For Immediate Release

Sacramento, CA – Climate advocates are sharply critiquing the California Air Resources Board’s Final Scoping Plan, released today, for its reliance on carbon capture to lower emissions. Among the details outlined in the Scoping Plan are plans to use carbon capture at refineries, a process criticized by environmental organizations as a lifeline for fossil fuel companies to keep operating as usual. Food & Water Watch research has shown carbon capture projects have been unsuccessful and largely reliant on federal funding to operate and function.

The fossil fuel industry has been at the forefront of lobbying for carbon capture, notably via the California Carbon Capture Coalition, whose members include fossil fuel giants like Chevron, SoCalGas and Aera Energy. Those three members alone spent a combined $2.2 million in the second quarter of 2022 to lobby priorities that included carbon capture. ExxonMobil spent nearly twice that amount in the first half of the year lobbying for CCS priorities.

Food & Water Watch’s California Director Chirag G. Bhakta issued the following the statement in response:

“Carbon capture is a giveaway to the fossil fuel industry that allows companies to keep business as usual, and relying on it to improve emissions is ludicrous. Investigations have shown how little faith the fossil fuel companies pushing CCS have in its efficiency and how they’ve used the unproven technology to amp their profit while greenwashing their image. Governor Newsom’s support for carbon capture is baffling given his readiness to tax oil companies for their outrageous profits. The only way to truly lower California’s emissions is to cut them at source, stop issuing fossil fuel permits immediately, and initiate a just transition away from fossil fuels.”

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Contact: Jessica Gable, (202) 683-2478, [email protected]

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