By Ed Sealover | Colorado Politics
Colorado regulators gave preliminary approval on Dec. 5 to the state’s first comprehensive rules on carbon capture and sequestration — rules that business leaders warn could scare off projects that are needed to meet statewide emissions-reduction goals.
The rules that Colorado Energy and Carbon Management Commission leaders are set to give final approval will be included in the state’s application to take regulatory primacy for the growing sector from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. They would establish safeguards that ensure the safety of Class VI injection wells and limit the impact they can have on surrounding communities.
Operators of such wells sequester carbon coming from industrial sites — typically oil-and-gas drilling pads or other industrial facilities whose emissions otherwise are hard to limit — and then inject them permanently into geologic layers thousands of feet underground. The sector, prominent in a handful of other states, is new to Colorado but is considered essential to the state reaching its goal of net-zero emissions by 2050.