How Carbon Capture & Storage Accelerates New Oil & Gas Projects
— Yes, It Is Already Happening!
Carbon Capture & Storage technology has become a new investment asset class with the perverse effect of driving new oil & gas projects — and Fink proposes that the IMF and World Bank should wear the liability.
The average value of explicit government fossil fuel subsidies, globally, from 2010 to 2022 was $576 billion. But, in another display of the capture of government climate policy, lobbying by every major oil company resulted in the U.S. government’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) including $billions of subsidies and tax credits for Carbon Capture Technology.
The subsidies give fossil fuel companies lucrative incentives to drill for gas in locations where the concentration of C02 in the fuel is especially high; the tax credits are awarded based on how many tons of CO2 companies trap. The perverse effect is to develop fields that have a high CO2 content, with the net result of more CO2 released into the atmosphere.
The IRA subsidies, and tax credits for Carbon Capture represent a new profitable revenue stream for oil and gas companies: they are being subsidised to use the technology to extract more oil and gas — which is driving an expansion of oil and gas projects.
