The outcome of four government-funded pilot projects could be crucial in developing technologies for Big Oil to reduce its carbon footprint and help the Biden- administration’s goal of a net-zero emissions economy by 2050. The Energy Department’s Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED) in February allocated $304 million in taxpayer funds to new technologies designed to capture carbon dioxide emissions at power and industrial sites in Kentucky, Texas, Wyoming and Mississippi.
It is part of a larger $12 billion effort via the 2021 infrastructure bill to develop carbon-reducing technology across the U.S. Should the pilot projects be successful, more than 500,000 metric tons of CO2 emissions could be prevented from being released into the atmosphere each year – an amount equivalent to the combined annual emissions of more than 110,000 gasoline-powered cars, the OCED says. COMPANIES TOUT ‘NET-ZERO’ CLIMATE TARGETS, BUT FEW HAVE CREDIBLE PLANS, REPORT FINDS Given that the power and industrial sectors account for roughly half of U.S. carbon emissions, a shift to capture and storage in oil production could see those emissions dramatically slashed. But the road to embracing carbon capture and storage technology is fraught with challenges given it is expensive and logistically complex. It is also frowned upon by some climate change advocates who want to see coal, oil and gas energy phased out and eventually stopped altogethe