Carbon tax survives in the US (as a tax credit)

Been meaning to blog about this for a while, so I'll just get it out here, a piece of good news that we're slowly creeping towards recognition of a carbon tax:

Among the energy credits tucked inside the budget deal eked out in early February lies a controversial measure: carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) credits designed to push the technology from the clean energy margins toward the mainstream. 

For years the technology has divided environmentalists and many working in the energy industry, even as some researchers argued for its essentiality in a decarbonized world. Now, modifications to an existing credit called Section 45Q offer more money per ton of carbon dioxide captured and remove a cap on how much plants can store.

“These changes to the tax code and the enhancements of the 45Q tax credit will absolutely make the difference between a whole bunch of projects being financed and a whole bunch of projects not making it,” said Julio Friedmann, formerly of the Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy, and now a distinguished associate at the Energy Futures Initiative and CEO of Carbon Wrangler, LLC.

The changes extend tax credits to carbon capture projects constructed over the next six years. Projects formerly received $10 for each ton of carbon captured and used for enhanced oil recovery and $20 for each ton captured and put “in secure geological storage” underground. The new credit bumps those sums to $35 and $50, respectively. It also eliminates a pre-existing annual volumetric cap of 75 million tons of carbon dioxide.

A tax credit for reducing carbon is equivalent to a tax for producing it. Maybe not as flexible in this format, but it's a way to slowly get there.

I'll take good news where I can get it.