. The other 99.9 % pollutes the atmosphere and heats Earth. Meanwhile, most of this captured CO2 is used to produce more oil. Since that first CCS project began in 1972, world CO2 emissions have almost tripled from 14.68 to 36.4 billion tonnes per year, not exactly the “net zero” we were promised.
Carbon capture was a scam from the beginning, and remains so today.
Resources and links:
Carbon Capture: Five Decades of False Hope, Hype, and Hot Air,” Andy Rowell and Lorne Stockman, Oil Change International, June 2021.
Shell’s fossil hydrogen plant in Canada emitting more greenhouse gasses than it is capturing: GlobalWitness report: “Hydrogen’s Hidden Emissions,” January 2022; sourcesand methodology: Pembina “Carbon Intensity of Blue Hydrogen;” Shell, Alberta data set; UK Dept. Transport; and Nimblefins Insurance; calculations shown in annex.
“The Western Australian government rules against the oil and gas company over emissions at the Gorgon LNG project, Guardian, 2020.
“Between a rock and a hard place: The science of geosequestration,” Standing Committee on Science and Innovation, House of Representatives, The Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia, 2007, PDF.
“Chevron’s Gorgon emissions rise after sand clogs $3.1B C02 injection system,” Peter Milne, Boiling Cold, Jan 12, 2021.
American Petroleum Institute: CCS used to “enhance oil production,” Platts Energy Economist, “Carbon Capture and Storage: panacea or an expensive red herring?” November 1, 2006, reported in Oil Change International, June 2021.
“Summary of Carbon Dioxide Enhanced Oil Recovery (CO2EOR) Injection Well Technology,” James P. Meyer PhD, Contek Solutions, Plano, Texas, for the American Petroleum Institute, web archive
Western Australia’s Environmental Protection Authority concluded that Chevron should be held accountable for venting gas from the Gorgon project: “Chevron Faulted for Gorgon Emissions,” September 30, 2019; cited in “Carbon Capture: Five Decades of False Hope, Hype, and Hot Air,” A. Rowell and L. Stockman, Oil Change International, June 2021.
Over 80% of U.S. CCUS projects have failed: “Explaining successful and failed investments in U.S. carbon capture and storage,” Abdulla et al., Environmental Research Letters, 2021; Science IPO.
“Honest Government Ad, Carbon Capture & Storage,” The Juice Media; “Australien Government” Sept 1, 2021:
“A power plant equipped with a CCS system .. would need roughly 10 to 40 % more energy than a plant of equivalent output without CCS.” EnergyWashington Week, “International Panel Finds Carbon Sequestration Has High Price Tag”, October 12, 2005; JSTOR.
“IEEFA: Carbon capture goals miss the mark at SaskPower’s Boundary Dam coal plant,” IEEFA. “The World’s Only Coal Carbon Capture Plant Is Regularly Breaking,” Audrey Carleton, Vice, 2022. SaskPower; has never met this goal (spglobal), as of the end of 2021.
“Are Canada’s carbon capture plans a ‘pipe dream?” John Woodside, National Observer, Canada, January 20, 2022
400 Canadian scientists’letter urges Canadian government to avoid rewarding companies who use carbon capture technology.
“Shell’s Massive Carbon Capture Plant Is Emitting More Than It’s Capturing,” Anya Zoledziowski, Vice, January 2022.
“Comparison of carbon capture and storage with renewable energy technologies regarding structural, economic, and ecological aspects in Germany,” Peter Viebahn, et al., International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control, April 2007, p.121-133.
“Fossil Fuel Racism: How phasing out oil, gas and coal can protect communities,” Donaghy, T. & Jiang, C., 2021, Greenpeace.
26 commercial CCS facilities globally, capture about 40 million tonnesCO2/year: “Global CCS capacity grew by a third,” Reuters, Dec. 2020.
2021 global CO2 emissions, 36.4-billion tonnes/year: “Global carbon emissions rebound to near pre-pandemic levels,” Andrea Januta, Reuters, Nov. 2021; from University of Exeter study.
Using carbon dioxide for enhanced recovery: “The Scurry Area Canyon Reef Operating Committee (SACROC) unit, Scurry County, Texas,” over a billion barrels of oil produced, Global CCS Institute, 2016. Carbon Capture, Centre for Climate and Energy Solutions, C2ES.
Exxon predicts Greenhouse Effect, CO2 build-up, and global heating: Exxon internal Engineering Report, 1982.
“Peak oil and the low-carbon energy transition: a net-energy perspective,” Delannoya, Murphy, ASPO France, 2021.
“Grand Transitions: How the Modern World Was Made,” Vaclav Smil, amazon.
“Hydrogen: The dumbest & most impossible renewable,” Alice Friedmann, Energy Skeptic, 2019
Energy Mix over time: Our world in Data
Energy Timeline, Alternative Energy
“COP-26: Stopping Climate Change and Other Illusions,” William E. Rees (Professor Emeritus, University of British Columbia), Buildings and Cities, October 2021.
Leaks Show Attempts to Weaken UN Climate Report, Greenpeace Says, Deutsche Welle, Eco Watch, Oct. 21, 2021.
Anderson, K. & Peters, G. (2016) The trouble with negative emissions: science.org
“A Review of the Role of Fossil Fuel Based Carbon Capture and Storage in the Energy System,” Garcia Freites, S. & Jones, C.; Friends of the Earth Scotland, 2020.
Source: https://human-wrongs-watch.net/2022/06/03/the-great-carbon-capture-scam/
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