Flagstaff Seeks Carbon Capture Technology to Meet 2030 Climate Goals / Public News Service

A technology that once existed only in science fiction soon could emerge as a viable solution to climate change. The city of Flagstaff has added carbon dioxide removal to its plan to reach carbon neutrality by 2030.

Flagstaff officials say once the technology is proved and deployed, it will extract and neutralize carbon and other pollutants from the atmosphere.

In recent years, significant progress has been made in developing systems that can remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.

Ramon Alatorre is climate and energy coordinator for the northern Arizona city. He said it could be one of the first in the country to implement a climate plan to capture and store carbon dioxide.

“We can do as much reducing as possible, but we’re still going to be producing some emissions,” said Alatorre. “And so there’s going to, by necessity, be the other half of the equation. In order to be net zero, we’re going to have to remove emissions from the atmosphere.”

Alatorre said demonstration projects in Iceland and around the world show promise, but are not yet ready for commercial deployment.

He said his office also is working closely with the Center for Negative Carbon Emissions at Arizona State University to develop CDR technology.

Alatorre said Flagstaff is part of the Four Corners Coalition with other governments across the region – including Boulder County, Colorado – seeking to obtain the new technology when it becomes available.

“If we join with Boulder and half a dozen other communities,” said Alatorre. “And suddenly we’ve got an aggregated demand and an aggregated pool of resources that really might attract somebody that wouldn’t have looked at Flagstaff by ourselves.”

Alatorre said while communities such as Flagstaff eventually will utilize a variety of solutions for removing greenhouse gases, he believes CDR will play a major role in cleaning the atmosphere.

He said while the technology may be expensive, the cost of not dealing with climate change could be much higher.

“Cost curve reduction could be achieved certainly by mid-century if we get started now,” said Alatorre. “But that we need those early projects to get the ball rolling, that it’s really going to be deployment-led innovation that result in cost coming down and scalability coming up.”

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The mayor of Huntington, where more than 200 homes were recently damaged by severe flooding, said now is the state’s “one chance” to prevent other residents from experiencing the same tragedy.

Last week, leaders from across West Virginia gathered in Charleston to coordinate on a new state Flood Protection Plan. Huntington Mayor Steve Williams was there, and he later warned that flooding can wipe out everything people have worked for overnight.

“Right now, I have over 215 homes that have just been devastated,” said Williams. “This is just ruining people’s lives. They’ve lost everything. The effect on people’s lives is not just palpable. It’s real.”

West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice toured Huntington’s flood damage earlier this month, just two days after declaring a State of Emergency for Huntington and other areas affected by flooding.

Projections say the state’s mountains mean West Virginians can expect to be some of the hardest hit by climate driven natural disasters. Mayor Williams said the only solution is for West Virginia to work together.

“Local, county and municipal governments, but you don’t leave out the people in the neighborhoods,” said Williams. “Everybody plays a role in this. We have one chance to get this right now. Whether you believe in climate change or not, these things are happening more often than they’ve ever happened.”

Robert Martin is the director of West Virginia’s resiliency office. He said they expect to have an update to the state’s 18-year-old flood plan by the end of the year.

But Martin stressed that West Virginians have to realize flooding is going to happen here, and be ready to take the steps to mitigate that reality.

“The topography of the state is such that you’re always going to have rains,” said Martin. “Rains seem to be a little bit more frequent than they used to be, or they’re cells of heavy rains that occur. But, we’ll do what we can to mitigate those, so that we all get some flooding, we know that, but it’d be at a much lesser level.”

Support for this reporting was provided by The Pew Charitable Trusts.

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Fifteen conservation groups from Wyoming and across the nation have filed administrative protests challenging the Biden administration’s plans to resume oil and gas leasing on public lands as early as June.

They’re calling for the president to end new leasing in order to protect communities, water and wildlife. Dan Ritzman – lands, water, and wildlife campaign director for the Sierra Club – said the move is critical for the administration to meet its own climate goals.

“One of the biggest single sources of greenhouse gases across the country is fossil-fuel leasing on our public lands,” said Ritzman. “So to address climate change, we need to keep those fossil fuels in the ground, keep them from being burned.”

Lease sales set for June include 144,000 acres across eight western states, with a majority of acres in Wyoming. Oil companies repeatedly have claimed that opening up more public lands for drilling can ease pressure on international supplies and lower gas prices.

The protests call for a halt to oil and gas leasing, and a nationwide plan to align federal fossil-fuel management with the goal of avoiding the most catastrophic impacts of climate change.

Ritzman said new leases on public lands won’t lower prices at the pump, in part because it takes years for oil companies to develop leases. He added that companies already have plenty of options for drilling.

“The oil and gas industry is currently sitting on millions of acres that they have yet to develop,” said Ritzman. “They are making those claims not to help the general public with gas prices but to get their hands on more of these public lands.”

The new leases come on the heels of record industry profits. Shell Oil brought in more than $9 billion in profits in the first quarter of 2022, according to a Guardian report – nearly triple its profits during the same period last year.

Ritzman said lands owned by all Americans have been monopolized by the oil and gas industry for far too long. He said it’s time for public lands to be part of the climate solution, not the problem.

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New Mexico continues to battle the largest wildfires in its history, and other states including Nevada, along with parts of Arizona and Colorado, have been warned of high fire danger through the weekend.

The largest blaze, the Calf Canyon/Hermits Peak Fire, has burned more than 300,000 acres.

Mary Katherine Ray, wildlife chair for the Sierra Club Rio Grande Chapter, lives in the southwest corner of Socorro County between two major fires. She said some people will want to blame the fires on improper forest management, rather than the continued burning of fossil fuels known to cause climate change.

“Low humidity — I mean zero to 5% humidity — like in the last four days here, it hasn’t gone above 10% even at night and high winds and drought and high temperature,” Ray reported. “This is the line in the sand. We can’t go on like we’ve been going on.”

On Thursday, climate, conservation and community groups from across the country filed administrative protests challenging the Biden administration’s plan to resume oil and gas leasing in New Mexico and other western states next month, arguing it fails to prevent climate pollution and harm to people and the environment.

Laura Paskus, a New Mexico-based environmental reporter, has written about climate change, including wildfires for the past 20 years. Nonetheless, she said she is stunned and overwhelmed by the magnitude of the fires and what it means for the future.

“Our soils are drying out, our forests are drying out, our farm lands need more water,” Paskus explained. “Our rivers, our reservoirs, everything. Just go outside right now and the world feels crunchy and warm.”

It is estimated at least 15,000 families in New Mexico have been evacuated, and between 600 and 1,000 structures have burned, including homes and businesses. The Black Fire, near Gila, ignited last Friday and had burned more than 90,000 acres in just six days.

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