气候变化领域集成服务门户

Pueblo Mayor Nick Gradisar, who supports the exploration of a carbon capture economy for southern Colorado, said “I think they re trying to get the word out about what they re proposing with these pilot projects.” 

But Pueblo activist Valdez, who organizes for the nonprofit environmental group Mothers Out Front, said the push for a carbon capture hub is ignoring minority and low-income voices who have already suffered the consequences of decades of carbon-based pollution. 

“I don t doubt one bit that they ve done community outreach to our mayor and our city council and those kinds of folks, but they re not talking to us, the people on the ground,” Valdez said. Mothers Out Front is the only environmental group with paid staff in Pueblo, and the Colorado School of Mines or others involved in creating the hub have not contacted them, he said. 

Pueblo is constantly sold on new technology or economic transition as a job creator and educational uplift for a historically poor blue-collar county, Valdez said. Some local officials have been pursuing a new nuclear reactor for Pueblo for years, long after the state’s only reactor, at Fort St. Vrain near Platteville in Weld County, was decommissioned. Xcel’s Comanche 3 unit was promoted as the height of new coal technology and a jobs bonanza, and now employs only a few dozen people “in a community of 113,000-plus” while pumping out enormous pollution, Valdez said. 

“When you’ve used a community like Pueblo as a dumping ground for bottom of the barrel polluting industries that other communities like Denver and Cherry Hills don t want, it s easy to continue doing. It  becomes just normal behavior to you,” Valdez said. “A lot of these lawmakers and state regulatory agencies, they don t even think about it. ‘Oh, yeah, let s just put it in Pueblo. That s what we always do.’”

Mayor Gradisar represents those who don’t want to be left out of what could be an important new industry. Carbon capture could also be a way to support Pueblo’s historic jobs base at carbon dioxide-emitting industries, whether Comanche, or the cement plant, or the wind turbine factory that creates pollution while making parts, he said. 

“Carbon capture is an innovative way that has the possibility of allowing those industries to continue without doing damage to the environment,” Gradisar said. “I think you have to capture the carbon where it s being produced. And certainly, these are the source of good paying jobs for citizens of Pueblo.”

Many federal and state laws passed in recent years shaping the global warming fight and the decarbonization of the U.S. economy have included explicit environmental justice provisions requiring consultation and mitigation for historically impacted communities. But those provisions are often ignored in Colorado, local environmental justice groups say.

I think you have to capture the carbon where it s being produced. And certainly, these are the source of good paying jobs for citizens of Pueblo.

— Pueblo Mayor Nick Gradisar

The pressure for new carbon capture hubs overran recommendations from the state Environmental Justice Advisory Board when the group was asked to do a hasty review of a state carbon capture, utilization and storage task force report, Valdez and Gonzalez said. Three members of the CCUS Task Force — the Sierra Club, the Environmental Defense Fund and Western Resource Advocates — said they could not fully support the final report until the advisory board’s criticisms were thoroughly explored. 

The advisory board’s overarching critique was that carbon capture advocates need to be honest that sequestration doesn’t stop the carbon dioxide created by coal power plants or cement plants, nor does it reduce other pollutants from those smokestacks that fall on disadvantaged communities. 

And the capture and sequestration economy is not without its own big footprint, the advisory board noted. “While a CCUS operation may not emit additional pollution, it may have the ability for example to destroy habitats, consume excess amounts of water, and increase seismic activity,” they wrote. 

While Colorado and Wyoming collaborate to pursue carbon capture projects, they will be competing with other regions whose leaders say they see similar opportunity. 

RMI, founded as Rocky Mountain Institute, leads a group with a $3 million grant earlier this year to study potential for direct air carbon capture hubs in the Northwestern states. 

Researchers at RMI are consulted around the world for their expert opinions on climate change, alternative energy and decarbonizing the economy. RMI agrees with the international science consensus that large amounts of carbon dioxide must be removed from the atmosphere to achieve climate goals, in addition to drastically cutting current emissions, Pike said. 

To do that, Pike said, the options include carbon removal and storage, altering oceans to soak up more carbon, and crushing basalt into rocks that absorb carbon. 

Or you could just plant more trees. 

“But it would be foolish to bet entirely on forests,” given wildfire and other land management challenges, Pike said. Just like it would be foolish “to bet entirely on direct air capture, as it s quite an early stage technology” and costs are still unclear. 

RMI’s perspective is that “we ve got to test everything,” he said. “Generate as many options for ourselves as possible because it would be foolish to bet on any one approach.” 

Gonzalez and other advocates echo at least part of what Pike is saying. But for all the talk of exploring all options, she said, Colorado is rushing ahead on a carbon storage economy “that hasn t been fully proven, and comes with a big price tag that could be used to fund more tried and true decarbonization strategies that don t come with as many risks to the community.” 

More trees would be a good start, Gonzalez said. 

Growing up in Pueblo, driving past the glowing steel slag heaps, watching Comanche’s smokestacks rise, seeing solar panels and wind turbines spread like irrigated crops southeast of his neighborhood, Valdez is well-versed in the mantra of job creation and a community building itself out of trouble.

From where he stands, the Bighorn solar farm and CS Wind turbine factory literally surrounding Comanche and Evraz, are like matter and antimatter poised on the edge of the future. Whether carbon capture constitutes antimatter, or more troublesome matter, is now the debate.

Valdez is asked what he would say about the dangers of a carbon capture economy to a Pueblo pipefitter or steelworker, hopeful for future work in building a carbon pipeline or a drill rig.

He pauses, wipes his dripping brow, and says he would ask them to think about what the people of the Iroquois nation believed from their concept of the Seventh Generation: Act now in ways that will benefit not just yourself, but families beyond your own in generations living more than 100 years into the future. 

“Those are temporary jobs,” Valdez said. “Once that pipeline is done, the work is done. And then you have to go figure out what else you re going to do. And there has to be some balance between putting my own community at risk and going for my own financial independence or stability.” 

He flings a thumb over his shoulder at Comanche. 

“We ve made bad decisions already. This plant, I think, was a horrible decision for Pueblo,” Valdez said. “It s a perfect example where large swaths of the community came out against it and they put it here anyway. And I think we need to do better.”

When it comes to carbon pollution, Valdez said, “You re not just making it disappear. You re putting it underground.”