By ALEX GIMARC
Gov. Mike Dunleavy made a proposal during his State of the State address to get Alaska into the carbon capture and sequestration business. There are a pair of bills making their way through the House with companion legislation in the Senate to set this up in Alaska Statute. HB 50 sets up geologic storage of carbon dioxide (CO2). HB 49 establishes a carbon offset program for state lands and a market for carbon offset credits. DNR made a presentation in support of the scheme to the House Resources Committee on Feb 10.
Essentially, the scheme captures and stores CO2 either in depleted oil and natural gas reservoirs or in forests. Do this, and the feds give you free money, popular in these parts. Not so popular is when the feds change the rules somewhere down the line, not unlike what they’ve done since statehood, not unlike what any pusher does to an addict after he gets you hooked.
Reporting on this has been skeptical, waiting for details. One organization calling itself We are the people of Alaska stood up an anti CO2 capture website and have been banging away on Tom Anderson’s morning radio show for a week.
As with any Next Big Thing, the devil as always is in the details, and as the details are (and will be) in flux, perhaps we ought to mention some big picture considerations.
There is both good news and bad news associated with this proposal. The good news is that it is free money, that several Lower 48 oil producing states (TX, LA, ND, WY, WV) are positioning themselves to participate, and that a decent CO2 capture and sequestration program would position Alaska nicely for future gas to liquids (GTLs) and coal to liquids (CTLs) activities. Finally, the producers are fully supportive as for the most part, they already have most of the injection infrastructure in place.
The bad news is that it is free money. Think of the pusher mentioned earlier. Additionally, it opens the door for remarkable graft and corruption like we have seen in the renewables / green energy world. Sadly, twice elected Alaska congress critter Rep. Mary Peltola appears to be an early adopter, with her husband Gene incorporating to get a piece of the newly baked pie. Think of Paul Pelosi’s stock trades with insider information and you won’t be far off. Additionally, most of us have figured out that the free stuff is the very most expensive stuff of all.
One of the rightful criticisms of this is that it panders to ESG (Environmental, social and governance), a scheme that uses pressure from banks, lending institutions, wall street, investment houses to support investments that are properly woke. Even Governor Dunleavy bragged about Alaska participating in ESG since before it was fashionable. I think ESG’s high point was last year, with significant pushback nationwide. And this is before the states roll out any of the large caliber anti-trust guns on its practitioners. Does the left want to inflict ESG? Absolutely. Will they try? Absolutely. Can they? Nope.
Both pieces of legislation in the House are complex, which worries me, as the more complex legislation is, the more difficult it is to determine what little nuggets of corruption are buried in it. As long as CO2 storage and sequestration do not shut down current or future resource development (think coal and logging), I think we ought to have that discussion. Whether we adopt it or not is another thing entirely, so color me skeptical.
I like that other leading energy producing states are participating. I do not like additional free money into Alaska, as it will be instantly spent. A return to defined benefit pensions for police and fire and more money for education are the current examples. I do not like that Gene Peltola is positioning himself to participate in the insider trading criminal enterprise known as the democrat party, as this is not going to end well for Alaska. He won’t be the only one, I expect.
Still, this is a start. The more discussion, the louder that discussion is, the better. The governor and his staff need to be front and center answering questions, as trust me no longer works when dealing with a government, any government at any level.
Alex Gimarc lives in Anchorage since retiring from the military in 1997. His interests include science and technology, environment, energy, economics, military affairs, fishing and disabilities policies. His weekly column “Interesting Items” is a summary of news stories with substantive Alaska-themed topics. He was a small business owner and Information Technology professional.
