ESG Not Quite Dead as CCS Devs Grapple with Community Support

Think ESG is dead? Think again, according to panelists at a recently held carbon capture, utilization and storage conference. And, they say, companies need to adjust.

“One thing that people don’t talk enough about is community engagement and the ability for projects to actually be accepted in communities in which they’re being proposed,” Charles “Chuck” McConnell, executive director of the University of Houston’s Center for Carbon Management in Energy, said during Wood Mackenzie’s recently held CCS conference. “Companies doing PR campaigns is not education and I think that’s the learning that comes about here.”

Maintaining a social license to operate by sharing information and building trust among other steps is seen by energy experts as a must-have when it comes to accelerating carbon capture and storage projects. Without gaining the support of communities in which projects will be built, there’s a risk developments could be squashed or slowed.

Many CCS projects, in the U.S. and elsewhere, remain at risk due to challenging economics, according to Wood Mackenzie. However, with helpful regulation, market certainty and other support, projects will be able to get off the ground.

Matthew Suhr, senior director of fundamental analysis and transmission for power company Calpine, pointed to the company’s hosting—with the U.S. Department of Energy—roughly 300 people for an education session about one of the company’s CCS projects.

“There’ll be Calpine employees, the DOE; we’ll talk about what the project means to the local community. They can ask us questions,” he said, referring to Calpine’s Deer Park CCS project in Texas.

CCS opposition rises

Calpine is also currently developing two large CCS projects. The company’s Baytown CCS project in Texas will capture and store about 2 million metric tons (MMmt) of CO₂ emissions. Its Sutter carbon capture project, near Yuba City, California, aims to capture and store up to 1.75 MMmt of CO₂ annually.

While some projects are working their way through public engagement phase, others have been stopped—either temporarily or permanently—in their tracks.

Alex Shelby, director of investment banking for Barclays, recalled public opposition for two Midwest CO₂ pipeline projects: Navigator and Summit. When the pipelines were announced, they were in competition with each other and had overlapping gathering systems with different sequestration points, he said.

“They were both announced before right of ways were secured, and I think some public opposition to both of those systems gained headlines,” Shelby said. “The resistance there was unfortunate because I think it was ill informed. … If they [pundits] took a step back and they really saw what those systems were there to do, it’s like how could you be against those two projects?”

Navigator CO₂ Ventures canceled its Heartland Greenway pipeline project in October 2023 after withdrawing the company’s permit application after its denial amid public opposition. The company had partnered with the South Dakota-based Poet biofuel company to capture emissions from 18 of its plants in Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota. The project aimed to capture 15 MMmt of CO₂ annually, transporting it via 1,300 miles of pipeline across five states.

Summit Carbon Solutions also faced similar obstacles, including a permit denial, as it continues to develop a large carbon capture pipeline project with 57 ethanol plants across Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and Nebraska.

McConnell added that reasons for opposition varied and aren’t like “homogenized milk.”

It’s “going in and listening to what people have on their minds and then being able to have some sort of a pathway,” he said. People talk about jobs all the time, but some communities don’t have qualified welders, for example, to benefit from such job opportunities. Bringing in qualified workers from elsewhere who will leave after the job is done “doesn’t do anything for my community,” he said. “I think that’s part of the maturity of the whole conversation.”

Community engagement, however, is not a new concept.

Edward Stones, business vice president of energy and climate for Dow, recalled the chemical company’s arrival in Freeport, Texas, south of Houston.

“We actually built a hospital as part of our moving into the local community. … Engagement, it’s not something that’s new to our industry,” Stones said, however noting the industry may have missed a bit in the 1990s and 2000s. “We have to go back to the core of what we do. … We can do this and it’s a core part of who we are.”

Dow is addressing community concerns as it tries to build a nuclear plant in South Texas, he added. The small modular reactor plant in the city of Seadrift will feature four of X-energy’s Xe-100 advanced nuclear reactors.

“Community engagement is the first thing we did and we’re continuing that. We’ve had huge support,” Stones said. “I think the same will be true for CCS.”