Louisiana kicks off one of the US’s biggest carbon capture projects yet

A massive effort to capture the pollution causing climate change is marching forward in Louisiana, and it’s It has become a flashpoint in the debate over how to clean up an “energy state”You will find petrochemical and fossil fuel plants all over the place.

Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards is the guest this week Announcement an “unprecedented” collaboration between two oil and gas giants, ExxonMobil and EnLink Midstream, and leading ammonia producer CF Industries. In what they’re calling the “largest-of-its-kind commercial agreement,” the three companies will attempt To capture 2,000,000 tons of carbon dioxide annually, transport it across the state and bury it underground.

Edwards is billing it as a major move toward reaching the state’s goal of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Louisiana is already facing the effects of climate change, as it loses ground to rising sea level and braces for stronger hurricanes each year. But critics of the new carbon capture project say it’s the wrong way to go about preventing more climate-fueled disasters.

“Projects like this serve as a vehicle for greenwash at a massive scale,” says Carroll Muffett, president and CEO of the nonprofit Center for International Environmental Law. “It allows companies who continue to be serious polluters, continue to be contributing significantly to the climate crisis, to present themselves to the public and to regulators as part of the solution.”

CF Industries plans to invest $198.5 million to upgrade its massive ammonia plant in Donaldsonville. This facility should be able capture as much as 2 million metric tonnes of CO2 per year. That’s equivalent to “replacing approximately 700,000 gasoline-powered cars with electric vehicles,” according to CF Industries’ Press release.

The captured CO2 was only a fraction the 10 million metric tons of CO2 the Donaldsonville facility produced during 2019. CF Industries’ ammonia plant is the Louisiana’s largest source of industrial greenhouse gases emissions, pumping out more than 50 percent more CO2 in 2019 than the next biggest source of emissions — ExxonMobil’s Baton Rouge refinery. CF Industries Uses natural gasTo produce ammonia which is a key component of industrial fertilizer. Synthetic fertilizers are a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions that is often overlooked. They account for about As much global emissions as aviation. Public subsidies are being offered to carbon capture and other climate solutions by the public, which is how fossil fuels and chemical fertilizer companies work together. Report Muffett’s organization published earlier this month.

Once CO2 emissions are captured at CF Industries’ Donaldsonville facility, they will need to be transported and stored somewhere to keep them from entering the atmosphere and heating up the planet. The greenhouse gas is supposed to travel about 100 miles via EnLink Midstream’s pipelines to a “125,000-acre secure geologic storage location” that ExxonMobil owns in Vermilion Parish. But piping CO2 across long distances has already Safety concerns raisedOne pipeline containing concentrated CO2 (an asthmatic) FragmentationIt sent many residents of Satartia in Mississippi to the hospital in 2020.

However, US legislators have allocated billions of dollars to this cause. federal funding Tax creditsCarbon capture infrastructure for climate action. Companies like CF Industries and ExxonMobil are clamoring to take advantage, as the new Louisiana project — slated to “start up” by 2025 — shows.

“We’re ready to offer the same service to other large industrial customers in the state of Louisiana and around the world,” Dan Ammann, president of ExxonMobil Low Carbon Solutions, said in the same release. “We’re encouraged by the momentum we see building for projects of this kind.”