Picture a smokestack somewhere in West Texas, wrapped in pipes and compressors, sucking carbon dioxide out of its own exhaust before it hits the open air. The facility cost hundreds of millions of dollars to build. It runs around the clock. And at full capacity, it offsets roughly the same amount of emissions that a mid-sized American city produces in about three days. That is carbon capture in practice — not the silver bullet that politicians and fossil fuel executives keep promising, but an enormously expensive machine doing a vanishingly small job. ProPublica’s investigation makes the math brutally plain: the technology has consumed billions in public subsidies and produced climate benefits so marginal they barely register on any serious emissions chart.
This is not a niche engineering debate. It is a political choice dressed up as a scientific solution. And in 2026, as climate targets slip further out of reach and clean energy funding faces the same volatility shaking markets across the tech sector, the continued promotion of carbon capture as a primary strategy deserves a harder look than it usually gets.
The Numbers Carbon Capture Advocates Don’t Lead With
Carbon capture and storage — CCS — works by intercepting CO2 at the point of emission, compressing it, and injecting it underground. In theory, clean. In practice, the Department of Energy has poured more than $12 billion into CCS projects since 2009. The flagship projects failed. Kemper in Mississippi. Petra Nova in Texas. Both shut down or scaled back dramatically after costs spiraled and capture rates fell short. Carbon capture does not scale economically. Every unit of CO2 captured requires significant energy input, often from the same fossil fuel system generating the emissions in the first place.
Carbon capture technology cannot solve the climate crisis on its own. That is not a fringe position — it is the documented conclusion of project after failed project, confirmed by independent auditors, federal watchdogs, and energy economists who have studied the actual output data rather than the press release projections.
The fossil fuel industry understood this early. CCS gave oil and gas companies a rhetorical off-ramp — a way to keep extraction going while pointing to a future technology that would clean up the mess. It worked politically even when it failed technically. And it continues to work, because the story is complicated and the timelines are long enough that accountability stays fuzzy.
Who Keeps Funding Something That Doesn’t Deliver
Congress has repeatedly extended and expanded the 45Q tax credit, which subsidizes carbon capture projects. The Inflation Reduction Act turbocharged those subsidies further. Billions more are flowing into a technology that has never come close to operating at the scale required to matter. Meanwhile, solar and wind costs have dropped so dramatically that new renewable capacity is often cheaper than running existing fossil fuel plants — yet CCS continues to pull disproportionate lobbying power and federal dollars.
The people pushing hardest for carbon capture funding are, almost without exception, the same companies that profit from continued fossil fuel production. That is not a conspiracy. It is an obvious financial incentive operating in plain sight. When ExxonMobil spends more lobbying for CCS subsidies than it invests in actual renewable buildout, the priority is transparent.
It mirrors dynamics playing out across other industries where incumbents use the promise of future technology to slow down present-day disruption. The same patterns show up in media, where legacy players keep promising transformation while faster-moving competitors quietly take the market. Carbon capture is the streaming bundle of climate policy — a complicated, expensive product sold to people who just want something that works.
What “Buying Time” Actually Costs
The most generous argument for carbon capture is that it buys time. Keep existing infrastructure running while the grid transitions. Capture what you can’t yet replace. It sounds reasonable until you look at what that time actually costs — in money, in opportunity, and in the political energy spent defending a technology that keeps underperforming.
Every dollar spent on a CCS facility that captures 30 percent of projected emissions is a dollar not spent on grid storage, transmission infrastructure, or electrification programs that have proven track records. Opportunity cost is real. It is not abstract. Carbon capture does not buy time — it sells it, at a high markup, back to the companies that created the problem.
The creators of the internet didn’t build it by improving telegram infrastructure. The shift required was categorical, not incremental. Climate is no different. Capturing emissions at the source of production is incrementalism in a crisis that requires replacement, not refinement.
Somewhere in West Texas right now, that compressor is still running. The meter is still ticking on the taxpayer subsidy. And outside, the air is exactly as warm as it was yesterday.