Capturing and storing carbon dioxide is also a massive waste of resources and causes other harms
ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, IL (January 22, 2025) – Carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects have become an increasingly popular method by which climate activists pursue their ultimate goal of global “net-zero” carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. A new paper by The Heartland Institute urges policymakers to push back against CCS projects, which often entail the use of eminent domain to seize private property from landowners.
The paper, titled Carbon Capture & Property Rights: There Is No Justification for Using Carbon Capture and Storage Projects to Abrogate Property Rights, begins with a brief background of the chain of events and overarching agenda that has spawned CCS and an explanation of the CCS process. It then covers the significant public health and environmental problems that can be the direct result of CCS projects, as well as the massive public-private partnerships and funding mechanisms that incentivize the proliferation of CCS.
The paper concludes by clarifying how CCS indeed poses an imminent threat to Americans’ fundamental private property rights and providing specific recommendations for state and federal policymakers to protect those rights and push back against the green agenda.
Some of those recommendations from authors Jack McPherrin, H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D., and Daylea DuVall Camp include state policymakers eliminating or mitigating the ability for CCS companies to use eminent domain by addressing common carrier designations, and federal policymakers both ceasing the regulation of CO2 as a harmful pollutant and cutting off funding for CCS projects.
Read the full paper here.
The following statements from climate and energy experts at The Heartland Institute may be used for attribution.
“Efforts to foist carbon capture and storage (CCS) initiatives on the energy sector represent a government-backed boondoggle. CCS is scientifically unjustified because we don’t face a climate crisis, as well as economically harmful by raising energy costs. And, in the grift of all grifts, CCS results in the forced sale of peoples’ property. No one should be forced to allow a CCS pipeline to be built across their land, as it serves no public purpose; rather, it just accrues unjustified profits to politically connected green-energy promoters. Politicians and public utility commissions should act to specifically preclude CCS companies from using eminent domain to violate peoples’ constitutionally guaranteed property rights.”
Director, Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy
The Heartland Institute
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Harold the Organic Chemist Says:
CO2 Does Not Cause Warming Of Air.
Carbon Dioxide Capture And Storage Not Needed.
Shown in the chart (See below) are plots of temperatures at the Furnace Creek weather station in Death Valley from 1922 to 2001. In 1922, the concentration of CO2 in dry air
was 303 ppmv (0.595 g of CO2/cu. m.), and by 2001, it had increased to 371 ppmv
(0.729 g of CO2/cu. m.), but there was no corresponding increase in the temperature of
the air at this arid desert. The reason there was no increase air temperature was quite simple: There is too little CO2 in the air. There is no need to capture CO2.
The empirical temperature data from this remote desert shows that the claim by the IPCC
since 1988 that CO2 is the cause warming of air, and hence global warming, and that it is the control knob of climate change is a lie. The purpose of this lie is to provide the UN the justification to distribute donner funds, via the UNFCCC and UN COP, from the rich countries to poor countries to help the cope with global warming and climate change. At the recent COP29 conference in Baku the poor countries came clamoring not for billions but trillions of funds. The poor countries left the conference empty handed with no pledges of funds from the rich countries.
NB: The chart was obtained from the late John Daly’s website:
“Still Waiting for Greenhouse” available at: http://www.John-Daly.com. From the home page
scroll down and click on “Station Temperature Data”. On the “World Map”, click on a country or region to gain access to temperature from the weather station there. John Daly found several hundred weather stations whose temperature data showed no warming up to 2002.
Carbon capture and storage is entirely without merit.
Steve,
Yes. It is a given that it is of no use or value except for a few small established uses like enhanced oil recovery.
I do not know any scientist who would support it for reduction of atmospheric CO2. Geoff S
Sterling,
Great to see property rights being publicised more!
In the 1990s my employer company wanted to adopt a theme for which it could be recognised and become a go-to for people seeking answers. I pushed for property rights and convened a private international gathering in our Melbourne board room. The proceedings were too difficult to put into writing because of the diversity of views. Dr Richard Epstein from Chicago was fascinating.
Sovereign risk and eminent domain have a place where matters are very serious, like to prevent threatening warfare. They have no valid place when the aim is to polish political aspirations. Sovereign Risk is persuasive when investors consider leaving a country because of it. Geoff S
We already have a fully functioning carbon capture system on Earth. It is called “Earth”, and its oceans and rocks and biota. The notion that we somehow have to speed up or increase carbon capture is utterly feckless and wasteful, and pointless.
I have attended several CCS presentations where lawyers discussed the difficulties in the legal status of underground CO2 injection. Like, “Who owns the pore space?” “How far down are the property rights?” and “Are injection rights co-existent with mineral rights?”
These questions have been worked out over 100+ years in the oil and gas industry in commerce and the courts. CO2 injection is in its infancy, issues with great financial and legal liability have yet to be determined. Risk, anyone?
You just knew sooner or later the doomsters would have to get off piddling plant food in the atmosphere for something really big-
Greenpeace Wins Lawsuit Against Dutch Government Over Nitrogen Emissions
Link seems to have disappeared..
Keep an eye on your neighbour. An electric vehicle in their garage may be a fire consuming your home. the old thing about smoking ‘I breathe your smoke’ comes to life in a new guize, the propensity of EV batteries spontaneously combusting. Perhaps there should be a decal on each such car conveying the threat, like graphic portrayals of health risks on cigarette packaging?
This sounds like a legitimate lawsuit awaiting its time;
We have studies that show levels of CO2 we exhale, levels agreeable in submarines, homes, etc., and levels where life is jeopardized.
That that and consider the loss of life should a pipe burst.
Perfection is unobtanium. There is no place on earth where a zero leak storage can be built.
Funny how this has nothing to do with carbon. Carbon you can till or bury and it augments crop production. The point: CO2 is not C.
Carbon sequestering is an assault on all life on earth. All life on earth depends upon photosynthesis which requires six molecules of CO2. Without photosynthesis there will be NO food for any life on earth. The formulae is 6 CO2 + 6 H2O + light → C6H12O6 + 6 O2, in case anyone has forgotten. Humans are carbon based life and we require that plants remove the carbon from what we exhale and return the O2 for us to breathe, while using the carbon to manufacture food for us to live, in case anyone forgot that. How many people have forgotten their grade school science classes?
You can read horror stories less frightening than descriptions of what they now teach in too many places.
A question.
If such a system to remove CO2 is built near farms, how might that effect the crops?
Conversely, a CO2 storage system may be very useful for farmers if CO2 could be released in the growing season. There are reports that a cornfield sucks much of the CO2 out of the air on a sunny summer day. It would make sense that supplying extra CO2 to cornfields would improve crop yields.
Developing a way to distribute and apply CO2 may take some doing.
That might make sense but those who want to build such things don’t seem interested in “what makes sense”.
IF someone declares CCS victory, then do coal plants come back?
Very nice Sterling. We need to double down educating the average guy that the warming capabilities of CO2 are limited. Knowing they are limited means knowing they aren’t causing a crisis. What is causing a crisis is nonstop lying and cheating by CAGW clowns.