Trump’s Happy Accident is Good for Clean Energy
Good Things Can Happen By Accident
It was clearly done as a “fuck you” to the clean energy movement, but Trump accidentally did something good.
Let me explain …
A few days ago, the Trump administration canceled $3.7 billion in funding for carbon capture and “other emissions-reduction technologies.” I’m not sure what those other technologies are, but I’m glad to see carbon capture funding eliminated as it essentially makes fossil fuels more expensive in an effort to make them cleaner. It’s a fool’s errand.
This would be like going to Costco to buy a 20-pound box of spicy pretzels and being given two choices: One box that had urine in it, but the urine was removed before they put it on the shelf, and the other box never had urine in it. Worth noting: the box of pretzels absent said urine is cheaper than the pretzels that were previously swimming in peepee.
Which would you choose?
Clearly you’re not going to buy the pretzels that were once covered in urine, especially when the non-urine pretzels are cheaper.
OK, maybe this analogy is a bit of a stretch, and fairly unsophisticated, but the reality is that it’s far more efficient and far less costly to expand renewable energy and storage capacity than it is to integrate carbon capture into an industry that is in the beginning stages of obsolescence.
So indeed, funding it with tax dollars should piss everyone off. Not just annoying treehuggers like me. Although it’s not just U.S. taxpayers ponying up billions for this greenwashing scam.
Globally, about $30 billion of filthy lucre has been funneled into various carbon capture projects that have never worked.
Analyst Lorne Stockman opined on this in a feature entitled: Carbon capture has a 50-year record of failure. Why are governments throwing billions of dollars at it? He writes …
Despite 50 years of development and an estimated $83 billion in investments since the 1990s, carbon capture has failed to make a dent in carbon emissions. Carbon capture projects consistently fail, overspend, or underperform.
In the United States, where most carbon capture projects operate with the help of major federal subsidies, 80% of projects fail due to technical issues, over-expenditure, and a lack of financial investment returns. Even if carbon capture functioned as planned, the projects currently operating globally would only capture 0.1% of global emissions. However, many of these projects not only consistently operate below capacity but are predominantly used to boost oil and gas production through enhanced oil recovery.
Despite this, a tsunami of new carbon capture projects are underway, undermining the imperative to justly and urgently phase out fossil fuels. This new wave is only made possible with hundreds of billions of dollars of public money offered by governments through policies announced since 2020.
So yeah, I’m good with Trump canceling these projects. Even if he did do it just to spite the clean energy movement.
I suppose good things can sometimes happen by accident.
Some of the companies that will likely lose out on their carbon capture funding include: PPL (NYSE: PPL), ExxonMobil (NYSE: XOM), and Calpine (private).
What I’m reading …
Carbon capture plan is a colossal waste of money: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/oct/15/carbon-capture-plan-is-a-colossal-waste-of-money
The overall cost of investing in carbon capture and removal is about 9-12 times higher than the cost of switching to 100% renewable energy: https://environmentamerica.org/center/updates/new-study-finds-carbon-capture-ineffective-and-costly-compared-to-investing-in-renewable-energy/
The opportunity costs of carbon capture: https://sustainability.stanford.edu/news/opportunity-costs-carbon-capture