Yesterday, Representatives Tim Ryan (D-OH), Anthony Gonzalez (R-OH), Cheri Bustos (D-IL), Tim Walberg (R-MI), Marc Veasey (D-TX), David McKinley (R-WV), Susan Wild (D-PA) and Kelly Armstrong (R-ND) introduced the Coordinated Action to Capture Harmful (CATCH) Emissions Act (H.R. 3538). The legislation would:
- Increase the value of the Section 45Q to $85 per metric ton (from $50 per metric ton) for industrial and power generation facilities seeking to securely store captured CO2 in saline geologic formations and $60 per metric ton (from $35 per ton) for storage in oil and gas fields and for beneficial utilization of capture carbon, and;
- Eliminate annual CO2 capture thresholds in the 45Q program to enable all industrial facilities, power plants and future direct air capture plants to participate and qualify for the credit.
CURC Executive Director Shannon Angielski released the following statement in support of the legislation:
"The Carbon Utilization Research Council (CURC) commends the bipartisan, bicameral group of Members for their leadership on the Coordinated Action to Capture Harmful (CATCH) Emissions Act. The Section 45Q tax credit remains the world’s foremost policy to enable the widespread deployment of carbon capture, utilization, and storage technologies across sectors, and we applaud Congress for their efforts to bolster the credit.
Increasing the value of the Section 45Q tax credit to a level that incentivizes CCUS in a wider variety of applications, including on natural gas combined cycle, is important to decarbonize the use of fossil fuels in the power sector. However, CCUS deployment in the power sector would be more accessible for project developers if a direct payment option was provided in lieu of the tax credit, and we look forward to working with Members in both parties and in both chambers of Congress to ensure that legislation to make Section 45Q more widely accessible and more easily utilized is enacted this year."