Tax incentives start rush for carbon capture projects in Louisiana

For years, fossil fuel companies have been reluctant to build carbon capture facilities, except to recover oil, because it was too expensive. Now, with the aid of a federal tax credit in the 2022 federal Inflation Reduction Act, they are lining up to capture and store carbon with the potential to make billions of dollars in profit.

In Louisiana alone, more than two dozen facilities have been proposed.

Carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) will become a profitable tactic that fossil fuel companies can utilize to reduce their carbon footprint thanks in large part to the tax credits in the 2022 federal Inflation Reduction Act.

But energy market analysts say the need for federal subsidies to make the projects, more than 20 of which are proposed in Louisiana, viable is another reason the public should be side-eyeing the aggressive push to capture and inject carbon emissions underground. 

“What happens if those incentives decline or go away?” says Suzanne Mattei, an energy policy analyst for the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, a nonprofit group that examines trends and policies related to the energy market. “This is a technology that appears to need permanent life support to keep it going.”