Three Reasons We Need to Work on US Federal Carbon Removal Policy Right Now

I get it, carbon removal might not be the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about what’s most urgent right in US policy now. We don’t have a line of sight to a big climate package–we just had our longest government shutdown ever(!)–and the major clean energy bills passed last Congress were aggressively rolled back over the past several months. Plus, you know, everything else going on. All of that is true, and it’s also true that if we’re not building carbon removal policy infrastructure right now, we’re missing the moment that matters most. Here are three reasons why.

There will be another window for climate bills

Policy moves in cycles. There are times you pass bills and, in between, that’s when you have time to actually write the bills you end up trying to pass. In many ways, it’s the work done before those windows open that is the most critical. It’s when you can not only design the new policies, it’s when you can build the trust and coalitions needed to get those policies moving in Congress.

In that way, this political moment offers unique advantages. Across climate advocates, there is more that connects us than divides us right now–unlike when there are windows to move bills and everyone is advocating for competing priorities that can cause us to zoom in on disagreements. And with an uncertain path forward on climate, it’s not only about what we can build for carbon removal, but how we can create carbon removal policies that build new and broader political coalitions.

If we don’t write new CDR bills right now, there will be nothing for us to pass when the next window opens.

Any major climate package needs carbon removal to pass

For Congress to pass any major clean energy or climate package, it must include policies that support many different sectors, including renewables, nuclear, and carbon management. It’s the only way to secure enough votes, regardless of the exact political makeup of the Senate or House.

This has been true for a long time and we have no reason to think it won’t be true over the next decade, at least. There are different constituencies for different clean energy and climate solutions, whether they’re driven by ideology or industry or local benefit. If anything, the expansion of the carbon removal sector creates more and more deeply held support in Congress. Without policy ideas that are seen as effective by carbon removal advocates and those who listen to them in Congress, major climate efforts will stall and, more likely, fail.

We need more data

We actually don’t know who does and doesn’t like carbon removal. We know who does and doesn’t like very specific policies like 45Q–a tax credit for direct air capture that also includes point source carbon capture and enhanced oil recovery, and has been fraudulently claimed in the past by some oil companies– but those aren’t the same things. Some groups have opposed 45Q while supporting federal procurement of carbon removal. Carbon removal was included in the Green New Deal resolution, while 45Q and funding for the Office of Fossil Energy–where all the federal R&D work on carbon removal happens–have been opposed by many of the resolution’s most vocal supporters.

Our limited information is also outdated. Political lines have shifted dramatically in the past year alone and many of these policy ideas have their roots in decades old carbon capture efforts. It made a lot of sense in 2015 and 2018 and 2020 to prioritize the inclusion of carbon removal in tax credits and Department of Energy reauthorizations where we could; the field had limited capacity to come up with and advocate for new ideas, because the field was nascent. If the field has limited capacity in the next couple of years, it won’t be for a good reason–it will be because we failed to understand the critical need to work on carbon removal policies today.

One extra reason: we might still pass things now

We aren’t going to pass a major climate bill right now, but we might pass smaller carbon removal policies. We could pretty reasonably get some more funding for early stage marine carbon removal research and development and my colleagues at Carbon180 have gotten a bipartisan, bicameral soil carbon bill introduced this year. In 2019, the bipartisan SEA FUEL Act resulted in $8 million for carbon removal research. And those are just the policy ideas already out there, the ones we built with far fewer people working on carbon removal.

So, what?

The next two years are invaluable. We need to start creating the next wave of carbon removal policies now; how we do that matters. Doing this the same way we did 5 years ago not only ignores how things are different today, it would entirely fail to take advantage of a unique opportunity. We need to create dozens of new policy ideas, set aside our (outdated) assumptions about who likes carbon removal and why, and do the work right now to figure out what those set of effective and politically feasible policies will be when we have the next window to pass major legislation.