CarbonCapture is looking to build a large-scale direct air capture facility in Rock Springs, Wyoming, a town with deep roots in the coal industry.
And last fall, the company invited the community to a town hall event to learn more about the initiative, known as Project Bison, and its aim to remove five million tonnes of CO2 annually by 2030.
How did the people react to CarbonCapture’s plans? And what can the carbon removal industry learn from events like this?
Nicholas Kusnetz is an award-winning reporter for Inside Climate News. His work has appeared in more than a dozen publications, including The Washington Post, Business Week, and The New York Times.
On this episode of Reversing Climate Change, Nicholas joins guest hosts Asa Kamer and Siobhan Montoya Lavendar to discuss his December 2022 piece on CarbonCapture Inc’s Project Bison.
Nicholas discusses what CarbonCapture’s town hall event was like, describing the wide range of people who attended, and what questions they had for the presenter.
Listen in for Nicholas’ insight into other DAC projects taking place in fossil fuel country around the US and learn about the local tradeoffs facing communities at carbon capture sites.
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Resources
Nicholas at Inside Climate News
Nicholas’ Series—Pipe Dreams: Is Carbon Capture a Climate Solution or a Dangerous Distraction?
CarbonCapture Inc’s Project Bison
Wyoming Law to Encourage Carbon Capture at Coal Plants
Powder River Basin Resource Council
Exxon’s Proposed DAC Hubs in the Gulf
Full Transcript
Ross Kenyon: 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.
Asa Kamer: All right, everybody, welcome to this week’s Reversing Climate Change. I’m your guest host this week, Asa Kamer, and I’m here with Siobhan Montoya Lavendar. And we are interviewing this week Nick Kusnetz. Nick is a reporter for Inside Climate News, and he reports on the fossil fuel industry. His work has won numerous awards, including from the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Society of American Business Editors and Writers. His work has appeared in more than a dozen publications, including The Washington Post, Business Week, The Nation, Fast Company and The New York Times. And so we are going to be talking about an article that he wrote back in the beginning of December of 2022.
And it was about Project Bison, which is a project by a company out of California called CarbonCapture Inc. I think a lot of our listeners probably know about this project, they know about this company. And they want to build a large DAC facility — if they get to it first, it would be the largest in the world. There’s others about as big that are planned in other locations, but it’s ambitious in size. And it’s going to be located, where they’re proposing to locate it, in Rock Springs, Wyoming. And they want to remove five million tons of CO2 annually by 2030 with this project.
And so in December, Nick went to this community, to Rock Springs, to report on the company’s outreach that they’re doing, and other public outreach work. That included at least one town hall that he talked about, and I think some other components to it. So he attended that, and he also spoke with a lot of local folks out there. And the context of all this is, you know, Wyoming has been proactive in carbon capture. It’s done some point source carbon capture, but this would be kind of their first foray into direct air capture, carbon removal. So it would be certainly a new endeavor, and not something that we really know how it’s going to go.
For me — I know for me, personally, you know, after reading that article I’ve been very intrigued, because, you know, we cover carbon removal on the show, and Carbon Removal Newsroom, the other show I do. We get a lot of info from companies and governments about what they want to do, but much less about what people on the ground, who live where some of these projects are proposed, think about it. And so, with that — sorry, that was a long intro. Normally we’re more conversational. [unclear]
Siobhan Montoya Lavendar: Yeah. The 60 Minutes of carbon removal. That’s our goal.
Asa Kamer: So, hi Nick, thank you for joining us. How are you doing?
Nicholas Kusnetz: I’m doing all right. Yeah, thank you for having me on.
Asa Kamer: Awesome. And Siobhan, how are you today?
Siobhan Montoya Lavendar: Oh, I’m doing great. I’m on vacation, but I’m here nonetheless, because I just want to talk to Nick. So here we are.
Asa Kamer: Right on. Okay. So Nick, I gave a little bit of information about Project Bison, but can you just, like, start off by telling us — you know, we’ll include the article in the show notes for people who haven’t read it — but can you tell us about what you were looking for, what you found when you were there? Just kind of an overview of your experience reporting from Wyoming?
Nicholas Kusnetz: Sure. Yeah. So last year I was doing a whole series of stories both about carbon capture and carbon removal — you know, recognizing these are separate fields, but particularly when it comes to direct air capture, and some of the players involved, and some of the regulations involved, and the tax incentives involved, there’s a lot of overlap. And so I was particularly interested. I mean, I’d come at the project in particular because I do report on oil and gas, and oil and gas companies are, of course, big players in the carbon capture space, and to some degree in the carbon removal and direct air capture space too.
But then this Wyoming project jumped up from, you know, a much smaller company that’s not tied to oil and gas at all, at least not in the financing. And the timing was just — I mean, it was the first time that there was a real specific project planned in a specific place, where, as you mentioned, they were having this town hall event because they wanted to meet with and hear from locals. And so they were really starting to kind of, like, engage at a project level. And to me that was a really great opportunity to start to look at, you know, these projects becoming reality.
Because that was part of the kind of context for me: there was this huge wave of public money coming, first from the bipartisan infrastructure bill and then from the Inflation Reduction Act tax credits, the expansion of the carbon capture tax credits. Suddenly it was like this potential industry that so many people had been, you know, dreaming about, promising, for so long was starting to sort of at least get built.
Siobhan Montoya Lavendar: Absolutely. This is sort of a random question, but how did you find out about the town hall meeting? What was the source?
Nicholas Kusnetz: So I — I mean, I had done reporting related to Wyoming and carbon capture and all of this already, because the state, as you mentioned, particularly because it’s such a coal and oil and gas dependent state — Wyoming produces like 40% of the country’s coal. And fossil fuels in general provide something around — I mean, I’m not sure of the exact number, but it’s around 70% of, like, tax revenues for state and local government. So it’s hugely dependent. And because of that, the state has really been pursuing carbon capture for a long time, primarily as a way to try to prolong the life of coal plants. So I had had sources there and I was aware of this project, and I’d actually bumped into someone at a conference who said that they were kind of going to be doing outreach. So I started asking around in Wyoming, and just as it happened, someone knew someone who lived in the town who got the mailer. And I was like, all right, well, I’m going next week.
Siobhan Montoya Lavendar: Right on. On-the-ground journalism. That’s, I guess, that’s what you’re giving us — a little inside peek.
Nicholas Kusnetz: That’s right. Yeah. So, I mean, but in general this was the kind of thing that was possible because I was reporting on the topic, like, through a series of stories. So I had been talking to a lot of people both from industry and environmental groups and, you know, all sorts of different sectors, and that’s how I heard about this.
Siobhan Montoya Lavendar: And can you, like, paint a picture a bit of, like, what was the — I think you mentioned it was in a high school gym. Like, who was talking, who showed up? Like, just give us a — I mean, I’m personally fascinated by, like, the actual details of how this is starting to, like, play out. So, I mean, this was the first one happening, and we’re talking about an industry that’s going to be as massive as the oil and gas industry. That’s a frequent thing we say, is that CDR will be as big as oil and gas. And yet here we are at the very, very beginning, really. And this is one of the very first town halls to have ever happened. And I’m so curious about public reaction. I’m so curious about what we can learn as an industry from events like this and from these early pioneer projects. So, yeah, paint us a picture.
Nicholas Kusnetz: Sure. Yeah. So it was at a community college in Rock Springs. And so Rock Springs, just briefly, is in the southwestern corner of the state, which is, like, essentially high desert, you know, very sparsely populated. And the town itself is a longtime coal town. There was coal found there sort of late 19th century, and because of that, and because of the kind of geology of the state and the topography of the state, the Union Pacific ended up routing its main line right through there, because the coal, you know, fueled the locomotives then. More recently, there’s a big gas field just north of the town that was one of the first big fracking plays. So oil and gas is a big part of the economy there.
And so this community college, part of what it does helps, like, you know, train and helps people get ready for jobs in some of those fields. So the town hall was in, like, a sort of large classroom area that was big enough to fit — there were more than 100 people in there and it was totally packed. In fact, so I had been told that I was not going to be admitted. It was a little unclear, you know, they had said it was because it was full and they wanted to prioritize residents. I didn’t know whether maybe they also didn’t want journalists in there. I was unclear. But, for what it’s worth, another resident of the area who I was put in touch with before I went was also told she wouldn’t be able to go in. But so, you know, I kind of went together and they just, you know, let us in. And yeah, it was packed.
It was pretty animated. People had only had about one week’s notice, or even less, that this thing was happening. So I think mostly people didn’t really know what the project was, or even what the technology was, or anything like that.
Asa Kamer: Yeah, I’m just curious. Like, I feel like, for me, I’m imagining, if I got, like, a mailer like that, like, I’m busy. I don’t know that I would have time to, like, go to some company’s thing talking about — what, you know what I mean? Like, I’m sure you talked to people there. Why were people interested in showing up in the first place?
Nicholas Kusnetz: Yeah, I mean, I think there’s a big range, and I definitely met with people not there who did get the mailer, who couldn’t go, or, as you said, you know, were busy. Or there were people who, like, hadn’t even realized they got the mailer because they don’t check their mail — you know, it’s a physical mailer, that’s how they sent it out, like a postcard. But I think there’s a real range. I mean, there were people who were kind of really intrigued and were really hopeful that this company could maybe be, like, the start of a new industry, because it’s an economy, as I said, that’s really dependent on fossil fuels. It’s been a boom-bust economy for many — for more than a century, really, and in particular some of those resources are trending more towards bust, you know, coal specifically, particularly.
So there were people with that in mind. There were ranchers who were worried that this was going to bring new wind and solar development that was going to both be, like, an aesthetic blight on the land, but a physical one too. There’s this solar plant that’s pretty close to where the Project Bison site is, and it was the first commercial scale solar plant in Wyoming. It was completed just a few years ago and it was very controversial. I mean, first of all, you know, it’s a pretty conservative state, of course, and a conservative part of the state, and people were not necessarily welcoming of renewable energy in general. But then once the project was built, you know, a solar farm has to be fenced, and once those fences went up, these pronghorn, which are kind of like an antelope-like animal that lives out west, started showing up on the highway that runs next to it. And eventually the company that built it commissioned a study, and they had built it right in the middle of pronghorn habitat and displaced, you know, part of the grazing land of the herd there. And ranchers also rely on open range there — this is, like, there’s a lot of open range in this part of Wyoming — and so they were worried that the project would, you know, bring more fencing that would shut them out of places.
So there are a whole set of people like that. I mean, there was sort of economic development people, so it was a pretty wide range. And then there were also people who were just, like, you know, what’s this California company coming with this cockamamie plan? That’s just another outsider coming to, like, make money off of our resources — which in this case is our air, I guess — you know, people are saying, and go back to California and do it there.
Asa Kamer: And what was the — can you tell us a little bit about, like, what you saw, the presentation from the company?
Nicholas Kusnetz: Yeah, so the presentation was really detailed. They went through a lot of, you know, really specific information about what they were planning. And the woman who was leading it, you know, to her credit said, I will take as many questions as you want and stay as long as you want, and she did that. And there were tons of questions, and people were asking about, like — and the questions were all over. I mean, there were some that were, climate change, it’s real but it’s not a real threat, or it’s real but it’s not caused by people. And there were people who had really specific questions about how much energy is this going to use, and how much land is that going to mean you’re going to have to cover with wind and solar. And, you know, what’s your business model? What happens if you go under, who cleans up the site if you go under? Why are you selling all these credits, why not just, you know, lock away the CO2 and maximize that? So it was a real big range, and a lot of it got into a lot of real detailed specifics about the project. I learned a lot, even, from ideas they might not have gotten into with me.
Siobhan Montoya Lavendar: So I feel like, for me, just hearing this, it’s exciting to hear that there’s this level of interest and action and involvement, and the company was really receptive to saying, hey, we’re going to really get into the nitty-gritty and all these questions, you know? I think one thing you brought up in your article that I was particularly interested in was how local governments are very much in favor of these new carbon capture or direct air capture initiatives. And was there any government representation there, or was it purely, like, you know, on-site, within, you know, 50-mile locals? Or was there any kind of government representation that was partnering along with the company?
Nicholas Kusnetz: Yeah, there were. And they weren’t government officials — they didn’t give, like, they weren’t part of the presentation. So there was someone from the University of Wyoming, where they’ve done a lot of the geological work, mapping out the subsurface in Wyoming to see where would be suitable places for storing CO2. But there were people from the state government and local government who were there in attendance just to talk to people, like someone from the state’s economic development agency. So, I mean, as I said, like, in Wyoming they’re kind of all in on this, at least the governor’s office, so the sort of executive part of the state government. There’s definitely criticism in the state of that from different sides. I mean, I think there’s some on the conservative side who think the governor has sort of a net-zero pledge, right, which is not about eliminating fossil fuels but is purely about making Wyoming into, like, a destination for other states’ CO2.
But there are also environmental groups in the state that think that it’s, like, this blind devotion, and that rather than making a real effort to diversify the state’s economy, they’re just kind of chasing this so-far pretty fruitless effort to, you know, chase carbon capture and now carbon removal as an economic engine.
Asa Kamer: Yeah. And I think in your article you said that the Wyoming legislature passed a law that would somehow encourage all coal plants to have carbon capture, but that none of them yet have that. So it seems like there’s government support, but at least the point source carbon capture on coal plants hasn’t panned out. Is that right?
Nicholas Kusnetz: Exactly, yeah. And, I mean, Wyoming — so it hasn’t panned out anywhere, really, with a couple notable exceptions. Wyoming has given about as much support as, you know, anywhere that I’ve come across. And as you said, there was this law passed in 2020 that — it was essentially like a version of what other states are doing for renewable energy portfolio standards, where the state will say, by 2030 you have to, utilities, you have to get 30%, 50%, whatever it is, from renewable sources. Versus, the state said, utilities, you have to get — I think it was 20%, but it was a certain amount of your power from coal with carbon capture. And the utilities have largely resisted this because it’s extremely expensive, and it’s much cheaper to build renewable power, it’s much cheaper to close a coal plant and replace it with wind or solar, or just convert it to natural gas, than to put carbon capture on a coal plant. There are no commercially operating coal carbon capture plants in the country right now. So the utilities have been kind of resisting it. There’s this regulatory process that’s playing out, but it has not actually resulted in anything happening.
Siobhan Montoya Lavendar: Do you think the communities are aware of the price differentiation and how the industry is moving towards renewables, surely based on cost effectiveness? Or has that not really permeated the community? Or are they — maybe they were aware long before I was aware. And what do you think is, like, the public perception of the transition?
Nicholas Kusnetz: Well, I mean, with the one caveat that I want to just say, this is anecdotal, what I’m saying, right, it’s not [unclear]. But I think certainly there’s a good amount of awareness. A lot of people I spoke with just, like, generally see the writing on the wall, that the world is moving away from coal, and they recognize this, right? And so I think that some of the people see that and think, okay, so we’ve got to figure out what’s next. And if carbon capture is part of that, then great, and if this kind of carbon removal thing is part of it, okay. Then there’s other people who are a little more resistant.
And I think there’s a lot of resentment there, because also part of what’s driving it is that Wyoming produces not only a lot of coal but a lot of power with that coal. They have power plants and produce way more electricity than they use, and it’s all exported to other states, a lot of it to West Coast states, and those states have passed, you know, 100% renewable energy targets, right? And so that’s part of what’s driving this. There’s the economics, there’s the regulatory piece of it. And so I think people are resentful of the fact that, like, what’s happening in Wyoming is being determined by other states, right, the states that are buying the fossil fuels that are getting produced in Wyoming. So, I mean, there’s an awareness of it and, you know, to some degree resentment, but also resignation, I think.
Asa Kamer: Yeah, yeah, that’s the part of your piece that kind of stayed with me — just, like, the reality of what it must be like to be in a place where most of the jobs are coming from this coal plant, and it’s, like, a huge part of why the town exists, and why a lot of people are probably even living there, you know, in terms of their previous generations moving there to work in the coal plant. I saw that Rock Springs has, like, a huge amount of different nationalities of people living there — throughout history, like, a lot of people from different parts of the world have come there for the opportunity of, like, the coal industry.
So it’s really, like — I mean, I don’t know if they’re quite, like, at the crossroads, because it seems like the coal plant’s still going to be around for another, like, 10 or 15 years, but it’s a bit of a crossroads. And having this conversation, I’m just sitting here like, wow, I wish we, like, had some of these people we could talk to. I mean, like, we’re asking you to, like, speak for all these people, and you’re doing a great job, but it seems like a situation that provokes a lot of different perspectives, probably, and this town, like, kind of looking into the future — like, what’s our future look like? It’s emotional, it’s existential.
And you spoke with one woman who worked at the coal plant and still calls it “my plant,” you know, and had a strong connection to it. You know, I can’t help — but I personally, you know, as a person who wishes all coal plants would shut down today for the sake of the climate, like, you know, on the other hand you can’t really help but feel for someone like that. So, I mean, I think you pointed out that the coal plant employs 300 people. So if that shuts down, which it will in the next 10 or 15 years, and then CarbonCapture Inc is saying they can theoretically employ 200 people — I mean, that’s not a bad sales pitch. I mean, there’s opportunity there for people in Wyoming too, I would think.
Nicholas Kusnetz: Yeah. And I should point out also that with the coal plant, part of the plan could be that — so it has four units, and some of them, at least currently, the plan is to convert them to natural gas. So it could be that at least a couple of them, that could extend the life. It’s kind of up in the air at this point, of course. So it could be that sort of half the plant closes and half of it turns into a natural gas plant, or it could be that the whole thing eventually closes.
But on the jobs, I mean, that’s the promise, right? And then, I guess, the question is, will that happen, and what kind of jobs will those be? Because the coal plant jobs have been, like, really good paying jobs, union jobs. Like Luann [unclear], the woman who you mentioned, who I spent some time with — she spent her entire career at the plant and is now involved in the local labor union council. Those are the well-paying jobs, and there isn’t a guarantee. I mean, certainly the company says they’ll pay people well, but there’s no particular guarantee of the quality of the jobs. And the 200 number is also if they reach their full scale, what you said, five million. So initially they’re going to have a fraction of that capacity and a fraction of the number of jobs. That’s certainly, like, what brought this woman, Luann [unclear], and some others to the meeting, kind of with their eyes open, to say, hey, well, what can they potentially provide?
Siobhan Montoya Lavendar: I also, I think, from, you know, just anecdotally from the questions you’re talking about, it sounds like a pretty savvy community in terms of awareness around, like, hey, what happens if you go under? Are you just going to close up shop and walk away with these rusting buildings? You know, I think it speaks to probably prior experience of, you know, promises being made, or initiatives starting or projects starting, and then the community was aware enough to say, hey, who cleans this up, what are the contingency plans? And that’s, you know, I think that’s encouraging in a lot of ways, to hear that there is a community advocating for itself and looking down the pipeline and being aware of different scenarios and different possibilities.
Nicholas Kusnetz: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, as I said, there’s a lot of oil and gas, and there have been coal mines for a century or more, and so they’ve been through it and they’ve had companies go under and abandoned mines and abandoned wells. They are — I think people there are pretty savvy about this. I mean, there’s one other voice that I definitely would want to highlight, someone who I met when I was there. And I don’t think this is representative of the community at all, but she is there. And she’s a woman who is now involved with something called the Powder River Basin Resource Council, which is like — you know, there is not a whole lot of environmental movement in Wyoming, there aren’t many local environmental groups, but this is one of them.
And she actually worked in mines, but not in coal. There’s this other — there’s a mineral called trona there. It’s used to make, like, glass and a whole, like, a ton of products, actually, and those mines have actually been taking up a lot of the jobs lost to coal and oil and gas so far. So she worked in those mines for a long time until getting laid off, and now she lives on a ranch that’s owned by her family and they raise bison. And she’s been really working to try to get bison, you know, reintroduced in places across the West. So for a while she was trying to actually have her bison move to different locations, and she had some bison go to a park, [unclear].
She’s not, like, against Project Bison — well, she — although she was somewhat resentful of the name, I guess, you’ll see why. But I think she is definitely coming from the perspective that the state is just kind of, like, failing to get the memo on how an energy economy is failing the state, and, you know, seeing the writing on the wall with climate change and a shift to renewable energy. And she basically, like, looks at her herd and says, look, we have devastated the landscape. And if we want to talk about, like, you know, carbon removal — she said to me, like, you know, we want to talk about carbon removal, and pointed out at her herd — there is a lot of science suggesting that restoring natural landscapes and having certain megafauna like bison, you know, reintroduced can revive landscapes in a way that makes them absorb a lot more carbon dioxide into the land.
And so, I mean, I think she is somewhat skeptical of this project as, like, the next, you know, industrial promise that, you know, won’t necessarily pan out and will have environmental impacts potentially. So, you know, I don’t want to misrepresent — again, she’s not sort of saying, all out, against the project, but I think she just sees it as, like, another piece of missing the big picture of what the state needs to do in terms of, like, reorienting itself.
Asa Kamer: Totally. Yeah. We were on the other show that I work on, Carbon Removal Newsroom — yesterday we had a recording and the conversation was about public acceptability, and some of the folks that are working on legislation to try to get carbon removal incentivized at the state level, not in Wyoming but in other states. And it’s just this really interesting tension, you know? We work on trying to promote and advocate for carbon removal, I think mostly based on the recognition from, like, you know, the IPCC and other research that shows, like, it’ll be necessary to, you know, keep temperatures below a certain level. So I guess it’s — you know, that’s sort of the, like, no one would care to hear what I had to say at this town hall either. Like, you know, that’s the question that I am so fascinated about when it comes to these public outreach and this public acceptability, is, like, there’s, like, a global need meeting, like, a local requirement, or, like, local trade-offs, or local maybe opportunities too.
Nicholas Kusnetz: Yeah, I know. But I mean, I think — so one thing that I found interesting about the woman who I’ve just been mentioning, her name is Michelle [unclear], is that it also speaks to something that you find in the scientific literature about this, which is, like, when you look at any carbon removal approach, whether it’s, like, engineered direct air capture or ocean approaches or afforestation, pretty much any of them, once you get to really big scale, start to have, like, real either risks or trade-offs or costs. And, like, for direct air capture, you know, it’s a ton of energy use, at least with current technologies. And so if that’s going to be provided with renewable energy, it means a ton of land. And in the case of this project specifically, it was something like a thousand acres. So there is this kind of, from the IPCC, apparent need for carbon removal. But then when you look at actually doing it, it’s like no one really knows how to do it at this kind of scale that might be needed without raising a whole new set of problems.
Siobhan Montoya Lavendar: Yeah, yeah. I think that’s one of the reasons a lot of people advocate for portfolio approaches — is not only that we don’t know which one is actually going to be able to scale, like, we can assume things and we can model things, we don’t actually know what’s really going to end up being viable at scale, but also we still are muddling through the impacts of a single method at scale, like, what does that actually look like? And so I think you bring up a really good point about this. This might be, you know, one small project now, but I think keeping an eye to the future of, like, what does DAC look like at scale, what does ocean alkalinity look like at scale, what does afforestation look like at scale, is really important, and is going to have all sorts of human political consequences. And again, to Asa’s point, both positive and negative — there’s opportunity there and there’s cost there.
You know, I used to work doing environmental impact statements and field studies for major utility projects in the western US. And so, you know, Pacific Gas and Electric, you know, wants to build a new gas line or whatever it is. And it’s interesting because, first of all, California has much, much, much more stringent regulations around this than a lot of the country. And so the fact, for example, just that you brought up, that that bison — or, excuse me, it was, it was a — now, what I can think of is antelope, what’s the — [unclear] — but the pronghorn, you know, they discovered that it had been built within some sort of migratory, it sounds like, habitat or grazing habitat. That is something that probably would have been discovered before the project was built in certain states because of fish and wildlife regulations.
And it’s going to be interesting to see how policy catches up, and how regulations catch up, to a lot of deployment of CDR in new areas that maybe aren’t accustomed to having major utility deployed with, you know, concern towards environmental impact. And again, I’m curious, like, how the government plays into this, and this kind of push and pull between the government saying yes, yes, yes, let’s bring in these new technologies, let’s grow our economy in this specific way, and then the reality of where that touches human lives on the ground, saying, well, wait a minute, what’s going to happen if this doesn’t pan out, or what’s going to happen if I don’t want to work in that industry? I think is a really, a really fair thing to say.
And I also really liked how you talked about there’s kind of these outside economic pressures that are driving the economy in Wyoming, which was a good reminder for me, because sometimes there can be resentment there, right? And I think sometimes I resent Wyoming for having an outsized impact in politics, right, that Wyoming has two senators, and so do I, and those two senators are representing a lot fewer people than my senators are, you know. And yet you bring up this really legitimate point that while I might have fewer — less representation politically, I might have an outsized economic representation on other states, which is just a good point to bear in mind.
Nicholas Kusnetz: Yeah, as a New Yorker, I kind of had the same kind of thoughts going through my head when I was particularly speaking with one woman who was just, like, airing a lot of that resentment. But, like, Wyoming’s economy is pretty much entirely dependent on what other states or the world are buying, you know?
Asa Kamer: Yeah, that’s a good — probably a good place to segue, because I know we wanted to talk to you also about — the headline for this article is “Carbon Removal Is Coming to Fossil Fuel Country,” and this won’t be the last project. And there already are other projects planned, and to some level of planning, in the Permian Basin in Texas and Oklahoma, and in the Gulf. I know there was an application for one of the DAC hubs to be in the Gulf, and Exxon has started to do some, you know, work to site carbon, you know, underground storage in the Gulf. And then even in California I think there’s going to be an application for a hub in Kern County. So this probably won’t be the last time that either small startups or fossil fuel companies or some combination try to work to bring carbon removal projects to former, like, coal or oil and gas regions. And in fact, the DAC hub projects, I think two of the four are supposed to be in former — I forget the name, I think “resource areas” or something, you know, basically fossil fuel areas. So I find that fascinating. Do you have, like, a view on, or other news from other projects, or, you know, what else are you seeing out there in terms of the US, like, where carbon removal might come to fossil fuel country?
Nicholas Kusnetz: Sure. So I did a little bit of reporting on another project which you alluded to there, which is proposed in the Permian Basin and West Texas. And this is planned by an oil company, Occidental, and they had announced this earlier, before Project Bison. So they say that they want to — there will actually — they now say they’ve started work on a DAC plant. It’s outside Odessa, Texas, and the initial scale would be, like, 500,000 tons, and they say, you know, eventually getting up to a million tons. And that project is interesting for a whole set of reasons, and different in some ways from the Wyoming one.
So for starters, it is an oil company. Part of why they’re doing it there is Occidental, which is, like, one of the biggest independent oil companies in the country — so it’s sort of, you know, a notch below like the Exxon, Chevron, but still a very big company. So they have a ton of what’s called enhanced oil recovery. So they own a lot of older oil fields where what they’ve been doing for a while now is pumping CO2 into the oil field, and the CO2, like, mixes with and sort of frees up a lot of oil. That was not an issue that didn’t come up initially, you know, in the first round. And the CO2 mostly comes from, like, other underground sources, so, you know, there’s natural deposits. But Occidental has been looking a lot into and investing money into both carbon capture and now carbon removal, because they basically — the way, actually — so their CEO said this at a conference I was at, where they said they have all these resources of these depleted oil fields, and their nearby sources of CO2 are going to dry up at some point and they’re going to need more CO2, and they say that this is how they’re going to get it.
So they’ve proposed this project, and a little more detail has come out of that one because they applied for local tax abatements, specifically from the school tax, from both the kind of district schools and from the community college schools. And I sort of stumbled across this in reporting, and in those requests, one of which has been granted, they have to say how many jobs they would create and how much they would pay them. And in the case of the 500,000-ton plant, it would be 25 jobs. So, you know, it’s not a ton of jobs — or that’s the amount that they promised, it could be more theoretically, but, you know, in order to get this tax credit they have to create those 25 jobs. So I think that that one is sort of the furthest along, but some of the CO2 that would be taken out of the air would be going to pump oil, and so that’s made it really controversial.
They also — another story I worked on last year — was they’re in negotiations with California, which has, like, a marketplace to try to lower the carbon intensity of its transportation fuels. And, you know, it’s a little complicated, we can get into details if you’d like, but basically the short version is they’re in talks to be able to sell credits on that marketplace, where, like, a refinery, say, in lieu of actually selling more low-carbon fuel, could buy carbon credits from Occidental in Texas for putting oil into the ground — but, I’m sorry, putting CO2 under the ground — but that CO2 could actually end up pumping oil. And so that has made some people in California pretty upset, saying that’s kind of, like, against the general intent of their Low Carbon Fuel Standard, right?
Siobhan Montoya Lavendar: Yeah, yeah. Like you said, what was it, kind of like — I want to take a — yeah, that EOR debate rages on within carbon removal spaces too. That’s definitely actually accounting for a very, very small percentage, right? I think it’s like, sure, five percent or something. But it’s a valid argument, and it’s certainly not something people are going to be excited about. But it’s interesting how much kind of, I would argue, outsize attention things like EOR get when, like, you know, big picture, we’re talking about gigatons moving out of the atmosphere.
Nicholas Kusnetz: And I think, I mean, I think part of that is about, like, the fact that there is public money on the table, there are tax incentives, and there are federal credits, and there’s this California program. And beyond the kind of accounting, which there is, like, a complex sort of debate about, it’s a question of, like, well, what are we trying to do here, right? And if the goal of what we’re trying to do here is to — I mean, I think most people who support pursuing carbon removal argue that, like, the highest priority is eliminating emissions, and in order to do that you have to move off of fossil fuels. And so the idea that you would pair carbon removal with what is typically a subsidy for oil production, I think, is the kind of particularly galling part.
Siobhan Montoya Lavendar: Absolutely. Yeah, no, it makes sense why people get up in arms about it. So, just one last question. Are there other stories about carbon removal that you’re covering? Do you have other plans to visit projects? What’s next for your kind of series that you’re working on?
Nicholas Kusnetz: So, I mean, something I’m still following — the kind of conceived-of series is complete. So, you know, because I do generally cover, like, oil and gas more broadly too. And so I’m still tracking the carbon removal and carbon capture fields, and will surely keep writing about it, particularly as it develops and as some of the infrastructure money starts getting, you know, directed and awarded. I mean, for a long time this story has just been about, like, is this real, you know, to some degree. We won’t know the answer to that question for 20 years, right? But I’m interested in all the little developments that will be coming over the next year or two or three that will start to give little shreds of answers.
Siobhan Montoya Lavendar: Really interested in when, instead of it becoming “is this real” — when people actually — ’cause I feel like the most common question is, what is this? That’s, like, just, what is this at all? You know, we step outside our bubble and people don’t really know about carbon removal. But I’m really excited to, you know, follow you and perhaps hear stories from you. What’s going to happen when more and more people really do understand what carbon removal is, what it entails, what the potential benefits and impacts are, and then what’s going to happen then? You know, because right now we’re having these discussions within this relative slice of the global population that is even aware that there’s such a thing as direct air capture, or that, you know, there’s such a thing as ocean alkalinity enhancement, you know.
And what’s going to happen when we actually have lots of people understanding this? And a lot of times I equate this to solar and renewables, and how those were kind of niche and unknown for a long time and now what they are today. But I don’t actually think that’s going to be the same path for carbon removal, because it’s not as simple and personal as, like, well, I need my lights to go on and this wind turbine can make my lights go on, you know. I think that’s a much more concrete and personal relationship to a burgeoning industry. The relationship to carbon removal is very different, not only because it’s not just one thing and the things are different — you know, reforestation is very different from direct air capture — but also I think there’s a challenge of how we make this personal for people, and how people really understand. And maybe it is jobs, maybe it is, like, things actually being sited within communities. But, like, what’s actually going to make people understand this, and when they do understand what’s happening, how are people going to react? I’m very, very curious to see how that plays out.
Nicholas Kusnetz: Yeah, well, and that’s what I thought, that’s why I wanted to go write about this project in Wyoming, right? Because it was one small beginning example of that starting to, you know, potentially become real.
Asa Kamer: Yeah. Well, with that, let’s wrap up. Nick, thank you so much for joining us. We should have you on again, if you would be willing, maybe sometime down the road when there’s another project that you can tell us about.
Siobhan Montoya Lavendar: Yeah, and you’ve inspired me. I want to get, you know, more just, like, on-the-ground opinions live on air. I want to talk to CarbonCapture, I want to talk to all the players, because this is really cool and interesting and important for our field. So thanks so much for writing about it.
Nicholas Kusnetz: Yeah, well, I’m glad to come on and talk about it. So thanks for having me.
Asa Kamer: Thank you so much for listening to the Reversing Climate Change podcast. Please give us a great review on Spotify or Apple, wherever you’re listening to this. Go ahead and share it with a friend. And if you aren’t already listening to Carbon Removal Newsroom and you’re eager for more information on this epic topic of carbon removal, head on over — we’ll leave a link in the show notes. Thank you so much.
Ross Kenyon: Thank you so much for listening. If you could please subscribe and give us a great rating and review on Apple Podcasts, or a rating on Spotify, that’d be much appreciated. It helps us get our content out to more people. You can sign up for our newsletter at nori.com. Follow us on social media. We will catch you next time.
