CAPTURE CLUB — The carbon capture tent is getting bigger. A bipartisan group of lawmakers this week introduced legislation to raise the tax credit for certain types of carbon-capture technologies. The Carbon Capture and Utilization Parity Act would make projects that capture and use carbon dioxide eligible for up to $180 per metric ton — the same maximum that capture-and-storage projects are eligible for under the Inflation Reduction Act, Allison Prang reports. Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Bill Cassidy (R-La.) are the Senate sponsors; on the House side, it's Reps. David Schweikert (R-Ariz.) and Terri Sewell (D-Ala.). And Carlos Anchondo of POLITICO's E&E News has an interview with the new head of the Carbon Capture Coalition, Jessie Stolark. The group has been around in one form or another since 2011 and is poised to take advantage of the "dramatic" increase in interest: On bipartisan support for carbon capture: I think the political strength of this issue is because people do come to the table for different reasons. It could be climate hawks like Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse [D-R.I.] or Rep. Scott Peters [D-Calif.]. It could be members of Congress whose top priority is protecting good-paying union jobs, like from the Rust Belt, and including Sens. [Joe] Manchin [D-W.Va.] and [John] Barrasso [R-Wyo.], who are looking to support domestic energy production. On criticisms of the technology: [W]e should not be taking solutions off the table. If carbon management is a potential solution in terms of the climate crisis, we need to be seriously looking at this technology. [O]ne thing the coalition and some of our allied organizations are focusing on now is trying to understand what are the potential co-benefits of deploying the technology. If you are going to see a reduction in air pollutants, what does that look like? On EPA's permitting process for CO2 injection wells (known as Class VI): It can be a pretty lengthy process. I think project developers are getting there, just getting prepared, that this is going to take some time. It’s going to take some investment to make sure that your Class VI permit application is complete and working with EPA through that. [F]or so long, we just had two Class VI wells that have been approved in the United States. Now there’s over a dozen or around a dozen projects that are applying.
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