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Carbon Capture: Costly, Useless & Harmful

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) has been presented by some as a promising technology to address the supposed threat of global warming while making possible the use of fossil fuels that emit carbon dioxide the promoters view as a pollutant. None of this is true.

CCS is expensive and unnecessary. It would raise the cost of energy, make uneconomic the operation of power plants and other facilities fueled by coal and natural gas, raise the cost of energy, and would have no positive effect on the environment. In short, CCS costs too much and is certain to fail at what its proponents promise.

Using data from the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) and the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), we found the following:



Costly

• The cost of retrofitting 114 U.S. coal-fired power plants (not scheduled for retirement) to achieve 90% carbon capture would be more than $148 billion, or about $2 million per megawatt of net power output. Operation and maintenance costs of coal plants would increase by more than 40%.

Useless

• Based on analysis using the Model for the Assessment of Greenhouse Gas Induced Climate Change (MAGICC), if the United States ceased all CO₂ emissions in 2010, the amount of warming averted would be only 0.07°F by 2050 and 0.19°F by 2100.

Harmful

• Higher concentrations of atmospheric CO₂ have contributed to increased crop production and a greening of Earth, 70% of which NASA has attributed to CO₂ fertilization. CCS would reduce these benefits of atmospheric carbon dioxide and lead to reduced crop productivity.

Download the CO2 Coalition one page summary here.

High Praise for the CO₂ Coalition

Recent commentaries have identified the CO₂ Coalition and its members as the primary scientific authorities refuting the false notion of a man-made climate crisis:

Daily Caller April 14, 2025 - A key player here is the CO2 Coalition, which includes scientists and researchers from across the globe devoted to educating the public and policymakers about the benefits of CO₂ . Not only is the naturally occurring substance not a pollutant, but it’s in fact the great elixir of life on Earth.

The regulatory attack on CO₂ is essentially an attack on humanity itself. Dr. William Happer,

a retired Princeton University physicist and founder of the CO₂ Coalition, explains why.

“Carbon dioxide is at the basis of life on Earth.” Happer said in an interview with Freedom Research. “We live because plants are able to chemically transform carbon dioxide and water into sugar and a byproduct is the oxygen that we breath, and so we should all be very grateful that we have carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.”

“Life would die without carbon dioxide,” he explained.

Happer and other members of the CO₂ Coalition view the recent warming trend as a natural response to planet’s emergence from the Little Ice Age beginning in the 1800s. Overturning the Endangerment Finding is therefore a matter of sound science.

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CO₂ Coalition

2677 Prosperity Ave, Suite 300

Fairfax, Virginia 22031



Gregory Wrightstone

Executive Director,

CO₂ Coalition