Incentivizing and streamlining CCS innovation solves warming---assumes every deficit.
Wendy B. Jacobs and Michael Craig 17, Jacobs is Clinical Professor of Law and Clinic Director of the Emmett Environmental Law and Policy Clinic at Harvard Law School, Craig is a Ph.D. candidate in the Engineering and Public Policy department at Carnegie Mellon University; “Legal Pathways to Widespread Carbon Capture and Sequestration”; Environment Law Reporter; December 2017; Vol. 47 p. 1023-1024//SJ
Thus, significant legal reforms that include a combination of financial incentives, mandates, and other forms of government support are needed to drive full-scale diffusion of CCS technology in the United States. This Article recommends a variety of legal reforms to expand CCS deployment on coal-fired and NGCC plants in line with DDPP projections. The recommended reforms would not only require the use of CCS at coal-fired and NGCC plants, but would also facilitate the sale of and help create markets for the higher-cost electricity generated by plants equipped with CCS, and would provide substantial investment in CCS and its associated infrastructure.
Assuming the continued absence of federal legislation that imposes a national cap or price on carbon dioxide emissions, this Article suggests: (1) issuance of presidential and gubernatorial Executive Orders to create federal and state markets for purchase of power generated by CCS equipped power plants; (2) enactment of federal and state legislation to provide financial incentives to spur capture of carbon dioxide; (3) tightening of federal and state regulatory requirements for new and existing sources to directly or indirectly require widespread use of CCS; (4) action by federal and state actors to streamline permitting and improve interagency coordination; (5) expansion of public-private partnerships to build out the existing pipeline infrastructure (perhaps providing eminent domain authority to install the pipelines needed to transport captured carbon dioxide from early adopters of CCS to the proposed federal sequestration sites); and (6) use of federal funds to build and operate several sequestration facilities on federally owned lands located near existing or proposed large sources of captured carbon dioxide with the federal government retaining the long-term liability associated with permanent sequestration of the captured carbon dioxide.
Together with other federal and state financial and regulatory incentives described below, these suggested legal reforms could overcome the chief obstacles to CCS deployment in the United States and help achieve the economywide 80% GHG emissions reductions needed to deeply decarbonize the United States by 2050. The suggestions in this Article build on lessons learned from the efforts to date in the United States to build or retrofit power plants with CCS. One key lesson is that trying to integrate all aspects of CCS into a single project is financially challenging in the current economic environment of low natural gas and oil prices.