In May, the US Environmental Protection Agency proposed new regulations that will require power plants to capture almost all their CO2 emissions, compress them, transport them via a network of pipelines, and store them underground. The plan is economic folly, but the problems go beyond money: CO2 injected underground may well escape into the atmosphere or contaminate underground water supplies, either of which could yield deadly results and create a feeding frenzy of litigation. The liability risks will be another nail in the coffin for the country’s reliance on fossil fuels to supply electricity, which in 2022 accounted for about 60% of all generation.
Consider the case of Cameroon. In 1986, an eruption of CO2 took place at Lake Nyos, which released several hundred thousand tons of CO2. Because CO2 is denser than air, it spread along the ground, asphyxiating between 1,700 and 1,800 people living nearby. The cause of the eruption has never been determined. It might have been a small earthquake, a landslide, or even a volcanic eruption. Could such an event recur domestically? Just the specter of the possibility is enough to give pause, which is exactly what Biden’s EPA hopes to do.
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Jonathan A. Lesser, PhD, is the president of Continental Economics, an economic consulting firm, and an adjunct fellow with the Manhattan Institute.
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