Progressives generally support regulations that protect the environment.
But the permitting process has become so complex that it can take five years and 500 pages of documentation to get a project off the ground.
And that red tape is holding up the clean energy projects we need to reverse climate change.
Chris Barnard is Policy Director at the American Conservation Coalition and a regular guest on our sister podcast, Carbon Removal Newsroom.
On this episode of Reversing Climate Change, Chris joins Ross, Siobhan, and Asa to explain how regulations can prevent us from building climate infrastructure and explore the potential for bipartisan collaboration on permitting reform.
Chris discusses how permitting interacts with issues of eminent domain and describes what community engagement looks like in the permitting process.
Listen in for Chris’s insight on the regulatory barriers to realizing carbon removal at scale and learn how we might streamline the permitting process without weakening environmental standards.
More from the show
Ad-free episodes and other benefits come with a paid subscription.
Carbon Removal Newsroom, the news show that ran alongside this one, is over. Its episodes are still up, on the feed Climate Workers Anonymous now uses.
Carbon Removal Memes is still going.
Resources
American Conservation Coalition
Senator Manchin’s Permitting Reform Bill
National Environmental Policy Act
The California Environmental Quality Act'
‘The Top Five Legal Barriers to Carbon Capture and Sequestration in Texas’ in Forbes
Lil Nas X’s ‘I Will Avenge U Mr. Van Gogh’ Meme
Full Transcript
Alexsandra Guerra: You’re listening to the Reversing Climate Change podcast by the team at Nori, the carbon removal marketplace. This is a show about the innovators and entrepreneurs developing solutions to climate change.
Ross Kenyon: Hello and welcome to the Reversing Climate Change podcast by Nori. I’m Ross Kenyon. I’m the creative editor and co-founder of Nori. Today I have with me my co-host, Asa Kamer, producer of Carbon Removal Newsroom. Hey, Asa.
Asa Kamer: Hey, Ross.
Ross Kenyon: Hey, welcome to the show. And Siobhan Montoya-Lavender, co-founder of Thanks a Ton. Hello.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: Hi, hello.
Ross Kenyon: Hey, we also have, you know, it’s like a little bit of poaching. I was just talking to Radhika before this, and she said, I need to really be careful what I do here, not trying to steal our guest. But we have Chris Barnard here, Policy Director of the American Conservation Coalition and a regular panelist on Carbon Removal Newsroom. Welcome, Chris.
Chris Barnard: I feel like a little bit of a traitor, but we’ll try to make the best of it.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, should Radhika be worried first up?
Unknown speaker: Yes, clearly the answer.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, we just did a show recently with the folks at Parachute. We ended up talking about climate industrialism and why it’s so hard to build things. I think many people listening might think regulation just is almost in a vacuum, a good thing. But there are cases where we’re trying to build new climate infrastructure and it’s really challenging. And it was really interesting to have that come from a kind of progressive angle since that regulatory insight tends to come from more market leaning people. I don’t know, Chris, why don’t you introduce this topic?
Is it actually a crossover area that could be successful politically, as I am alluding to? What do you think?
Chris Barnard: Yeah, I mean, one of the things that climate activists are having to reckon with right now is they just passed the largest climate investment in US history, which probably means it’s the largest climate investment in world history, period. And there’s all these hundreds of billions of dollars that are ready to be spent on clean energy projects around the country. The hurdle that they’re running into now is, well, it takes 10 years to build a lot of these projects simply because of the regulatory hurdles that have been erected over the years for these kinds of energy projects.
And so there’s this really interesting dilemma for climate activists that have typically kind of seen the regulatory state as something that is good because it prevents pollution. Corporations from exploding the environment and all those kinds of things. But right now, actually, the regulatory regime that they’ve been so supportive of for so long is holding back the very projects that they want to have built and that they also understand We can’t tackle climate change and go to clean energy without making it easier to build these kinds of things. And so there’s just a really interesting moment where they’re having to reckon with that and repeat almost like a Republican talking point that we need to make it easier.
I hesitate to say deregulate, but we need to kind of streamline this process and make it easier to build these kinds of things.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: For listeners who don’t know, he’s referring to the Inflation Reduction Act. So that’s the big funding for a lot of climate initiatives.
Ross Kenyon: Is this an area where there’s going to be crossover, Chris? It is funny to watch the strange bedfellas emerge here. Do you think there’s going to be some bipartisan collaboration or are Republicans just going to react to their language being cribbed and fight? Because it’s basically all we know how to do, I think, in some cases.
Chris Barnard: I mean, I certainly hope there will be bipartisan collaboration on this. On the Republican side, I do know that is a priority for the next Congress should they retake the House and, I mean, maybe the Senate. And that really will be a priority. And I mean, you really kind of saw at the end of last year as well that it was a bipartisan concern. The politics of it didn’t really, really work out. But Right after we passed the inflation reduction that Senator Manchin proposed his permitting reform bill, and he’s still a Democratic senator, and he managed to get Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, And so there really were Democrats pushing this.
Unfortunately, the politics didn’t quite work out, partly because Republicans were upset over the way the Inflation Reduction Act was passed, kind of bypassing them. Some of the progressive climate people on the kind of left side of the Democratic Party weren’t very keen on this either. I think with the right politics in the right context, there certainly is potential for bipartisan collaboration on this.
Ross Kenyon: My understanding is that permitting reform was a part of the IRA, but it fell out at the last moment. And that’s seemingly is what you’re alluding to.
Chris Barnard: Yeah, it was part of the agreement. So the IRA was standalone, but Manchin promised promised his support for the IRA in return for Schumer promising his support for a permitting reform deal to be passed afterwards. OK, but unfortunately for Manchin, They passed the IRA and then didn’t really follow up on their promise on the permitting reform side of things. And so that’s really kind of where we’re at right now.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: Is it in the works though, do you think? Is there going to be permitting reform coming down the pipeline or has that just been scrapped? And interestingly, a lot of people talk about Manchin wanting permitting reform for oil and gas infrastructure, but it actually would apply to any renewable, carbon removal, all new infrastructure, correct?
Chris Barnard: Yeah, and coming down the pipeline is certainly the right language to use in this context. So obviously we’re heading into a lame duck session after the election on November 8th. So I really doubt they will see much move on this before the 118th Congress. Congress takes office in January of 2023. But I do know that Manchin is interested in kind of re-upping that conversation. And I know a lot of Republicans, if again, they retake Congress, they’re very interested in this as well. So there are things coming down the proverbial pipeline.
In terms of kind of the actual implementation of this and what this would look like, it’s really quite remarkable when you look at the statistics around what kinds of projects are being held back by Red tape in this country right now. And almost 80% of projects in the last year or so that have been held up by this are projects that have to do with clean energy. And it’s only about 10 to 15% for fossil fuels. You will make it easier to build Mountain Valley Pipeline from West Virginia to Virginia, but you’ll also make it easier to build 10 different solar fields or 10 different wind fields or whatever that might be.
And so really, I think people that are kind of climate hawks should be realistic about the politics of, yes, we’re going to make it easier for everything to be built, but that will overwhelmingly favor clean energy projects.
Ross Kenyon: I’m wondering if we could take a step back even because I want to talk about this from a conservative point of view that I’m going to voice upon you to represent as an entire class of thinkers here. Property rights, of course, super important to conservatives and libertarians. Some of these projects might interface with eminent domain. Conservatives are long concerned about the ability for the government to have takings or to challenge property rights in certain kinds of ways. Does permitting interact at all with eminent domain? I’m going to wait to introduce the nimbyism concept, but why don’t we just start with eminent domain?
I want to talk about that.
Chris Barnard: I should preface this by saying I’m not a legal expert on the intricacies of eminent domain, which is really one of the most complicated things to talk about when it comes to public policy. But I do know that there are provisions to help make that process easier. And I think really what it comes down to is, and sorry for maybe prematurely like bringing the nimbyism argument into this, but I think it really comes down to being more transparent with communities and like thinking of the ways that we can actually benefit them with these kinds of things.
And I do think that permanent reform has in like the proposals I’ve seen and will include kind of ways to hopefully mitigate some of those problems.
Ross Kenyon: Mitigate it for whom? Does it strengthen property rights against eminent domain, even in cases where they’re building climate infrastructure, or does it make that harder to do? Does it strengthen or weaken property rights? Do you know?
Chris Barnard: Well, so in this case, it would be to make it easier to build the actual projects. And I think one of the arguments that’s really interesting, and that’s kind of behind Manchin’s proposal to have the president designate 25 critical energy projects that are important for national security and energy security. And kind of the idea behind that is that those projects are so critical and so important that in these cases, really kind of building them takes priority over anything else. And I mean, obviously, there’s, again, all kinds of intricacies around eminent domain that will have to be figured out with that.
But the idea really being that we can’t afford to hold up these projects any longer.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: When we talk about holding up these projects for our listeners, let’s kind of frame it about what do we really mean holding up projects? So I used to work for the California Department of Transportation and PG&E were clients of mine when I did private environmental consulting for a firm that would do environmental impact statements, California environmental CEQA reports and whatnot. And I looked it up before this because I remember being like, man, some of those just took years. And I looked it up. And the average environmental impact statement, which is what you have to submit for NEPA, which is the National Environmental Policy Act, average timeline is four and a half years.
Average page length is 550 for these documents. So that’s just one document for one thing. California Environmental Quality Act has other permitting requirements and whatnot. And then also, I’ve been on projects that obviously, if you’re working on like a freeway or something that’s crossing multiple jurisdictions, you might have to do something with navigable waters of the U. S. or the Water Quality Control Board, or you might be crossing into Bay Area Coastal Commission lands. So it’s not just these big guys, these NIPA and CEQA. There’s all sorts of different permitting hurdles.
Can you give the listeners kind of like what is the typical project timeline for permitting?
Chris Barnard: Yeah, I mean, like you kind of like lay the foundation there. It’s a very complex process. I think like my I work at the federal level and so like my expertise is mostly with the federal policies around this. And like you mentioned, when there is a project that wants to get built, that is kind of like a major infrastructure project that has Impact across state lines that would qualify for under the National Environmental Policy Act, which was this law created in 1970 to make sure that any major infrastructure projects that are built don’t have negative environmental consequences.
And on the face of it, that sounds like a perfectly reasonable, sensible thing to do. The problem is that over the years, that’s really kind of morphed into this kind of labyrinth of red tape. And like you mentioned, when A project wants to get built, they have to basically fill out this, write this document called the Environmental Impact Statement, which is essentially a study on what the impact would be on the environment from the project they’re about to build. And this is, like you mentioned, gone up to 550 pages. It takes months for that to be reviewed.
There’s all kinds of ways for people that don’t like these projects to just go ahead and sue the government or the company trying to build that. And so really at the end of the day, what happens is that you spend millions of dollars as a developer, like just in legal fees, in all kinds of other fees to try and get your project off the ground. You have to wait an average of almost five years just to get an answer. And you have to spend all this time and money on writing the research and working with the government on producing these documents.
And so at the end of the day, for a lot of developers, it just becomes uneconomical. They just can proceed with the project or it delays really the ability for them to have produced electricity in a clean way for a certain community by years unnecessarily. And so that’s really kind of the fundamental problem is that we’ve let this spiral out of control and we haven’t built guardrails to make it easier and faster to process these kinds of applications.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: Would you say it’s coming like these regulations, would you say they’re coming from the right place? Would you say that in holistically? I mean, it’s always hard for me. I’m with you, Ross. I’m like, I don’t want to say deregulate. I don’t want to say like, let’s get rid of environmental regulations. I’m glad that we have environmental regulations. And I know California is a beast and some people like some contractors won’t even work in California because it’s even goes above and beyond federal requirements. But having worked in California for a long time in this industry, I see lots of moments where I’m like, oh, it’s so great that we have these permitting requirements and that we have qualified biologists on site to move endangered species or whatever the thing we’re working on is.
But at the same time, I’ve never worked on a small project. The smallest project I worked on was maybe like the BART extension. And that’s a huge project. And so, yeah, you have to have a lot of resources and backing to get these major projects done because you have to go through these huge hurdles. But at the core, I’m still like, but isn’t it good? Where’s the balance, Chris? For listeners who are like, I really care about the environment. What do you say to them? You’re like, well, we’re not reducing the hazard here.
Or what do you say to them?
Chris Barnard: Well, so contextually... The mentioned permitting proposal is very clear in saying we do not want to weaken any kinds of environmental standards. We want to make sure that we’re still being rigorous, that our projects do not have a negative environmental impact, which I think really is the goal of this kind of regulation. But the problem when it comes to the reality of the situation is that when companies have to go through this process, it’s kind of duplicative. Like often these are kinds of projects that we understand the environmental impacts because similar proposals have been made in the past and yet they have to redo the whole process again.
There’s all kinds of red tape involved where really there’s just no streamlined process to make this happen. And so what we’re talking about is not weakening those standards. What we’re talking about is streamlining it and making sure that we’re not spending unnecessary time on things that we already know the answer to. Like if we know that, for example, this particular type of geothermal project is very well documented and does not have a negative impact on the environment, we don’t need another 550 page study to determine the exact same answer. Right.
And the second aspect to that also has to do with kind of the litigation aspect of this. A lot of times a company will propose to build a project somewhere. They’ll start the review process and everything. For example, they get the permit to go do it and then they get sued by the local Sierra Club chapter or by the NRDC or whichever it is. And then all of a sudden they have to produce new documents and they have to rehash the study and they have to go back to their lawyers.
It’s years and years and a lot of money extra to this as well. And so one additional thing here is just making sure that the kind of NIMBY groups that tend to oppose any kind of project, no matter what it is, don’t have that kind of leverage over a project, but they actually produce more guardrails that they actually provide the comment at the beginning rather than after the permit has been approved. And so you don’t have to go and redo the study and all those kinds of things. There’s a lot of reforms that can be made to make that process a lot more efficient.
Ross Kenyon: Your question was posed in such a righteous way, Siobhan, but it did make me think of in economics, there’s a parable that gets told called Baptists and Bootleggers. Do any of you guys ever heard of that?
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: No, I’ve never heard of this. Explain it to us.
Chris Barnard: Yeah, that they start working together because they have the same policy goal, but they come from different perspectives.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: Yeah, essentially. Baptists and Bootleggers? I need more information.
Ross Kenyon: So like during the temperance movement, the teetotalers trying to get alcohol prohibited, who are the people that benefit most from that policy? It’s not just the people who want temperance, but it’s also the people who want intemperance and people who are going to supply illegal alcohol. So you have this weird, strange bedfellows scenario here where people that you wouldn’t expect to collaborate. I’m sure during the permitting process, has there ever been like a corporate espionage angle where someone’s like, I’m going to AstroTurf and environmental group here to block Tesla’s factory expansion here and set them back five years.
Do these permitting processes always happen from a place that we need to protect the spotted owl, whatever, or do they ever come from a place of we can really screw over our competitors here?
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: Well, in California, we’ve had challenges where it’s a public contract and there’s a union that doesn’t get the contract that they I would watch the David Simon show that gets made about that. Exactly. Yeah, exactly.
Chris Barnard: It kind of reminds me of when USPS was in the US Postal Service was in the process of upgrading their fleet for delivery vehicles. And they said, we want to make sure we upgrade the fleet to remain like with our net zero targets. So that we’re not using like these dirty vehicles driving around. And then they awarded it to a company that has hybrid vehicles. So sometimes they produce emissions, sometimes they’re clean. And then all the clean energy, the electric vehicle delivery van companies that were trying to get the contract and sued USPS over them not actually giving it to the best environmentally friendly thing.
Obviously, it was like self-interest. I’m not entirely sure to what extent it’s explicit that companies are involved with this kind of stuff. Honestly, it wouldn’t really surprise me, but there are plenty of examples of, frankly, like Completely false evidence being submitted in favor of like trying to scupper a particular project. So, for example, and this is this isn’t necessarily energy related, but there was a so-called purple line that was being built for the metro or is currently being built for the metro in D. C. And that was delayed for a while because a local group claimed that it had an impact on some kind of like Newt or Salamander or something.
And then they did the study which showed that Newt or Salamander doesn’t actually exist there, but it still delayed the project.
Unknown speaker: God, I thought that was a short study.
Ross Kenyon: The famous hard to find ghost.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: You know, you know, that was like a 200 page study to be like.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, which qualifies as short under this, right? I have a conceptual question, Chris, which is when I think about ways of regulating anything, you can have legislation that comes and dictates policies for how to proceed. And conservatives that I know and respect have often favored a more bottom up coming through the courts and having civil cases and torts and people suing. And I’m wondering if that’s applicable here, because I’ve also seen it go back and forth within conservative circles, too. Like, did you see the documentary Hot Coffee?
Chris Barnard: No, it didn’t.
Ross Kenyon: It’s really good. It’s about the famous woman who goes to McDonald’s and she spills the coffee in her lap and she sued McDonald’s.
Chris Barnard: Oh, that story.
Ross Kenyon: And so in the 90s, I remember like being in the car and hearing Rush Limbaugh and stuff like that and talking about what a horrible grifter this woman is. She got like third degree burns like on her like groin and the top of her legs from this hot coffee that was served at like scalding temperatures and like her suing. Force all providers of this coffee service to lower their attempts to much safer degrees. And this was done without regulation. This was done by the courts in a more bottom-up sentence. This is like the English common law tradition, right, is all based on judge precedent and sort of like filtering down through history and then applying law.
And so something like this where it is suing as a means of making law That strikes me as a more conservative way of doing it. Does that model of understanding apply here with claims using SEPA or NEPA or any of these other means?
Chris Barnard: Yeah, I mean, that’s a tricky one. I think conceptually or theoretically, yes, that we’ve gotten to a point where really the only people that use NEPA kind of nefariously to block basically any project Are doing so not with like this kind of common law, bottom up conservative perspective. It’s really groups that just don’t want major energy infrastructure being built. So it’s like the NRDCs and the Sierra clubs and those kinds of groups. I hesitate to say it’s a conservative thing when literally none of the groups using it are in any way remotely conservative.
This is kind of like a tricky thing there. But I do think broadly speaking, there should be community input. Of course there should be. If there’s a project that’s going to really have a damaging effect on a community, whether it’s because of... The ecosystem or because of even the view or things like that, I think it’s valid for communities to have that kind of input that really the way that this is set up right now is like I think it’s something like 80 to 90 percent of these lawsuits are brought by really major groups that have the lawyers to do so and that have the kind of ability to quickly come up and sue a project.
And it’s really not like the little guys, unfortunately.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: Yeah. What about community engagement, though? You know, a lot of these environmental regulations require a community engagement period. You know, there’s an online document that the public can comment on. Sometimes there’s forums. What’s kind of the implications around community engagement in the permitting process? How accessible do you think it is to local communities? I mean, I know there’s some activist groups that, you know, actively watch and monitor for whether it’s like the Bureau of Land Management and what they’re permitting or different things like that. How do you see the little guy, like not the big corporates, but like actual communities participating in this process?
Chris Barnard: Yeah, that’s a great question. I think one of the problems right now is that you typically with any kind of policy like that or projects, you have a public comment period and literally anyone can can submit a public comment and the relevant department is required to read that comment and take it into account. It’s like Twitter, guys.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: It’s like it’s like the comments range and everything from like, you know, interested PhDs to the guy who’s just like rambling on the street corner. You know what I mean?
Chris Barnard: Yeah. And to be clear, you have to like separate the wheat from the chaff when it comes to like what’s legitimate, what should be considered for this kind of stuff. But one of the interesting kind of reforms that you could bring to really kind of protect that while also making it easier to build these kinds of projects is that right now you can actually still bring some kind of complaints against a particular project after And so the tactic that these NIMBY groups will use is rather than submit a very real concern or claim during the comment period, which is a certain amount of days, they’ll do it after the permit has been issued after all the work has been done.
And they’ll be like, Oh, what about this? Newt in this garden that might be impacted by this project. And then they’ll force the whole thing to restart because they have to reconsider it. So one reform you could be is like, you can only sue on the basis of a particular issue that you feel hasn’t been addressed if you yourself have brought it forth during the public comment period. If you haven’t, then clearly that’s not really what’s at hand here.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: And how beholden are the people proposing these projects to the communities in terms of making, like, how does the contact happen? You know, I feel like I worked on lots of projects, but I come in usually either early in the permitting process or late in the monitoring compliance process. And so I’m not really sure, like, how are people actually getting and putting their projects before the public? How much public input is there even before the commenting phase? You know, or is this just landing in people’s laps? Yeah.
Chris Barnard: Yeah, honestly, I don’t necessarily think I’m the best person to answer that just because I’m not involved on the business or the community side of things. I’m really focused more on the policy side of things. But I do know that these companies, when they go establish a project somewhere, they don’t want to be vilified by the community. They don’t want to be seen as a pariah. They typically try to get the community on board somehow. Aren’t like, oh, everyone bends together because they’re really concerned about it. It’s really like this particular interest group that brings it.
The interest group probably represents that community much less than the company that would build the project that would actually probably bring jobs and opportunities there. So that’s kind of the way I look at it. But it is a really good question. It’d be interesting to get like a business executive from a major infrastructure company, like talking about how they engage those communities and hear from him or her.
Asa Kamer: Chris, you’ve been on this energy permitting. Since I’ve been working with you on CRN, I’ve been following some of the stuff you’ve written.
Ross Kenyon: Is it a broken record, man? All about that permitting reform. Get enough of it.
Asa Kamer: And nuclear. I do think it’s interesting that you’ve been focusing on it well before the... Probably before Biden was president and before the Inflation Reduction Act came around. And now from the... Sort of progressive side, climate activists and Democrats have kind of gotten a lot of what they wanted, like a lot of money on the table to build solar and wind. And now, like the thing you’ve been saying is, you know, that’s kind of the implementation piece that comes after legislation. The rubber hitting the road is kind of the next challenge.
And, you know, I know that’s something you’ve been saying for a long time. And so, you know, with that view, I also wonder about carbon removal, like something we have you talk about every month over on the other show. All the extrapolations and visions for carbon removal and getting DAC to scale and getting these other methods to scale and getting gigatons of removal obviously requires a huge amount of infrastructure that would have a big physical footprint that a lot of Americans would see every day. Actually, I don’t even know if that’s true, but I think there would be a big physical footprint certainly if it were to get to the scale that a lot of us hope it does.
I’m sure there’s like really smart people thinking about this. I know in like the CCUS field, there’s probably a lot of people have been thinking about this in terms of like carbon CO2 pipelines. But yeah, I just want to hear about like, you know, looking forward, if we really are going to get this scaled up version of CDR, it’s going to require a lot of permitting, obviously, a lot of community engagement, all this stuff. And, you know, the carbon, the climate math says we have to do it really fast too, which is not the way The energy build-out is happening a lot of the time from the picture you’re painting.
So yeah, I just want to get your thoughts on that as someone who’s spoken favorably about CDR and getting carbon removal to scale. What are we looking at here? And what do we need to be doing? And what are some of the obstacles coming up?
Chris Barnard: Yeah, sure. And just one quick point about the IRA, just a stat that jumped in mind that I should have mentioned earlier as well as their studies. I think there was a study from Yale or some other like prominent university showing that up to 80 to 90 percent of the climate benefits. So emissions reductions from the IRA would be lost if we don’t have permitting reform. And the kind of funny thing is that these hundreds of billions of dollars that are taxpayer dollars that are being that would be spent on these kinds of projects.
That money will still be claimed, right? It’ll still be given to those companies. But if they can’t build it, that’s going into the pockets of lawyers. That’s going into the pockets of business executives. It’s not going to the actual projects that would help the American people and that would help the climate. And so really, there’s almost like an environmental justice angle there as well. It’s like this money is like valuable money that needs to be spent correctly for the planet and for the American people. On carbon dioxide removal and technology, yeah, you’re exactly right.
There is a lot of infrastructure that will have to be built for this, not just in terms of the technology itself, but also really, if we’re talking about transporting CO2 You need to have pipelines, for example, to have that move. You need to be able to build the infrastructure necessary to do those kinds of things. And so from a broad perspective, permitting reform would make it easier to build that kind of infrastructure. And that’s certainly kind of an important part of the equation there. I think there’s beyond just simple permitting reform, we also need to be a lot more forward looking with our regulation, more broadly speaking.
There’s this really interesting article, I think I’ve mentioned this on the other show, it’s called the top five legal barriers to carbon And then we can put the link in the show notes or something. But that basically shows how there’s huge demand for this technology. Companies are willing to invest, but we just need to create a regulatory space where it actually makes sense for them to invest in that. The permitting for the specific wells that would qualify for this, obviously you have oil wells, you have natural gas wells, you have these different types of wells, and you have also specific CO2 injection wells.
That would need to be classified in a certain way to make sense for developers to use that and the permitting around that is just really murky and we need to clarify that. Another thing like a really kind of silly thing is typically we consider a CO2 a waste product, which I mean, in many ways, obviously it is because that’s what’s contributing to climate change. But if we’re using CO2 to build a different product, say we’re capturing CO2 at a fossil fuel plant and we’re using that to make baking soda or something, whatever it might be, that is actually a beneficial product.
But products that are considered They are eligible for a different type of regulatory structure that makes it a lot easier for them. And they can use different kinds of laws that make it easier for those companies. And so that’s like a really simple thing is like there are certain aspects when CO2 should actually be considered a beneficial product, not just a waste product. And then there’s just all kinds of other other things like what is liability look like? If you say you’re a pipeline transporting CO2 that has like say you’re capturing CO2 in your pipeline, transporting that to be used somewhere to be injected and there’s a fault in the pipeline and it goes into the air, who’s liable for that?
Like if you’re taking it out of the air to start with, then it’s not like it’s kind of your fault because it’s your pipeline that’s leaking. But at the same time, you’ve done a massive public benefit by taking it out of the air. In the first place. So there’s kind of things like that have to be clarified about property rights as well. The pour is underground that you would pour the CO2 and inject it into and that it would solidify there. Who owns the ground underground? Who owns that space? And there’s all kinds of just regulatory things that we just really haven’t thought about that needs to be clarified for CDR to really be able to scale.
Sorry, that was really long winded.
Asa Kamer: No, that was great. Yeah. One thing that I’ve, as I’ve learned more about CDR, especially versions that are going to have like CO2 gas, like compressed gases, so much of the space that it takes up is like underground. So for the quantity of gas that they’re actually moving around, there’s less theoretically like above ground infrastructure than you’d actually think. And so, so much of those issues will come into like what having to do with regulating, you know, I forget the phrase, but who has the liability for what goes on underground?
Chris Barnard: Yeah, exactly. There’s just a lot of different things that need to be figured out there.
Asa Kamer: And it’s interesting. I mean, I can’t help but think about how on our business episodes of Carbon Removal Newsroom, we talk about a lot of the funding and most of the funding we’ve been talking about is like venture capital. And something Susan Su, our host over there, talks about, our panelist, is that’s a very risky type of investing. That means that you can’t get a loan from a bank, basically, if someone’s giving you venture capital. And so I think that says so much. I mean, there’s many reasons why something like director capture is not a secure investment.
I mean, it’s not just the regulatory stuff. Obviously, it’s very speculative on a number of In a number of ways, but I just think it probably is a big hindrance that a lot of companies that are interested... There’s probably not that many corporations in the world right now that are anywhere near this space that aren’t thinking about carbon offsets, carbon removal. Someone in most companies is probably somewhat aware of these issues. And I’m sure many investors are getting various types of pitches all around this space. And so it’s probably a massive source of uncertainty that a lot of the regulatory questions are still so up in the air, even though CCS has been around for like 30 years.
And anyway, so I don’t actually really have a question that was more of just like context, but I just, I can’t help but think that’s an issue in and of itself, just the regulatory, I guess, gray areas that are probably going to keep people from saying, yeah, I’m going to put a lot of millions of dollars into this.
Chris Barnard: Yeah. It’s hard to necessarily be responsible for making CDR competitive economically, but we can at the very least not make it harder. And I think that’s really where the conversation should be right now because there is private sector interest. Let’s just not make it harder. That’s a good place to start in my opinion.
Asa Kamer: Yeah, it’s true. And when you hear like entrepreneurs or scientists working on DAC, for instance, they’re talking about, you know, how can we get to $100 a ton? How can we get to $100 a ton? And I think a lot of the time we think about that, we think of like, well, how successful will their scientists and their engineers be? Part of their costs, like you’re saying, are going to be lawyers and dealing with regulators. So the easier that some of the regulatory side is for these companies is probably will help take a few dollars off those per ton costs that will eventually help them get to $100 a ton or whatever.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: What’s going to happen at the end of, what is it, next week? Are we voting next week? I already voted, but is that one? So it’s next week or elections, right?
Chris Barnard: It’s a week from today.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: A week from today. So what’s going to happen and what could happen to environmental permitting and regulations based on the outcome of the midterm elections? Like what are some risks or potential benefits or what do you think? What are some predictions?
Chris Barnard: Yeah, I mean, it’s looking likely that Republicans will retake the House. It’s looking possible that they’ll also retake the Senate, but unlikely. But at the very least, I would put money on the fact that there will be divided government next year. And so that begs the question, when it comes to climate change, literally anything that passes will have to be bipartisan. And what I really want to see is kind of people on the left really open up to the fact that permitting reform is right now the key to unlocking a clean energy future.
We spent nearly half a trillion dollars on the clean energy subsidies and tax credits and all that kind of stuff. Right now, it’s a matter of building those. And the only thing between those being built and not being built is Government regulation. And so we should be making it easier to do that. I feel like I’ve said that a million times this recording, but we need to make it easier and we really need Democrats to come to the table. I also think it will require some goodwill from Republicans that like obviously we’re not going to like completely deregulate like the permitting process in this country.
And like they should understand that there is a middle ground and we need to understand their concerns that Democrats or environmental groups might have about this. Premiering reform needs to happen, and I do think it will happen, given the fact that Manchin, as a Democratic senator, pushed for it and had kind of a good chunk of the party on board with it. I think the politics didn’t work out for it, partly because of the election, but with kind of a new Congress, I really think there will be fresh hope.
Ross Kenyon: Can we end it there before someone interjects something horrible in there? I want to get Srivan to say deregulation is good, at least once.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: I think streamlining regulation is pretty fantastic.
Ross Kenyon: That’s a data point right there for you, Chris.
Asa Kamer: Who could be against streamlining?
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: The message here is streamline, not make harder. Is that our overall takeaway?
Ross Kenyon: I think that’s a pretty solid takeaway. It’s such a hard one to talk about. Even the questions that I asked too, I find it hard to articulate because in some ways, things being blocked by local opposition, if that’s indeed what is happening, feels quite democratic in a way, and also local enough where even conservatives could I’ve seen versions of NIMBYism that are conservative and some that are progressive too. It depends on the why. What is being blocked and why often determines who is being a NIMBY at any time. It isn’t like being a NIMBY is in every case bad either.
There are certain things that you would want to prevent from being in your backyard too. It’s one of those questions that breaks a lot of our left-right assumptions that I think makes it an interesting topic, though certainly not an easy one to talk about. I feel a little bit more confused after doing this, but go ahead, Chris.
Chris Barnard: Yeah, I mean, it’s even like breaking apart groups internally. Like at the federal level, you have the Sierra Club that is heavily lobbying for Clean energy subsidies for like, we need to go to 100% renewables, blah, blah, blah. And they’re spending a lot of political capital on their federal advocacy there. And then it’s their local branches around the country that are blocking like wind turbine projects off the coast of Massachusetts and solar projects in Nevada or whatever it might be. It’s those local chapters that are doing that. And so there’s like a really interesting Dichotomy between the leadership pushing in a direction and the grassroots pushing in a completely opposite direction.
And they all fall under the kind of same progressive climate angle. Right. And so it’s really interesting that even within organizations, there’s no clear direction. Yeah. I mean, those are also like broad coalitions on a variety of issues. Like if you’re a party, you represent farmers in this area and you represent like urban people in this area and you represent working moms in this area. It’s like those are really very different things. But it’s just like kind of interesting that for a single issue like tackling climate change. Like building out clean energy that even within that one single issue, you have such like fragmented coalitions as well.
I feel like it’s a lot harder being a political party trying to unite everyone around like a very specific message. I feel like let’s make it easier to build clean energy should like not be that hard of a message, but apparently it still is. So it’s kind of an interesting observation on human psychology, I guess.
Asa Kamer: I wonder if people could vote to say, let’s deregulate clean energy everywhere else but where I live. I bet everyone would vote for that.
Chris Barnard: That would be very popular. That’s essentially what they already kind of do. Because if you say, I’m in favor of more wind and solar in this country, which 85% of Americans say they are in favor of, that’s essentially saying you want more of that to be built. But if you then block it in your own area, It really is kind of like a dichotomy there.
Ross Kenyon: Which way does the causality of this run, Chris? Is it like Veep? You only have to go to Veep. Veep is an easy thing to go to, and I’m sure that’s a fine default. But even when you look at... When mainstream Democrats became okay with gay marriage, and for Hillary Clinton or whatever, it was the moment it passed over the 51%, it was like, cool, I support gay marriage. And you’re like, okay, fine. You waited until it cost you nothing, essentially. And that’s a very deep-ish kind of interpretation of that, I think it’s fair to say.
Do you think politicians are having to just... How much of it are they like instructing or trying to guide their constituents and how much of it they just have to react and be like, they care about this dumb thing. They’re totally wrong about it. I have to stay in office.
Chris Barnard: Yeah, I think it’s definitely a bit of both. On the whole, like members of Congress in particular, the ones that get elected every two years and are basically campaigning constantly. They are very sensitive to what their voters think. And so that’s kind of like where the whole like pork barrel politics comes from, right? Because they want to get their project that they can go back to their district and be like, look, I got you this. And that’s what they care about. That really is a big factor. But I think on the whole, like the Overton window also is something that exists separately.
And that kind of like moves through the media, through popular culture and things like that. I’m not sure that’s like a specific deliberate effort from politicians to be like, we’re going to shift it on this. But there is kind of like just a cultural window that moves and that politicians respond to and that does influence like voters. And that’s often generational. So like the gay marriage thing and like right now also kind of seeing with public opinions on marijuana legalization and climate change is another one, right? Like there’s clear generational gaps.
But I do think that a lot of it is politicians like being beholden to Their constituencies and their interest groups and donors and all that.
Ross Kenyon: It’s funny that there’s an insight in there too that means maybe you should have longer terms or be less responsive to some democratic influence too. Like in some cases is the influence of having to appease voters who may not even be the best informed in some cases be the best way to enact democracy. And I realize I’m saying that with literally no time left on the clock at all. So pose an enormous question that goes back at least to Plato and probably before.
Chris Barnard: But I’ll just add as well that kind of this is where I sympathize with you, Ross, because in a way, our federal system is set up constitutionally to not work all that well. Right. Because power should be left to the states to do things. And that’s really kind of where I’m at. Like, I think states should manage a lot of this kind of stuff. And we shouldn’t put our hopes in the federal system working efficiently because it was never meant to be. It’s kind of what I’m saying, I guess.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah. You really want to talk on enumerated powers and then the amendment to like, come on, man, we don’t have time for that. We’ll save it for another podcast. Those are topics too that are so befuddled and are hard on their brain because they’re all trade-offs. I can think of examples of both sides of that issue where I’m just like, oh, that sounds dystopian and terrifying. Wouldn’t it be nice if you just had a constitution that was just people in good faith interacted with it and it just kind of worked?
Can we do that, Chris?
Chris Barnard: Yeah, I’m not sure. The constitutional convention?
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: Ross, we can’t even write a permit that isn’t 500 pages.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, you’re not wrong. Yeah, and that sort of makes me feel like a little bit more localist, but I’ve also seen stuff happen even in Seattle that feels so out of control and crazy too. I’m just like, does anything work that well? I don’t know.
Chris Barnard: Yeah, there’s an interesting angle there as well as like the places where things aren’t working that well. And like I grew up in Europe and so coming to the US, like seeing people move from California to Texas or New York to Florida and like those like migration patterns aren’t really something, isn’t really something that Europeans witness much because you kind of just like stay where you grow up and it’s really not all that different depending on where you go. But in the US, you can really like go to Texas or go to Florida and things be Drastically different when it comes to taxes, regulations, all those kinds of things.
I think there is really a bit of a fleeing from places like California and New York overprices and bad policies.
Ross Kenyon: I’ve seen it go the other way too, Chris. I’ve seen friends who left Arizona because it was a cultural backwater and too conservative for their liking and they wanted someplace that was more cosmopolitan and less provincial. Well, they can go pay their high taxes in California. That’s fine by me. The examples you chose were so favoring to the point you were trying to make. I had to nudge you a little bit. Man, I want to end this on a nice note. And then I introduced several very difficult questions that I don’t have an answer to.
That people have spent careers trying to solve and failing. Anyways, Chris, thanks for making me think. I’m excited to watch this permitting reform stuff play out. Also, if you like this topic, and Chris personally, sure, why not? Why not say that? You should listen to Carbon Removal Newsroom. I listen to it. I think I’ve listened to every single one at least once.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: It’s a great show, yeah.
Ross Kenyon: It is a great show. Asa, feeling humble? Asa, I mean, you make it.
Asa Kamer: No, I... I think Chris does a great job. He’s on every month talking about policy and CDR. And if you liked what you had to say, you should check it out. And not only will you hear this, but also like whatever the recent news and CDR policy is, they’ll talk about that. So I agree with Ross. If you like what you hear here, you should check out CRN.
Chris Barnard: Was this just a ploy to get more promotion for the other podcasts? That’s the only reason you had me on.
Ross Kenyon: We’re that Machiavellian. No idea how deep it goes. Just getting those clicks.
Chris Barnard: Maybe the conservative alternative to this is throwing tomato soup at really bad modern art and just being like, we need to reinstate standards for good art.
Asa Kamer: I feel like 99% of the world would applaud that.
Unknown speaker: The standards for art?
Asa Kamer: No, the throwing soup at modern art. I think many people are alienated by art these days. They would be like, yeah.
Ross Kenyon: People would just be like, is this a Cy Twombly? But yeah, it’s only something like Roger Scruton would probably approve of. So it’s probably, it’ll probably be okay.
Asa Kamer: Well, how long until someone like goes to their own gallery show and throws soup on their own art, like as part of their art, like that’s going to happen, right?
Ross Kenyon: Wow. Asa, Asa’s like next career as a conceptual artist. Let’s do it. Breaking career on the podcast. It’s literally that simple, Asa. It’s literally that. And you have to have a very popular, I think, Instagram. I think you’re good.
Chris Barnard: Let’s go. Do you know that famous modern art? I don’t know if it’s a photo or a painting of a can of tomato soup. And there was this meme of someone throwing a Van Gogh on it. It was like, I got you guys.
Ross Kenyon: Are you like the Andy Warhol pop art? Yeah, I think of it. And someone is throwing a Van Gogh. Yeah. It’s like, got you back. I love that. That’s a great idea.
Siobhan Montoya-Lavender: I’m having meme envy right now. I wish we’d made that.
Ross Kenyon: That’s pretty great. Let’s make it and see. It’s not really a carbon removal meme, but it’s climatey. Why not?
Asa Kamer: Yeah, we still haven’t done anything soup related. We need to do that.
Ross Kenyon: I’m going to make one of just like, I think it was going to be like the forever alone head of the guy like crying and it just says, no one’s thrown soup at carbon removal. We want our day in the sun. Thanks for being here. If you like what we do, please share with a friend. We had fun. Hopefully you had fun listening. Give us a great rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Come back next week. Listen again and have a great day. Thank you so much for listening.
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