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President Biden’s early efforts to tackle climate change prioritized public action: re-acceding to the Paris Agreement, buying clean energy and vehicles, and removing fossil fuel subsidies. But the administration’s strategies to steer the country towards zero emissions also rely heavily, albeit less clearly, on a more sensitive area: capturing or removing huge amounts of global warming carbon dioxide.

In July, the US Department of Energy’s Fossil Energy Administration added Carbon Management to its name, signaling a clear shift in an agency traditionally focused on developing more efficient ways to extract fossil fuels and convert them to energy. Now, the office’s primary goal, supported by some 750 federal employees and a nearly billion dollar budget, is to develop more efficient and cheaper ways to clean up climate-polluting businesses.

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New priorities include: advancing technologies and techniques that can prevent CO2 from escaping from factories and power plants, remove it from the atmosphere, transform it into new products, and preserve it forever.

The office has appointed several researchers working on these issues to leadership positions, including the appointment of Shuchi Talati as chief of staff. She will oversee many of the changes at the agency with Jennifer Wilcox, Deputy Assistant Secretary General. Talati was previously Deputy Director of Policy at Carbon 180, a proponent of carbon removal and recycling, and a member of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

President Biden’s agenda is also embodied in the $ 1 trillion infrastructure bill already passed by the Senate. It is committing billions of dollars to develop direct air capture plants that can suck CO2 out of the air, pipelines to move it, and places where it can be buried in geological formations deep underground.

Many climate activists argue that capturing carbon is a distraction from the primary goal of getting rid of fossil fuels as quickly as possible. And the area is rife with failures, including dozens of DOE-backed trivia, such as the nearly $ 2 billion FutureGen clean coal project.

But research shows that eliminating emissions and preventing dangerous levels of warming without capturing and removing carbon will be much more difficult and expensive, especially in heavy industry where other options are few. And the number of successful commercial projects is growing around the world, reducing emissions from steel, hydrogen and fertilizers.

In a subsequent interview, I asked Talati what role carbon sequestration should play in our response to climate change and how the Fossil Energy and Carbon Management Agency is working to accelerate progress in this area.

The following interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Why was it important to change or expand the mandate of your office?

When it comes to climate goals, especially clean zero, carbon management is playing an increasingly important role. This means that not only are we dealing with our ongoing emissions, but we are also aware that for every type of fossil fuel we burn, we must manage the carbon that comes with it.

Ensuring that these two are linked on behalf of our office is essential to how this office does its job and how it is perceived. Because we do not want to work with fossil fuels without reducing the environmental impact associated with them.

How does the Department of Energy believe carbon capture and storage specifically fit into broader efforts to accelerate decarbonization and tackle climate change?

Where we can switch to renewable energy, we want to make that choice. But where we can’t, CCS [carbon capture and storage] plays a really important role. In industries like cement, we know that CCS is absolutely essential to capture these emissions.

We can capture not only the emissions from the actual energy needed, but also the emissions from the production process, where there are no other mechanisms to prevent CO2 emissions. CCS is just an incredibly versatile way of capturing emissions from many sectors that are difficult to decarbonize.

On the electricity side, especially when looking at natural gas, there are many natural gas power plants that are not planned to be decommissioned until 2035, which is in line with our goal of 100% clean electricity. This equates to over 200 gigawatts, which will continue to run on natural gas. So CCS is really the only option for this to be clean.

I also want to say that with regard to natural gas, we have never demonstrated this technology before. So if we really want to understand the true costs and what commercialization will actually look like, we need to invest in a demo first. This is really what our office could do.

Many climate activists see supporting carbon capture akin to providing a social license to keep the fossil fuel industry going. How do you react when you hear people raise these issues?

I understand where a lot of this criticism comes from. This industry hasn’t always been easy. And I think the fact that it has to do with the fossil fuel industry is really tricky, and that’s what we’re trying to fight.

But I think when it comes to the dedicated infrastructure that we have, and especially when looking at the industrial sector – where it is not necessarily about the fossil fuel industry, but about creating the products that we know we will need. for example concrete – we have to think about what this means for emissions and about reaching zero. There really are no other options.

The role of our office and the role of the federal government is to ensure that we do this properly and create a responsible industry and create environmental protection measures based on this technology, which may not have been in the past.

You mentioned the role that carbon capture can potentially play for gas factories that will continue to operate for decades. But do you expect carbon capture to play a role in creating new energy sources for electricity generation in the future?

To be honest, I think it really depends on the market and how private companies view their investments.

We only support reducing the use of fossil fuels, so when it comes to creating new natural gas, our support is highly dependent on the availability of CCS infrastructure. And I think the really important component of that too is reliable storage. A lot of CO2 is now being used to enhance oil recovery. [freeing up remaining oil from wells] and we want to be sure that we are helping to build a reliable storage infrastructure around geological reservoirs and products intended for long-term storage, such as building materials.

Even if it could be an effective tool for cement plants or for some elements of existing natural gas plants, there is still a reasonable concern that there could be fraud. These emissions may leak more than companies claim, either from the plants themselves or from the production sites, or because carbon storage sites are not performing as efficiently as they would like. How can we ensure the industry is doing this in a reliable manner?

I think this is the role of our office, and I think this is the role of this administration. I totally agree. I think we need to make sure that reliable storage is actually working. We have experience with storing CO2 in depleted oil and gas reservoirs, but we have no such experience with saline aquifers. [permeable rocks filled with salt water]…

We need to do demo projects. We need to have [monitoring, reporting, and verification] capabilities we trust that are reliable and perform on a large scale. And this requires investments from the government and actually allocated capacities.

I also think that there are leaks in our infrastructure throughout the natural gas supply chain. So this is actually one of the priorities that we have listed in our upcoming budget: reducing methane emissions.

This means changing the way our office has often operated in the past. We want to move the conversation to the lowest possible environmental impact from mining.

The infrastructure bill, which is moving forward, includes funding for direct air recovery plants. What role does the Department of Energy see as removing carbon directly from the air in efforts to combat climate change?

It is incredibly interesting that this is the largest investment in carbon removal in history. The fact that we recognize the need for dedicated demonstration funds for direct aerial capture is an absolute first of its kind worldwide. So [the Department of Energy] plays a really important role in helping to invest in these early technologies, showcasing them, and really helping private companies leverage the incredible work they’ve done in this space.

When it comes to live-action footage, these demos are incredibly expensive. And $ 3.5 billion is actually not nearly as far away as most people think.

We are incredibly excited about this technology. But there are others that, in my opinion, deserve the same attention, for example, increased mineralization. [developing ways to accelerate the natural process by which certain types of minerals capture carbon dioxide]…

When we talk about engineered carbon removal, I think that enhanced mineralization has yet to find its way into the sun. [Direct-air capture] – this is the first thing that comes to mind, and we want to change that. The increased mineralization has incredible scalability.

How do you feel about the stress or, if any, between increasing carbon removal, but also considering the potential limitations of our ability to do so?

This is an incredibly important question.

Removal of carbon dioxide should not be applied where we can reduce emissions in other ways. For companies, this means reducing emissions through energy efficiency, electrification or other feasible means. The first priority is always to prevent emissions. Is always. Since it will be cheaper, it will be more efficient. Removing carbon is difficult. It is expensive. And the industry does not yet exist at scale.