Pennsylvania Advances Carbon Capture Over Objections of Environmental Radicals Aligned with Keystone State Gentry Class
Guest post by Jim Willis of Marcellus Drilling News.
Environmental radicals have struck out a second time, and they’re pretty bitter about it. We’re talking about Senate Bill (SB) 831, the Carbon Capture & Sequestration (CCS) Act. Last week, a strong bipartisan majority in the PA legislature ignored the radicals that had asked Democrat legislators to block the bill, passing the bill and sending it to the governor’s desk (see PA Legislature Rejects Radical Antis, Passes CCS Bill, Sends to Gov). Having failed with Democrat legislators, the radicals hung their hopes on convincing Gov. Shapiro to veto the bill. That didn’t happen either. He signed SB 831 into law on Wednesday. It’s now officially known as Act 87.
SB 831 (now Act 87) is the first step in establishing a framework that allows for the underground storage of CO2 in the Keystone State. The law aims to (eventually) enable PA to achieve “primacy” in approving Class VI CCS injection wells in the state, meaning the state (and not the federal) government takes the lead in approving new CCS wells. It is a critical component in building the much-ballyhooed hydrogen hub projects in the region.
The problem for anti-fossil fuelers is that they are fractured on this issue. One set of environmentalist wacko groups, including the Pennsylvania Environmental Council, Environmental Defense Fund, Nature Conservancy, and Clean Air Task Force, support SB 831. A second group, including Better Path Coalition, 350 Pittsburgh, 412 Justice, the Center for Coalfield Justice, and the Clean Air Council, are opposed.
Now that the bill is signed into law, the group opposed is pledging to go back to Democrat legislators and try to get them to overturn the new law. Since Republicans still control the Senate, it’s all but impossible.
Environmental Health News has the news:
On July 17, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro signed into law a carbon capture and storage bill that creates a legal framework for climate-warming carbon emissions captured from burning fossil fuels to be injected underground and stored indefinitely to prevent them from escaping into the atmosphere.
The bill is controversial because carbon capture and storage technology is still new and scientific researchers have unanswered questions about whether it’s a viable climate solution and whether it will pose health and safety risks to communities.
A handful of environmental advocacy groups supported the bill, including the Clean Air Task Force, which said in a statement that carbon capture and storage technologies will “play a role in decarbonizing the industrial and power sectors of the commonwealth’s energy economy.”
However, around 45 environmental advocacy groups wrote letters urging the Pennsylvania state legislature and Gov. Shapiro not to pass the bill. Those groups have spoken out against the new law, saying in a statement that it guarantees “Pennsylvania will not be part of any climate solution.”
“Governor Shapiro should be ashamed of signing a bill that threatens the public and our environment with the dangers of carbon capture and storage, all for the benefit of special interests, namely the fracking industry,” Tracy Carluccio, deputy director of the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, said in a statement. “This is a terrible day for the Commonwealth and we’ll experience the harms far into our future.”
The groups also expressed concern about the unusual way the bill moved through the legislature. In the state House, the bill was never referred to the House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee, but instead went through the Consumer Protection, Technology and Utilities Committee and was advanced without discussion.
As a result, “there were no hearings or discussions,” said Karen Feridun, co-founder of the Better Path Coalition, a Pennsylvania-based environmental advocacy group. “In the end, an unproven, failed technology was deemed to be in the public interest.”
The new law will pave the way for two proposed, federally-funded hydrogen hubs in Pennsylvania that will rely on carbon capture and storage. (1)
The prime sponsor of the new law is State Sen. Gene Yaw. He issued this victory lap press release yesterday:
Legislation to establish the legal and regulatory framework for potential carbon dioxide capture, utilization, and sequestration (CCUS) in Pennsylvania was signed into law earlier this week by Gov. Josh Shapiro, according to Sen. Gene Yaw (R-23), sponsor of the measure.
Senate Bill 831, now Act 87 of 2024, was overwhelmingly approved by a bipartisan majority in both the Senate and the House of Representatives.
“This legislation is a proactive step to secure Pennsylvania’s future as a hub for carbon capture and sequestration,” Yaw said. “It’s a pragmatic solution to a problem that we all want to solve – reducing our carbon emissions without crippling the reliability of our existing power grid. I’m grateful to my colleagues in the legislature and the governor for their support in getting this across the finish line.”
Previously, only the Federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) claimed authority for CCUS, a process that removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere emitted from industrial sites for reuse or storage underground. The Great Plains Institute, using data from a 2009 Department of Conservation and Natural Resources report, estimates the state could store about 2.4 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide underground. This is equivalent to the level of greenhouse gases emitted from 517 million gas-powered passenger vehicles annually, according to the EPA.
Yaw noted the legislation received support from the Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry, as well as the Greater Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce. It is also supported by the Pennsylvania State Building and Construction Trades Council, the Allegheny-Fayette County Labor Council, the Pittsburgh Regional Building Trades Council, the AFL-CIO and numerous other labor and environmental groups and industry representatives.
“Carbon capture technology has the potential to create a significant number of good paying jobs in the construction industry while simultaneously creating family-sustaining permanent jobs for the citizens of our commonwealth,” Robert Bair, Pennsylvania State Building and Construction Trades Council president, said. (2)
The anti group Clean Air Task Force supported SB 831 (now Act 87) and issued this press release to celebrate Gov. Shapiro signing it into law:
Today, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro signed a groundbreaking carbon capture and storage (CCS) bill into law that will bolster the commonwealth’s efforts to decarbonize power and industrial sectors while ensuring safe and permanent storage of carbon dioxide (CO2).
“Pennsylvania is a longstanding energy leader, a legacy it is carrying forward into the clean energy transition. CCS technologies will need to play a role in decarbonizing the industrial and power sectors of the commonwealth’s energy economy, and this legislation allows carbon capture projects to move forward with key measures in place,” said John Carlson, Senior Northeast Regional Policy Manager at CATF Action. “We applaud Pennsylvania’s leadership with this law and anticipate it creating robust in-state economic activity and jobs for our union workers who already have the relevant skills to build these projects.”
The bill was introduced by Senator Gene Yaw (R) and strengthened by the leadership of Chairman Robert Matzie (D) and numerous stakeholders across the state. It enhances landowner rights and empowers the Department of Environmental Protection to require additional analysis for permitting decisions that may affect environmental justice communities. It also mandates seismic activity monitoring to ensure the safe and permanent geologic storage of CO2 and addresses long-term liability concerns by setting a default 50-year period for monitoring and accountability. This strong regulatory framework helps enable Governor Shapiro’s PRESS proposal to reform the Alternate Energy Portfolio Standards Act (AEPS) and incorporate a slew of low-carbon technologies.
“The passage of this bill marks a significant step forward in efforts to decarbonize the industrial sector, which is a major source of carbon pollution in Pennsylvania,” said Sam Bailey, Appalachian Regional Hubs Manager at Clean Air Task Force. “Carbon capture and storage is a cost-reasonable, commercially available solution and supports a range of other efforts to decarbonize the commonwealth’s economy, including the Appalachian Regional Clean Hydrogen Hub (ARCH2). Pennsylvania’s continued interest in the subsurface and further action on geologic characterization is key to enabling in-state capture and storage of carbon dioxide. We look forward to continuing to work with stakeholders to ensure all Pennsylvanians fully realize the benefits of the bill.”
CATF, alongside the Pennsylvania Environmental Council (PEC), Environmental Defense Fund, and The Nature Conservancy, sent a letter of support for the bill (SB 831) as amended by the House.
CATF also recently released a report to better understand CCS prospects in Pennsylvania. The analysis found that while CCS can achieve significant emissions reductions across sectors and there are opportunities for geologic storage, more characterization efforts, such as drilling new test wells, are needed. (3)
The super-radicalized MoveOn.org (petition drive by a bunch of anti groups) is bitter and says the left will now go back to the legislature to try and overturn SB 831/Act 87:
Senator Yaw’s Carbon Capture and Storage bill, SB 831, is a profoundly consequential piece of legislation whose adverse impacts cannot be overstated. Governor Shapiro should not have signed it into law. Now the legislature must repeal it.
Declaring a nonexistent technology to be in the public interest defies logic, yet that is what SB 831 does. Billions of dollars have been spent on Carbon Capture and Storage demonstration projects since the Obama administration. None has succeeded.
Carbon Capture has been used for Enhanced Oil Recovery for decades. Storing CO2 was never the objective. As we have cited in our statements to you and the legislature, Stephen Rassenfoss wrote in the Journal of Petroleum Engineering that “While a lot has been learned from EOR (enhanced oil recovery), there may well be significant differences between cycling just enough gas through a reservoir to increase production and injecting as much gas as possible for permanent storage, often in unfamiliar sorts of formations.” (emphasis added)
The bill strips Pennsylvania landowners of their subsurface property rights, shifts liability to the state, and exposes everyone to a new and very dangerous generation of fossil fuel infrastructure. Senator Yaw calls the bill “a proactive step to secure Pennsylvania’s future as a hub for carbon capture and sequestration.” How can such extreme measures taken to the detriment of the people be considered a proactive step for anyone but the parties that will profit from it?
The bill never had a hearing, nor was it referred to the House Environmental Resources and Energy committee. Instead, it was moved quickly through both the Consumer Protection and Appropriation committees without discussion. Representative Matzie attempted to school his colleagues during the floor debate. He misrepresented Senator Yaw’s description of the bill by framing it instead as a way to ensure that the state has control over a technology whose coming is an inevitability.
A state that is taking control does not violate landowners’ property rights, nor burden taxpayers with liability, nor expose communities to dangerous fossil fuel infrastructure, nor put this massive responsibility on an already overburdened regulatory agency with a history of failing to protect the environment and Pennsylvanians from this industry. Carbon Capture and Storage is only unavoidable if our government lacks the courage to avoid it.
SB 831 should not have been enacted for the sake of the Commonwealth and the people who depend on you to make the courageous choice to protect them.
Why is this important?
Minutes after we started this petition yesterday afternoon, Governor Shapiro signed the bill. Now it is up to the legislature to repeal it.
Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is an unproven technology that has never worked. Naomi Oreskes, best known as the co-author of Merchants of Doubt, wrote in an essay in Scientific American in March that she is among geologists who believe that long term CO2 storage could be achieved, but that its success relies on identifying sites where CO2 will remain sequestered. “But site characterization takes time that we don’t have,” she says. She points out that billions were spent over two decades to evaluate Yucca Mountain as a site for nuclear waste disposal before the proposal failed. Identifying sequestration sites is just as challenging.
For years, we were told that Pennsylvania’s geology was not suited to injection wells, the wells used for underground storage. Our geology hasn’t changed, yet we’ve seen a huge increase in injection well projects, most of them Class II wells used for oil & gas waste. CCS requires its own class of well the EPA calls Class VI injection wells. Identifying sites for those wells is particularly challenging in Pennsylvania, not just because of our geology, but because the CCS involves injecting CO2 into pore space below a cap rock, or the impermeable rock, that will keep CO2 from leaking. The Marcellus would be the likely cap rock, but its integrity is in question because of decades of drilling and fracking and because there are hundreds of thousands of abandoned wells in the Marcellus. Does that disqualify the Marcellus from being a suitable cap rock? Does the corrosive effect of the CO2 compromise the cap rock? What does permanent, as in permanent sequestration, mean?
Scientists are still trying to answer these questions and many others. If scientists don’t know the answers, our state legislators don’t know them either. That didn’t stop them from passing the bill without any hearings or discussion and without referring it to the House Environmental Resources and Energy Committee.
The scientific and technological unknowns are concerning enough, but Yaw’s bill takes aim at the public by imposing a form of subsurface eminent domain that bars people from saying no to injection into their pore space if enough neighbors say yes. It then shifts liability from the industry to the state so the taxpayers are left holding the bag when something goes wrong. And it exposes communities to dangerous Class VI wells and the CO2 pipelines that would deliver the CO2 to the site.
The only ones who benefit from SB 831 are those who will profit from using PA as a CO2 waste dump. The rest of us have everything to lose. CCS is one of the false climate solutions that allows the fossil fuel industry to continue doing business as usual, but it’s also the technology that turns gray hydrogen blue. The blue hydrogen hubs proposed for Pennsylvania use methane as a feedstock to produce the hydrogen. That means more drilling and fracking, more harms to our communities, and more climate-killing methane leaks.
Governor Shapiro failed to protect Pennsylvania. It’s up to the legislature now.
Editor’s Note: I don’t think we need carbon capture, for reasons I expressed here, but it is clearly intended to facilitate natural gas development and Gene Yaw deserves much praise. The new law also serves to expose the absolute hollowness of supposed anti concerns about carbon and climate change.
Let me also point out the antis on this legislation are funded by Pennsylvania’s elites; the Heinz and Haas families out of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, respectively. They do so through the Heinz Endowments and the William Penn Foundation.
The fact Shapiro felt comfortable rejecting the pleas of their shills tells two things.
First, these two gentry class outfits have apparently lost some clout if they couldn’t intimidate Josh Shapiro into vetoing this legislation.
Secondly, Josh Shapiro is working hard to get on the Biden replacement ticket either as the nominee for President or Vice-President, and he wants to look moderate. He's anything but, of course (he sued the Little Sisters of the Poor as Attorney General), but he knows his politics.
#Yaw #CarbonStorage #Climate #NaturalGas #CCS
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Thanks for bringing this out!
CCS is great for enhanced oil recovery, and is supported by the Feds via our tax dollars. 80 % of CO2 generated or trapped is used to enhance oil recovery.
https://tucoschild.substack.com/p/carbon-capture-green-grift-and-taxpayers