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State officials are touting incentives for a $198.5 million carbon capture project at an Ascension Parish chemical plant, in spite of evidence and experts suggesting it is a questionable investment.
Gov. John Bel Edwards announced on last week CF Industries plans to invest $198.5 million to construct a CO2 compression and dehydration unit at its Donaldsonville complex that is expected to process up to 6,000 tons of CO2 per day.
The project, which would reportedly create 12 new jobs with $100,000 per year average salaries, would enable up to two million tons of CO2 to be processed each year before it is liquefied and transported via pipeline to a yet-to-be-determined sequestration site. The process would enable CF Industries to produce up to 1.7 million tons annually of blue ammonia, which is considered a clean energy source because its components, nitrogen and hydrogen, do not emit carbon when combusted, according to the Edwards announcement.
"To achieve our goal of net zero emissions by 2050, Louisiana must simultaneously increase new clean energy investments and decrease current greenhouse gas emissions," said Edwards. "CF Industries' plan to add carbon capture capabilities to its Donaldsonville plant accomplishes that, while stimulating economic activity and creating high-paying jobs in Ascension Parish. We applaud the company's commitment to sustainability and encourage other industry leaders to recognize that decarbonization is good for both our economy and our climate."
The Board of Commerce and Industry and local governments have approved CF Industries for the state's Industrial Tax Exemption program, which provides an 80 percent property tax abatement on qualifying capital investment. The company is also expected to take advantage of Louisiana's Quality Jobs program.
"We believe that ammonia will play a critical role in accelerating the world's transition to clean energy and that demand for blue ammonia for this purpose will grow meaningfully in the coming years," said Tony Will, president and chief executive officer of CF Industries Holdings, Inc. "We are pleased to be able to leverage our previous investments in Louisiana to add CO2 processing technology to our Donaldsonville complex that will enable a significant volume of blue ammonia production by the middle of the decade. This will position CF Industries and Louisiana at the forefront of this emerging global market."
The project is the second announced this year in which taxpayers will subsidize carbon capture, with the first involving a $900 million investment announced by Cleco in April to add carbon capture at its Boyce powerplant.
Katie Tubb, research fellow with The Heritage Foundation's Center for Energy, Climate and Environment, pointed to a Government Accountability Office report issued last year that showed poor returns from 11 carbon capture projects subsidized by the Department of Energy since 2009.
Other experts, including Mark Jacobson, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University, have suggested carbon capture technologies can cause more harm than good.
"The politics around CCS (carbon capture and sequestration) are interesting. Many climate extremists oppose CCS projects and government subsidies because at the bottom of it they oppose production and use of oil and natural gas," said Tubb. "Many in the energy sector support CCS projects and government subsidies because they see it as a way to get PR points, and make a bad situation less bad — that is, the current situation where their competitors are heavily subsidized and they themselves have a big regulatory target on their backs."
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