From Watts Up With That?

From the Heartland Institute.

H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D.

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.”

H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D.

Director, Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy
The Heartland Institute