Despite the risks, Pennsylvania races into the carbon capture era

After months of debate and negotiations, Gov. Josh Shapiro has signed legislation that will push Pennsylvania to the front line in the effort to slow global warming by capturing climate-altering emissions from power plants and injecting that carbon deep underground. But armed with reports that the fossil fuel industry is vastly overstating the technology’s potential while downplaying its risks, environmentalists are urging the state’s divided legislature to repeal the legislation.

“Declaring a nonexistent technology to be in the public interest defies logic, yet that is what SB 831 does,” wrote the grassroots Better Path Coalition of the bill in a July 16 letter to Shapiro, cosigned by the leaders of 30 organizations and 18 individuals. “The bill strips Pennsylvania landowners of their subsurface property rights, shifts liability to the state, and exposes everyone to a new and very dangerous generation of fossil fuel infrastructure.”

The news site Vox, in partnership with the reporting project Drilled and the Pulitzer Center, called carbon capture “a fake climate solution” and, citing the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2023 report, said the technology, even if deployed at a large scale, would eliminate just 2.4% of global carbon emissions by 2030. The IPCC report has stated that carbon capture is expensive, often untested, and has never been used at a large scale — and internal documents show that Exxon agrees with this pessimistic assessment despite publicly embracing the technology.

The Pennsylvania bill lays out a framework for regulating the emerging industry as part of a step toward securing for the state sole authority over the permitting of carbon dioxide injection wells within the commonwealth from the federal Environmental Protection Agency. In its original form, the bill would have required carbon dioxide storage operators to obtain consent from just 60% of the landowners whose property sits atop an underground storage field. It also would have allowed operators to cede liability for their wells to state regulators 10 years after carbon dioxide injections have ceased. Both provisions inflamed environmentalists.

During negotiations this summer, legislators amended the notification level to 75%, putting it on par with nearby West Virginia. The 60% threshold would have been among the lowest notification levels in the country, leaving many landowners without a voice when carbon is buried under their property. The amended bill also increased the liability transfer period for storage fields to the state to 50 years. Environmentalists complained that the 10-year threshold would make careful and routine maintenance of storage fields less likely. Legislators did, however, add a vague loophole — “or until an approved alternative period of time.”

Speaking in opposition to the bill on the Senate floor, State Sen. Katie Muth said the provision “effectively [reduces] the amount of time to an unstated minimum,” and said the amendment, made by the Democratic-led House, “did nothing to address environmental and climate concerns, nor protect Pennsylvanians and their private property rights.” The amended bill also added a provision to account for environmental justice concerns — or, the extent to which a marginalized community is overburdened by industry — in permitting decisions.

The bill was the last of a slew of stand-alone bills to advance to the governor’s desk as state legislators passed a $47.6 billion budget package for the 2024-2025 fiscal year, 11 days after their legally mandated June 30 deadline. Though the state budget process is first and foremost one to determine government spending for the upcoming fiscal year, it’s also one in which related legislation is advanced — bargaining chips that top lawmakers use to negotiate, mostly in secret, last-minute deals.

The final deal included a smattering of environmental wins:

“While there is more work left to do, the bipartisan deal forged in Harrisburg helps move Pennsylvania toward a clean energy future while also creating union jobs and protecting our rivers, streams and open space,” Conservation Voters of Pennsylvania executive director Molly Parzen said in a statement.

The final deal also included a handful of climate concessions:

The governor’s proposed clean energy plans, the Pennsylvania Climate Emissions Reduction Act and the Pennsylvania Reliable Energy Sustainability Standard, which would have created a carbon cap-and-trade program and heightened renewable energy standards, did not advance amid budget negotiations. Nor did the following:

“Honestly, I’m not really feeling great” about the budget deal, said Democratic Rep. Greg Vitali, who authored the legislation limiting tax credits for Bitcoin mines last year. Vitali had spoken against Senate Bill 831 on the House floor in the final hours of budget proceedings, calling carbon capture “enormously expensive” and “an unproven technology.”

He was joined by his Republican counterpart on the key Environmental Resources and Energy Committee, Martin Causer, who has historically voted in support of fossil fuel related legislation, but argued that S.B. 831 was “not ready for prime time.”

“I think the bill should have been considered in the Environmental Resources and Energy Committee first and foremost,” Causer said.

Indeed, after its passage by the Senate in April, S.B. 831 was sent to the House Consumer Protection, Technology and Utilities Committee, rather than Environmental Resources and Energy, the committee by which it had been considered in the Senate. (Bills typically go through the same committee in each chamber before reaching their respective floors.)

On June 25, the House Consumer Protection, Technology and Utilities Committee passed the bill with amendments, unanimously and without debate, in a meeting that lasted less than five minutes. The vote was met with cheers and laughter from lawmakers and lobbyists alike as the meeting adjourned in record time.

The amended bill calmed some nerves. But environmentalists such as Karen Feridun, cofounder of the Better Path Coalition, remained concerned. “SB 831 is a bad bill that all the amendments in the world won’t improve,” the Better Path Coalition tweeted on July 8. Feridun and other environmentalists said they fear the path carbon dioxide follows underground could contaminate nearby water wells or trigger explosions. In a letter sent to House leadership in late June, a group of nearly 40 people expressed dissatisfaction with the bill as it was voted on by the House committee without a public hearing.

Feridun compares the ushering in of carbon capture to the early days of fracking and the natural gas boom, when legislators, too, walked into a new technology about which there was little information.

“Tonight, the legislature ignored the lesson of fracking,” she said in a statement sent after the House floor vote. “So, here we go again.”