Congress is spending billions on carbon capture. Is it a climate savior or a boondoggle?

While much of President Joe Biden's climate change agenda has stalled in Congress, there is one nascent — and controversial — technology for reducing carbon emissions that has received billions in public funds in 2020 and 2021: Carbon capture.

Last year's infrastructure legislation gave the largest amount of funding ever to carbon capture projects — at $12 billion. Those funds come on top of $5 billion in the Energy Act of 2020. And lawmakers are debating dramatically increasing funding for carbon capture in the stalled Build Back Better Act.

Carbon capture, which removes CO2 emissions from high-polluting sources like industrial facilities or power plants, could play an increasingly important role in global efforts to stave off the worst effects of climate change, according to international regulatory bodies. The International Energy Agency last year projected that carbon capture would account for nearly 15% of all the ways that we remove carbon, and the International Panel on Climate Change endorsed it as part of a suite of net-zero CO2 emissions scenarios.