CHEYENNE, Wyo. — Putting carbon dioxide from power plants and industrial facilities underground where it won’t contribute to global warming could see less federal support and enthusiasm under President Donald Trump. But experts and industry advocates doubt demand for the technology will go away as long as utilities face state-level climate change goals.
Trump has vowed to “drill, baby, drill” for fossil fuels and ordered the U.S. to withdraw from the landmark Paris agreement to try to limit Earth’s warming. Meanwhile, his new energy secretary, Chris Wright, has vowed to prioritize “affordable, reliable and secure energy” in a policy-setting order that criticizes zero-carbon goals and makes no mention of carbon capture.
Carbon capture’s doubters include both conservative policy organizations and environmental groups. Even so, its outlook in the U.S. isn’t all bleak.
Carbon capture got a $12 billion boost under former President Joe Biden through increased tax incentives and funding through the Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. With projects scattered nationwide, including dozens in Republican states, there may be less appetite to include them in budget cuts, said analyst Rohan Dighe with the energy and resources research firm Wood Mackenzie.
But a broader trend away from “environmental, social and governance” investing could sap momentum for carbon capture, Dighe wrote in an email.
“So even absent government rollback of funding, we could see fewer project announcements and movements due to lower interest in decarbonizing,” Dighe wrote.
Idea backed in Wyoming
Carbon capture involves separating carbon dioxide from the emissions of power plants and other industrial facilities and pumping it underground. The goal can be either to store it permanently so it doesn’t contribute to climate change, or to pressurize an oilfield to help increase production.
Carbon capture has deep support in Republican Wyoming, home to projects including an ExxonMobil plant that separates CO2 from sour gas wells for use in aging oilfields and another experimenting with putting power plant CO2 underground.
In 2021, Republican Gov. Mark Gordon pledged to make the sparsely populated state — which exports 12 times more energy than it consumes — not just carbon neutral but “carbon negative.”
Carbon capture features prominently in that plan. In 2020, Wyoming — which has contributed tens of millions of dollars for a carbon-capture research facility at an operating power plant — became one of the first states to regulate underground carbon dioxide injection itself rather than through the EPA. That list now also includes Louisiana, North Dakota and West Virginia.
But there’s also growing skepticism in Wyoming, the nation’s top coal producer. With Trump back in office, some question the need for greenhouse gas goals.
One state lawmaker recently proposed legislation titled “Make Carbon Dioxide Great Again” that would back off carbon capture, including a 2020 state law requiring utilities to study how much it would cost to install at the state’s fossil-fuel-fired power plants.
No other lawmakers supported the bill, and it failed.
