CARB Says Direct Air Capture Needed to Meet Its Carbon Reduction Goals

California will need to remove 100 million tons, or more, of carbon from the atmosphere to meet its climate change goals, the chair of the state’s Air Resources Board told a legislative panel in Sacramento April 21.

Liane Randolph said the Air Board’s upcoming update of its scoping plan, the state’s master blueprint for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, will call for direct air capture and sequestration of carbon. She maintained to Joint Legislative Committee on Climate Change Policies that direct air capture technology can remove up to 90 % of the carbon in the air it processes. The draft update is due out in May.

However, an environmental justice advocate told state legislators that direct air capture is a “dead-end technology” that captures way less than 90 percent of the carbon in processed air. “We have to focus on direct reductions,” Catherine Garoupa White, a member of CARB’s Environmental Justice Advisory Committee, testified.

Lawmakers immediately picked up on the issue.

State Sen. Henry Stern (D-Los Angeles) said the nation’s biggest carbon capture project, known as Petra Nova in Texas, has shut down and been partly disassembled due to its ineffectiveness.

Assemblymember Al Maratsuchi (D-Torrance) added that a separate Petra Nova plant in Washington has only a 33% capture rate and one operated by Shell in British Columbia has a capture rate of 48%.

In response, Randolph admitted carbon capture technology could develop more slowly than the upcoming draft plan assumes and likewise capture less carbon. However, she said that without capture it will be difficult to meet the state’s goal of carbon neutrality by 2045.

She stressed the upcoming scoping plan update will be subject to months of public comment and scrutiny before its adopted, including its assumptions about the need for carbon capture from the air. She also maintained that “we absolutely have to phase out combustion to meet our goals,” but noted that it’s likely some fossil fuel in buildings and to produce electricity and operate other industrial operations likely will remain after 2045.