Executive Summary
- Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is one of the latest methods climate activists are using to combat greenhouse gases and achieve “net-zero” carbon dioxide emissions.
- CCS companies capture carbon dioxide emissions at their source, condense them into a liquid-like “supercritical” state, transport supercritical CO2 through pipelines to a storage site, and then inject captured CO2 into underground geologic formations.
- CCS can have dramatically deleterious effects upon public health and the environment, especially in the transport and storage phases.
- CCS is enormously expensive and propped up by vast amounts of government funding and coercive mechanisms designed to control the private sector, such as carbon credit markets and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) metrics.
- CCS projects are proliferating rapidly, with hundreds in operation or development around the globe, including more than 100 in the United States.
- One of the largest problems caused by CCS is the abrogation of private property rights.
- Government-funded private CCS companies—such as Summit Carbon Solutions—are using eminent domain to seize privately held land to transport and store captured carbon dioxide, on the basis that they are common carriers that serve the public good.
- Despite their claims, CCS companies are not common carriers, and should not be given the ability to seize private property in service of their own profits.
- CCS can and should be opposed at both the state and federal levels of government, such as by explicitly barring CCS companies from being able to use eminent domain, enacting stricter common carrier laws, deregulating carbon dioxide emissions, and cutting off federal funding for CCS projects.
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