On Friday, December 1, the Department of Energy is holding an online event known as "Carbon Management Day."
"Carbon management" is a term that conflates two different things: carbon capture and storage (CCS) and direct air capture (DAC). CCS is a technology that's supposed to remove carbon dioxide from smokestacks of facilities that burn fuels such as fossil fuels and wood pellets that emit carbon dioxide. DAC refers to industrial methods of removing carbon dioxide that is already in the atmosphere.
In spite of their differences, CCS and DAC have a lot of features in common. Both these technologies are dangerous distractions from the need to phase out fossil fuels and other polluting energy sources and to transition to truly renewable energy.
They are both largely untested technologies, and there's no guarantee that they'll ever work at the scale required to actually make a difference to the climate. Relying on them would be unacceptably risky.
They are both very expensive and energy and water intensive. They both depend on carbon pipelines to transport captured carbon to underground injection sites. Carbon pipelines are highly susceptible to serious rupture incidents, which can expose communities to clouds of asphyxiating carbon dioxide. And underground injection poses serious risks of groundwater contamination.
CCS, in particular, is explicitly intended to allow for continued use of fossil fuels, by purporting to remove carbon dioxide from smokestacks to prevent more greenhouse gas emissions. However, it fails to address emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. And it leaves in place all the other harmful environmental impacts of the fossil fuel industry, such as air and water pollution from extracting and burning oil, gas, and coal. Indigenous, Black, Brown, and poor white communities disproportionately bear most of these toxic impacts.
For more information about the case against these technologies, please see our factsheet on CCS and DAC.
Right now, there's something you can do. On Friday, December 1, you can use this toolkit to create social media posts to call attention to how the Department of Energy, a federal agency that is supposed to work for us, is instead using its reach and power to greenwash risky technologies that delay and distract us from the needed energy transition – just so the fossil fuel industry can keep making profits.
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