Policy Push Sees US Poised to Lead on Carbon Tech

Landmark legislation could make the US the undisputed global leader in carbon capture and storage (CCS) and accelerate adoption of CO2-removal technology worldwide. CCS and direct air capture (DAC) were major winners in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), for which final approval is expected soon. It will direct billions of dollars into tax incentives to deploy carbon-removal technologies and fund new research and development projects. The carbon-removal sector has been pleading in recent years for additional policy support to enable it to scale up. Assuming the IRA becomes law, the US industry will have some of the world’s most supportive governmental policies, not to mention more geologic storage capacity than any other single country. Matt Bright, policy manager for carbon capture at the Clean Air Task Force, says the IRA will be “transformative” for the deployment of carbon capture technologies and will have “a profound ripple effect on the rest of the globe.” By demonstrating the viability of carbon removal in the US — economically and technically — and attempting to fast-track innovation, the US can be a model for other countries looking to “seize the opportunity to decarbonize” even hard-to-abate industries like steel and cement, Bright says. Chris Kendall, CEO of CO2-management specialist Denbury, says carbon capture “now has the necessary public policy support to incentivize rapid development of capture projects.”