Today, impacted community members and climate and environmental justice organizations called on the California Air Resources Board to reject carbon capture, use and storage projects (CCUS) at its board meeting. CARB is expected to finalize California’s first CCUS Program charged with evaluating and regulating CCUS in the state by the end of the year.

Advocates released the following statements:

“Carbon capture is a dangerous distraction from phasing out fossil fuels that will not help California reach its climate goals,” said Food & Water Watch Northern California Senior Organizer Isabel Penman. “Even worse, the pipelines and injection wells that come with these projects are inherently dangerous and lack adequate safety safeguards that are necessary to protect the public. We are disappointed that these dangerous carbon capture projects are included in CARB’s mandate to reach state climate targets and we urge the agency to thoroughly evaluate the impact and ultimately reject these projects.”

“Our organization is horrified that current activities at CARB are focused strongly on promoting the illusion that climate pollution can be effectively cleaned up after the fact, exposing communities and natural ecosystems across the state to unprecedented risk and dangers,” said Gary Hughes of Biofuelwatch. “It is truly alarming that state regulators are downplaying the evidence that such speculative carbon removal technologies, if built out and scaled up, would promise a variety of environmental and public health harms, without assurances of meeting climate objectives.”

“CARB’s continued focus on ‘silver-bullet’ technologies that are costly and ineffective (carbon capture and storage) or costly and unproven at scale (other carbon removal technologies) to reach California’s climate goals is harmful to our communities and economically unsound,” said Valerie Ventre-Hutton of 350 Bay Area Action. “Given the Agency’s expertise and breadth of knowledge, it is hugely disappointing that they appear to be ignoring studies that demonstrate the public health dangers and lack of efficacy of these technologies.”  

“You cannot call it climate progress if the people living next to these facilities are still breathing toxic, dirty air,” said Martha Dina Argüello, the Executive Director at Physicians for Social Responsibility – Los Angeles. “Carbon capture leaves communities with the pollution that makes people sick, while the fossil fuel industry continues to profit. CARB needs to ask what SB 905 means for people’s health, not just how much carbon a project claims to capture. We need to remember: the goal is to stop creating pollution in the first place.”