“While we appreciate the Environmental Protection Agency’s attempts to curb pollution from power plants, we believe they are on the wrong track by encouraging further subsidies and investments in carbon capture (CCS) technology. Carbon capture on coal-fired power plants has proven to be expensive to install and has fallen short in reaching its goals.
“There is only one coal-fired plant with CCS operating in the world, Saskatchewan’s Boundary Dam Unit 3, and it only captures about half the carbon they projected. The only coal plant with CCS to operate in the United States was Petra Nova on the W.A. Parish coal plant in Texas, which shut down in 2020, but only after it cost $1 billion to build, with $200 million of that in federal subsidies. The Kemper carbon capture project in Mississippi never even went into operation after its projected costs rose to over $7 billion.
“Now looking at these failures, we ask why would the administration choose this costly and unproven technology to curb carbon pollution? Carbon capture technology on coal plants is unlikely to curb carbon emissions, will only pump more federal dollars into the coal industry, cost ratepayers more money on their monthly utility bills, and delay the transition to renewable energy.”
- Lynne Huskinson, Powder River Basin Resource Council Board Member from Gillette, WY
