Is carbon capture viable? The EPA is asking power plants for proof.

For years, fossil fuel companies and utilities have touted carbon capture and storage, or CCS, as a way to cut climate pollution from the power sector. Now, federal regulators are asking them to walk the walk.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, on Thursday proposed a new rule to nearly eliminate climate pollution from the nation’s coal- and natural gas-fired power plants by 2040. In contrast to previously proposed regulations that required “generation-shifting” — forcing utility companies to replace their fossil fuel-fired power generators with renewables, a strategy that the Supreme Court shot down last summer — the new proposal focuses on what’s achievable using technologies like carbon capture and storage, or CCS.

At least, they focus on what’s theoretically achievable based on optimistic projections from CCS’s proponents. Although the EPA says CCS technology is “adequately demonstrated” and “highly cost-effective,” experts are deeply skeptical that it can deliver on its promised emissions reductions. In the end, some told Grist that fossil fuel power plants could find it more economical to shut down and switch to renewable energy.

“The EPA is calling the bluff on the power industry,” said Charles Harvey, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “There have been so many arguments that they’ve made in favor of CCS as a mature technology. … Now the EPA is saying ‘OK, you have to do it,’ and I don’t think they really can.”

To be clear, EPA’s proposed standards don’t mandate a specific emissions reduction strategy, since that was deemed beyond the EPA’s authority by the Supreme Court. Instead, the agency put forward overall pollution caps, with different limits depending on the fuel facilities use (e.g., coal or natural gas), how frequently they run, and how long they plan to remain in operation. Starting in 2030, the rule would require almost all fossil fuel power plants to begin driving down their emissions, with the most stringent requirements for coal-fired power plants and the most frequently used natural gas plants.

According to the EPA, its proposed rules would cut 617 million metric tons of CO2 emissions through 2042 — an amount equal to about 40 percent of the power sector’s emissions in 2022. The agency highlights two technology-based “pathways” that power plants could choose: one based on CCS, which uses chemical reactions to strip carbon out of the emissions that come out of a facility’s smokestacks, and the other involving hydrogen, which can be blended with natural gas to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Industry groups have promised much from CCS, saying that it can — or will — be capable of capturing 90 percent of a power plant’s greenhouse gas emissions, and the EPA’s 680-page proposed rulemaking seems to take those promises at face value. The document cites a long history of research into the technology, as well as declining costs for its deployment, thanks to unprecedented funding for CCS included in the Biden administration’s 2022 climate spending law.

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