Californians are well aware by now that the world is in the thralls of climate change. The state feels the effects often—every year we deal with fires, earthquakes, and dramatic natural disasters that devastate community after community. And what can we do? The California state government says that we need to cut back on carbon emissions, and they’re willing to invest serious money to do so.
The California Climate Commitment, signed by Governor Newsom, commits California to invest $54 billion into fighting climate change. It also introduces measures that will reduce dependency on fossil fuel use and create new technologies to help make clean energy. Part of this commitment is AB 1757, a bill that calls for the effective and achievable removal of carbon from the environment. Coupled with bills SB 905 and SB 1314, this legislation paves the way for carbon capture and storage (CCS) to come to California.
Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is a recently developed method of tackling global warming by helping to eliminate carbon emissions from power generation or other industrial activities. It’s a three-step process involving capturing carbon emissions, transporting them, and then permanently storing them deep underground. The underground storage facilities are generally saline reservoirs around 1.6 km (or 1 mile) underground, where carbon emissions will remain permanently.
However, critics argue that CCS is expensive, largely unproven, and takes away attention from the urgent need to scale up renewable energy. They contend that the technology provides political cover for fossil fuel companies by allowing business-as-usual operations as long as those interests claim they are working towards a sustainable future, while CCS is really just a way to justify continued pollution. From this perspective, CCS is less an actual climate solution and more a mechanism for delaying necessary change.
This tension reflects a broader divide between environmental justice advocates, who prioritize systemic change and equitable outcomes, and techno-optimists, who seek to solve climate challenges through innovation and adaptation of existing systems. CCS technology requires significant energy to operate, and often that energy itself is derived from fossil fuels. Critics argue that it’s not even really that effective because while it claims to eliminate emissions, it also requires fossil fuels to operate, creating an odd balancing act. Critics have a point—in Canada, the seven CCS projects currently operating capture only 0.05% of national emissions and have cost at least 16.5 billion CAD government dollars.
But, advocates argue that it is in fact a viable emissions reduction strategy that will see costs decrease over time as the technology becomes more and more popular. It has been hailed as a bridge technology just as many times as it has been cursed as a delay tactic. Supporters argue that CCS provides an essential short-term solution as the energy grid transitions away from fossil fuels without having to completely shut down or rebuild existing power plants.
In the long run, investing now could actually save lots of money by just adding to existing infrastructure. In heavy industry sectors, like power generation or cement-making, CCS may be one of the few viable paths to achieving carbon neutrality because so far these processes require pollution. Given that renewable energy systems are not yet fully capable of powering the grid alone, CCS offers a technological solution that balances decarbonization with reliability. Advocates also frame CCS within the circular economy model, and major institutions like the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) consider it indispensable for meeting the targets of the Paris Agreement.
Now, Carbon Capture is starting to appear in California. The passage of the California Climate Commitment and the following passages of the bills SB 905, SB 1314, and AB 1757 made CCS legal and have taken the first step in paving the way for future deployment. Companies like California Resources Corporation (CRC) and Calpine Corporation are spearheading carbon capture projects in the Central and Sacramento Valleys.
CRC is bringing Carbon Capture to Kern County in one of the most publicized proposals in California. Kern County is the home of the Elks Oil and Gas Field, a massive 550-MW natural gas fired power plant. It is one of the many fossil fuel burning power plants in the Central Valley. CRC hopes that the project will lay the groundwork for more CCS projects in California which will help the state reach its 2045 climate goals.
There is quite a mixed reaction from locals regarding CCS in Kern County. Local businesses and PACs have invested in the technology and in the CRC, signaling support for new infrastructure that will help to preserve fossil fuels. Some hope that added industry will keep adding jobs in the industrial sector, an economic sector that Kern relies on. However, local environmental justice groups, such as Roots of Resilience and Central California Environmental Justice Network (CCEJN) oppose the technology for the potential harm it can cause local communities. Some of these groups have even gone so far as to sue Kern County for approving CCS projects in the area.
Up a little further north in the Northern Sacramento Valley, Calpine is bringing CCS to Sutter County. The region is largely agricultural, with limited fossil fuel infrastructure but increasing interest in clean energy innovation. Calpine Corporation’s Sutter Energy Center Decarbonization project aims to store captured CO2 from the power plant as it operates. Notably, the CCS project in Sutter County has not received as much attention as the one in Kern County. Unlike in Kern, there is no strong environmental justice movement in the county opposing the project and minimal media attention to CCS. When mentioned in local outlets like the Chico Enterprise-Record, CCS is framed as a very niche project or even a curiosity rather than a hugely divisive environmental issue.
CCS technology is perhaps the greatest moral gray area in environmental politics at the moment. On the one hand, it could offer a very reasonable and realistic solution to the climate crisis. At this point, renewable energy alone cannot power the grid based on expenses and output. Investing in CCS tech is expensive, but it may offer a solution to decreasing carbon output while also continuing to produce enough energy to realistically support the energy grid.
Some critics doubt about the effectiveness of the process, as it is still working with fossil fuels. Other opposition arises because, as stated earlier, this process is incredibly expensive. These concerns are valid, but our need to mitigate the effects of pollution supersede the costs. Bottom line is, we need something. The sad reality is that it’s highly unlikely that as a society we will completely abandon fossil fuels and other carbon-emitting means of energy production. It’s also highly unlikely that we will be able to support the grid with renewable energy in time to fulfill the California Climate Commitment. This type of technology offers fossil fuel interests and environmental activists a unique moment to work together to come up with something that benefits them both—a tech that we can still use for energy production that might also be helpful to the environment. And as for investment and marketability, the government and other companies have obviously decided that the future is worth it.
Featured image source: Energy Monitor
