Bloomberg is reporting that the overhyped carbon capture project known as Petra Nova may be coming back online. The Texas facility, touted as the ‘world’s largest carbon capture’ project, closed in 2020, after repeated failures.
Food & Water Watch Policy Director Jim Walsh issued the following statement in response:
“Petra Nova was the perfect illustration of the problems with so-called carbon capture: It was costly, wildly overhyped, and ultimately failed to produce meaningful results. Even if it worked as designed, it removed a portion of the carbon pollution at a coal plant, and then re-purposed that carbon to extract more oil out of the ground. This is not successful climate action, it is literally a lifeline for the fossil fuel industry.
“The Inflation Reduction Act promises to supercharge these kinds of carbon capture schemes – but years of evidence and billions of wasted dollars tell us that carbon capture is nothing more than a scam. It is oil drilling masquerading as a climate solution. The answer to climate pollution is to stop creating climate pollution, not to hand over money to corporations for a techno-fix that does not work.”
