The unregulated carbon dioxide removal industry is calling on the U.S. government to implement standards and regulations to build transparency and trust in the sector that has been flooded with billions of dollars in federal funding and private investments.

A report released Wednesday by the Carbon Removal Alliance, a nonprofit organization representing the industry, outlined recommendations for improving monitoring, reporting and auditing. Currently, the only regulations in the United States concern the safety of these projects. Some of the biggest players in the industry, including Heirloom and Climeworks, are members of the alliance.

“I think it’s rare that an industry calls for regulation for itself and I think this shows why it’s so important,” said Giana Amador, executive director of the alliance. Amador said monitoring, reporting and verification are like “climate receipts” that confirm how much carbon is removed as well as how long it can actually be stored underground.

Without federal regulation, she said, “it really hurts competition and it forces these companies to get into sort of a marketing arms race instead of being able to focus their efforts on making sure that there’s actually a demonstrable impact on the climate.

The nonprofit organization defines carbon removal as any solution that captures carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and stores it permanently. One of the most popular technologies is direct air capture, which filters the air, extracts the carbon dioxide and puts it underground.

The Inflation Reduction Act and the bipartisan Infrastructure Act set aside approximately $12 billion for carbon management projects in the United States. Part of this funding supports the development of four commercial-scale regional direct air capture centers that will capture at least 1 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year. . Two hubs are planned to be built in Texas and Louisiana.

Some climate scientists say direct air capture is too expensive, nowhere near scale, and can be used as an excuse by the oil and gas industry to continue polluting.

Gernot Wagner, a climate economist at Columbia Business School at Columbia University, said this is the “moral hazard” of direct air capture: Removing carbon from the atmosphere could be used by the oil and gas industry to continue to pollute.

“That’s not to say the underlying technology isn’t a good thing,” Wagner said. Direct air capture “decreases emissions, but, in the long term, also extends the life of a particular coal or gas plant.” »

In 2023, Occidental Petroleum Corporation purchased direct air capture company Carbon Engineering Ltd for $1.1 billion. In a press release, Vicki Hollub, CEO of Occidental, said: “Together, Occidental and Carbon Engineering can accelerate plans to globally deploy the technology at a climate-friendly scale and make it the preferred solution for companies seeking to eliminate their difficulties. to reduce emissions.

Jonathan Foley, executive director of Project Drawdown, doesn’t see carbon dioxide removal technologies as a real climate solution.

“I welcome at least some intervention by the federal government to monitor, verify and evaluate the performance of these proposed carbon removal programs, because it’s kind of the Wild West,” Foley said.

“But given that it can cost ten to a hundred times more to try to eliminate a ton of carbon than to prevent it, how is it even reasonably reasonable to spend public dollars on this sort of thing ?” he said.

Katharine Hayhoe, chief scientist at The Nature Conservancy and distinguished professor at Texas Tech University, said standards for the direct carbon capture industry “are absolutely necessary” because of the level of government subsidies and private investment. She said there was no single solution to the climate crisis and many strategies were needed.

Hayhoe said these goals include improving the efficiency of energy systems, transitioning to clean energy, weaning the world off fossil fuels and maintaining healthy ecosystems to trap carbon dioxide. On the other hand, she said, carbon removal technologies are “low-hanging fruit.”

“It takes a lot of money and a lot of energy to get to the top of the tree. That’s the carbon capture solution,” Hayhoe said. “Of course we need all the fruit on the tree. But doesn’t it make sense to pick the fruit on the ground to prioritize that?

Other climate scientists are completely opposed to this technology.

“It should be banned,” said Mark Z. Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University.

Carbon removal technologies indirectly increase the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, Jacobson said. The reason, he explained, is that even in cases where direct air capture facilities are powered by renewable energy, the clean energy is used to remove carbon instead of replacing a source of fossil fuel.

“When you just look at the capture equipment, you get a (carbon) reduction,” Jacobson said. “But when you look at the system as a whole, you’re increasing.”