I have a bit of experience with “carbon capture and storage” that dates back. I don’t have time to find it right now. My conclusion at the time was essentially what this author expresses:
. . . they want $50 billion in taxpayer support
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Re: “Axe the Tax: Nix Net Zero”
While I share Michelle Stirling’s concern that measures to address climate change can waste a great deal of money, I’m disappointed that she neglected to say one word about CCS, or carbon capture and storage. This is an astonishing omission, as both our federal and provincial governments are giving budgetary and policy support to this costly distraction.
It’s a decade since the launch of the Boundary Dam carbon dioxide removal project managed by Sask Power, and it has never captured its promised 90% of carbon emissions. Not even close. The average capture rate, at this highly supported, much touted facility, is 57%.
Just a bad apple, perhaps? Um, no. William Burns, a founding co-director of the Institute for Responsible Carbon Removal at American University, noted that even the modest amount of CO2 stored at the Archer Daniels Midland plant in Illinois was only achieved with the help of massive taxpayer subsidies.
“We’ve been providing these subsidies for a long time — billions and billions of taxpayer dollars — and we still have very little to show for it,” Burns said. Last month Avik Dey, the CEO of Capital Power, told analysts in a conference call that the company will no longer pursue its $2.4 billion CCS project at the Genesee power plant west of Edmonton.
“Fundamentally, the economics just don’t work,” he told them.
One of the guests on the May 17th West of Centre podcast was Derek Evans, former President and CEO at MEG Energy, and the new Executive Chair at Pathways Alliance, a partnership between the six largest oilsands companies who want to work together to take carbon capture and storage to the next level. He said on that podcast that, “We’ve talked for 40 years about climate change … and we’ve done very, very little about it.”
Well, now that they want to do something about it, they want $50 billion in taxpayer support. But Ms. Stirling, concerned about costly fixes to climate change, can’t mention it? What?
Roger Gagne
CALGARY, AB