Last month, a representative for Tenaska — the company seeking to build the Tri-State Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) Hub — testified before the Ohio House Natural Resource Committee in support of House Bill 170. If passed and signed into law, this bill would establish a regulatory regime for CO2 injection wells, one that would significantly disenfranchise landowners in Ohio, hamstring communities all over the state, and increase the financial and environmental risks inherent to CO2 storage projects.
Instead of talking about how the bill or project might affect nearby residents, the company representative focused on the “significant job creation and economic benefits associated with CCS projects.” But their own report shows something very different: the Tri-State CCS Hub would only create four permanent jobs across three states — hardly the vision of economic prosperity touted by the backers of these projects.
What is Tenaska Planning?
Tenaska plans to develop, construct and operate 24 CO2 injection wells across six Appalachian counties, including Carroll, Jefferson, and Harrison Counties in Ohio.
These wells would be used for the long-term storage of CO2 in underlying geologic formations spanning up to 80,000 acres. Supporters say this will help reduce emissions in a variety of industrial processes by chemically or physically trapping CO2 deep underground for hundreds or even thousands of years.
In reality, each step of this process, including the capture, transportation, and storage, is fraught with uncertainty and risk. Additionally, companies in the U.S. have little practical experience with carbon management. Just a handful of projects are actively injecting CO2 and there are only about 5,300 miles of CO2 pipelines, mostly in the Gulf and Midwest regions. These pipelines primarily transport CO2 from high-purity natural sources, in contrast to the medium-to-low purity sources targeted by Tenaska, such as power plants, further underscoring the uncertainties at play. Testimony from supporters at the hearing largely avoided these thorny issues.
Tenaska claims that their project “will be a catalyst for sustainable economic growth, fostering job opportunities and contributing significantly to each state’s economy”, a vision that relies on a study they commissioned from West Virginia University using company data. Reading the study, the picture isn’t as bright as Tenaska paints it.
A Closer Look at the Numbers
A fact sheet published by Tenaska in December 2023 claims that it will create “nearly 53 jobs” during operations, a figure that includes the estimated indirect and induced economic impact of the project rather than just the four people that would be directly employed by Tenaska on an ongoing basis.
It is difficult to properly assess how realistic these estimates are due to the fact that only a handful of projects in the U.S. are actively injecting CO2, leaving us with few peers with which to base an assessment. However, some of the claims made in the report, such as the estimate that the two permanent jobs created in Ohio will go on to create 24.5 indirect jobs, are difficult to believe, especially since carbon capture installations represent an added cost to existing operations.
Additionally, the Department of Energy awarded $55 million to the Tri-State CCS Hub in 2023. That works out to about $14 million per permanent job so far. And that’s not the only public money involved. Tenaska could also see a big windfall from lucrative federal tax credits: $85 for every metric ton of CO2 they store. Tenaska plans to store 5 million metric tons of carbon annually for thirty years, meaning that this project could receive $425 million in tax credits annually and more than $12 billion over the lifetime of the project, demonstrating the immense cost these storage projects could impose on taxpayers. Higher taxes would be compounded by higher utility bills if carbon capture is widely adopted in the power sector, potentially allowing companies to recoup costs from ratepayers.
To Tenaska’s credit, we can expect an increase in temporary jobs during the construction phase of this project. (The company estimates that they will directly employ an annual average of 1,080 short-term construction workers across all three states.) But even with the massive amount of public funding supporting this project, it is unlikely that the Tri-State CCS Hub will bring the lasting economic prosperity so often promised to Appalachian communities.