Philanthropy is playing “catch-up” on providing the resources necessary to address the climate crisis, as climate funding accounted for less than 2% of global philanthropic giving in 2021. In an effort to speed this investment, some climate philanthropists are choosing to advance the deployment of CCS, delaying our transition away from fossil fuels. For three fundamental reasons, donors should reject support for CCS, and instead, prioritize funding for effective, reparative solutions that are bringing about a just energy transition.
First, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, CCS is one of the least-effective, most-expensive climate change mitigation options. CCS technologies try to capture carbon dioxide emissions and inject them deep underground in the hope that they’ll be stored “permanently,” or, more likely, used to extract even more oil and gas (a process known as “enhanced oil recovery”).
It has been unsettling to discover, in conversations with some funders who support CCS, a lack of awareness about the technology’s risks to communities and the inadequacies of current regulation to ensure risks are mitigated and that CO2 is permanently stored. A strong regulatory system to govern CCS seems even less likely now in a post-Chevron world. To be considered even a theoretical climate solution, the carbon forced underground would have to be captured and then stored on a permanent basis. Yet, existing government oversight of CCS does nothing to require that storage is permanent (even if this was technically possible, which is unlikely based on the industry’s own long track record of failure to achieve targeted capture rates). To the contrary, the government’s role has been solely focused on handing out billions in tax credits and taxpayer subsidies to oil and gas companies regardless of efficacy in reducing carbon pollution.
These CCS tax credits and subsidies served as a bargaining chip to secure the legislative compromise that advanced the IRA. We won’t debate whether these subsidies were actually necessary to secure a political win on climate legislation, but philanthropy is not obligated to support this compromise by promoting ineffective technologies that advance the interests of the oil and gas industry. Philanthropic dollars are better used investing in solutions that are available and scalable today rather than on technology with a track record of failure.
Indeed, these tax credits and subsidies mean that carbon capture will often increase climate pollution. Using carbon capture to force more oil and gas from old oil fields through enhanced oil recovery, of course, produces even more carbon emissions. Thirteen of 15 operational CCS projects in the U.S. are used to extract more oil and gas, while they capture less than 1% of their carbon emissions. Proponents of CCS projects also use it to justify the development of new fossil fuel infrastructure, creating even more carbon emissions and other hazardous air pollution. Oil and gas companies, for example, are increasingly investing in CCS under the guise of maintaining social license to build and operate new climate-polluting facilities.
The process of carbon capture itself also increases climate pollution. Separating carbon dioxide from the mixed gases, and then compressing it into a fluid for transport, requires enormous amounts of energy. All of the existing CCS projects burn fossil fuels to meet these energy requirements and vent the resulting carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, again producing even more climate pollution as well as cancer-causing air pollution.
Second, philanthropy should reject funding CCS because carbon capture’s inextricable relationship to the fossil fuel industry means it exacerbates generational inequities and imposes disproportionate new harms by exploiting systemic racism and economic disenfranchisement. Carbon capture multiplies and diversifies the harms inflicted on overburdened populations and communities in a variety of ways.
Carbon capture, for example, is linked to the socio-historical legacy of siting, concentrating and clustering polluting industries and technologies in or near economically vulnerable communities. It adds to the generational burdens of pollution sources and transport infrastructure, like pipelines, highways and railroads, following the “path of least resistance.” In many, if not most, locations, CCS creates disproportionate and unequal risk burdens that map closely with community vulnerability, creating environmental “sacrifice zones.”
By way of illustration, it is, of course, no coincidence that the nation’s first near-deadly carbon dioxide pipeline rupture occurred in Satartia, Mississippi, with a population of 59% Black residents, where Denbury, Inc. operates a CO2 pipelines network that serves enhanced oil recovery operations. Carbon dioxide is a dangerous toxin that asphyxiates its victims. At least 45 people were hospitalized in Satartia, where some residents lay shaking on the ground, unable to breathe while emergency vehicles — disabled by the lack of oxygen — struggled to reach them.
In April, when a high-pressure carbon dioxide pipeline in Sulphur, Louisiana, ruptured, residents only found out about a shelter-in-place order through social media. It took almost two hours for the pipeline operator to show up. The near miss put in stark relief the lack of safety preparedness plans for a region that could soon see thousands of miles of CO2 pipelines snaking through communities, should developers get their way.
The Biden administration advertises carbon capture to environmental justice communities under the banner of a Justice40 priority program — with “community benefits programs” and community benefits agreements as the vehicle for delivering “environmental, energy and climate justice.” In reality, these communities are sacrificed once again, while fossil fuel companies are benefiting from the greenwashed label of carbon capture (and billions in taxpayer subsidies).
Third, given philanthropy’s unique and critical role, our climate investments must change. Our philanthropic investments on climate should not lead to increased carbon emissions and cannot perpetuate environmental injustice. And yet climate philanthropy’s support for the Biden administration’s climate agenda has led to massive subsidies for carbon capture. Funding is now needed to redress this mistake — intentional or not — and to support challenges at each stage of a carbon capture project. Given the technical, economic and environmental justice implications of advancing carbon capture, the philanthropic community should prioritize operational support for communities and groups opposing these projects.
Many organizations opposed to carbon capture projects and the associated build-out of even more fossil fuel infrastructure need general operating support to expand their existing advocacy campaigns to include making the case against carbon capture. A growing number of organizations in the Gulf South, California, the Ohio River Valley, the Mountain West and the Midwest are joining forces to push back. National and local-level coordination of existing campaigns and coalition infrastructure is needed to build consensus for a shared vision and broad campaign goals, while respecting place-based campaigns tailored to the unique community context and landscape confronting carbon capture proposals.
Philanthropic leaders have crucial choices to make about investing in carbon capture. Those choices reflect the power, privilege and possibilities at their disposal for speeding the transition toward a more sustainable and equitable future. In the words of the celebrated poet Amanda Gorman: “Change is made of choices, and choices are made of character.” We’re looking to philanthropy to make the right choice and reject carbon capture.
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Robert D. Bullard, Ph.D. is founding director of the Bullard Center for Environmental and Climate Justice and distinguished professor of urban planning and environmental policy at Texas Southern University. Professor Bullard is often called the “father of environmental justice.” He is a founding member of the Science Roundtable on Carbon Capture.
Charles F. Harvey, Ph.D. is a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Harvey has extensive experience with both carbon dioxide capture/storage engineering and the realization that carbon capture cannot reduce carbon dioxide enough to reduce global warming. He is a founding member of the Science Roundtable on Carbon Capture.
Bakeyah S. Nelson, Ph.D. is a senior advisor with the Funder Collaborative on Oil and Gas, a project of the Rockefeller Family Fund, and a 2023 Public Voices Fellow on the Climate Crisis with The OpEd Project, in partnership with the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.
