A new report claims that 45Q federal tax credits for carbon capture & storage (CCS) can have a significant impact on CO2 emissions reductions by 2030. This is false and CCS is a fraud. The math is simple.

Here’s what you need to know and out this report and CCS.

The report claims:

Last year, manmade emissions of greenhouse gases were equivalent to about 55 BILLION tons of CO2. Emissions are only going north from there. Even if 49 MILLION tons of CO2 could be stored underground, that amount is less than 0.1% of manmade emissions. That will obviously have no impact on climate (even if you believe climate science hysteria).

That means taxpayers are being defrauded since they are paying for the CCS via subsidies.

But there is perhaps even a bigger fraud occurring.

From the report:

When utilities think of CCS, they think of enhanced oil recovery (EOR). While we are all in favor of EOR because it is an economic way to get at hard-to-produce oil, EOR as CCS is pure fraud.

Even if the stored CO2 remains underground, the storage is a fail since the emissions from produced oil when it is burned exceed the CO2 stored — every 1 ton of CO2 stored produces oil that when burned will emit as much as 1.2 tons of CO2. The math is pretty simple.

Finally, as the late-University of Houston petroleum engineer Dr. Michael Economides pointed out, utility-scale CCS is a physical, economic and political impossibility.

The CCS fantasy survives for several reasons.

CCS is code for “no coal.” Coal-haters would like nothing better than to make CCS a condition of burning coal — like the Obama EPA tried to do. Mandatory CCS is just too expensive.

Utilities are happy to double dip by taking taxpayer subsidies while being paid by oil producers for trivial amounts of CO2.

Oil companies — like ExxonMobil — like to greenwash themselves with the CCS fantasy.

CO2 is plant food. Great for life on the planet. Cheap and reliable coal-provided electricity is also great for life on the planet. Utility scale CCS is a fraud.