Three years ago, California unveiled an ambitious plan to drastically slash greenhouse gas emissions by 2045.
That plan mentioned the need to ramp up carbon removal and sequestration. It’s a three-step process involving separating carbon dioxide emissions from other gases produced by power generation or industrial processes, like cement and steel, and storing them below the earth’s surface.
Pipelines are one of the vehicles used to transport carbon dioxide, or CO2, from its source or atmosphere to its storage destination.
The use of carbon pipelines was banned in California until now.
Last week, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 614 (SB 614) into law, giving the green light to their use.
“Carbon management is a critical pillar of California’s world-leading efforts to cut climate pollution,” he said in a statement. “I’m signing this legislation to put our state on the leading edge of an emerging 21st-century industry that will not only help us address the climate crisis but create good-paying, skilled jobs.”
In 2022, California imposed a moratorium on carbon pipelines, which was supposed to end after the federal government created safety regulations.
The Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, or PHMSA, released draft regulations earlier this year under the Biden administration. But the agency later withdrew them after President Donald Trump ordered a freeze on proposing rules without review by the new administration.
Proposed rulemaking remains stalled.
Rather than waiting, Newsom approved SB 614 to direct the State Fire Marshal to develop safety rules by July 2026.
David Victor is a professor and director of UC San Diego's Deep Decarbonization Initiative. He said carbon capture and storage is needed in addition to renewable energy.
"It's really impractical to run the entire state just on renewable power," he said. "That would mean a huge amount of land area, it would require unbelievable batteries and other kinds of technology used to be able to store that electricity."
A Stanford University study released last month showed that California could go carbon-free by 2045 if it scales technologies "at an unprecedented pace." Researchers said breakthrough technologies like removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere should be combined with other energy sources, like solar, wind and batteries. Carbon capture and storage could be "the most viable option" for hard-to-decarbonize industrial sectors, such as cement, steel and some electricity, the report added.
Victor said capturing, transporting and injecting carbon dioxide underground may not be directly relevant to San Diego. Most projects in California under review by the federal government are located in the Central Valley.
There is local interest, he said, because San Diego's power grid is connected to California's power grid.
"Having all the options on the table across the rest of the state, and to the extent that this technology works in other parts of the state, that'll help make the overall state electric power grid more reliable," Victor said.
But not everybody is convinced about investing in the technology. Environmental groups, including SanDiego350, the Sierra Club, CA Youth vs. Big Oil and others, opposed SB 614.
"Concentrated CO2 is incredibly dangerous if breathed in, and there have been quite a few instances over the past decade of these pipelines rupturing and causing both damage and harm to the communities nearby,” said Ryan O’Hara, a member of the SanDiego350’s legislative team.
He referred to a carbon pipeline rupture in a Mississippi town that sent more than 40 people to the hospital in 2020.
Now that pipelines can be built, O’Hara said he hopes the state won’t let the fossil fuel industry influence its safety standards at the expense of communities.
State Sen. Henry Stern, who authored the bill, said in a statement that California will adopt the “best-in-class regulations for carbon dioxide pipeline safety through a public process that elevates community input while encouraging major investment in the clean energy transition of our most fossil fuel intensive industries.”
