Michigan Senate Approves Carbon Capture Legislation

Michigan bills to let the state permit carbon capture and storage projects passed in the state Senate Thursday. Carbon sequestration is the process of storing carbon dioxide emissions, often underground, rather than releasing them into the atmosphere. Currently, federal regulators primarily handle the approval process for new projects. State Senator Sean McCann (D-Kalamazoo) is among the package co-sponsors. He said state regulators could do a better job considering Michigan’s needs for those operations than the federal government. McCann said carbon capture itself could have an upside for meeting the state’s environmental and carbon neutrality goal.

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“We look to a lot of things for how we can reduce our carbon output for energy and industrial uses and so on. And this legislation, should it be successful, will help Michigan reach our climate goals faster,” McCann said Thursday after the bills had passed.

The three bills in the package passed with bipartisan support as well as some no votes from both sides of the aisle. State Senator Jeff Irwin (D-Ann Arbor) was among the opposition, calling carbon capture “potentially dangerous” and “uncertain.” Irwin said he supports the state having a larger say in regulating carbon capture, but the bills need to include more of what he calls “best practices.”

“Best practices like requiring, if we’re going to allow carbon capture, that it actually reduce the amount of carbon. If we’re using more carbon, if we’re generating more pollution just to put this other pollution under the ground, that’s a foolish tradeoff and we shouldn’t allow it here in Michigan,” Irwin said.

During the committee process, lawmakers tried to address some concerns environmental groups brought up with the bills. McCann said the legislation tried to build upon laws passed by other states. That included incorporating relatively high fees for storing carbon dioxide underground and sending money collected from those fees into newly created pots of money like a Community Benefits Fund.

“We’re not the first state, we’re not the first adopter here to do these kinds of projects. We’ve learned from other states as far as how to go about this. We’ve had lots of expert involvement,” McCann said.

Despite the changes, the Michigan Environmental Justice Coalition still shared numerous concerns with the bills. The group felt fees should still be higher and that the package should be tied to other bills to ensure carbon capture operations aren’t polluting the air themselves. It also took issue with provisions that would have the state potentially assuming liability for projects after 50 years, or sooner in some cases. Chris Gilmer-Hill is the policy associate at the coalition.

“To not only create a long-term liability that has to be monitored that poses a potential community risk, but hand over the cost of that to the public, that’s forcing the public to subsidize long-term pollution,” Gilmer-Hill said.

Amendments to address some of those concerns were shot down ahead of a final vote on the Senate floor Thursday. The bills now head to the Republican-led Michigan House of Representatives.