States are better positioned than the federal government to oversee the permitting of carbon dioxide storage wells that are vital to greater deployment of carbon capture and removal projects, an expert panel told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee on Wednesday.
Granting permitting authority over Class VI wells to states can reduce a permit pileup at EPA, which reviews Class VI permits in all but a handful of states, the panelists said. Class VI wells are used for the geologic sequestration of CO2.
“States are best suited,” said Dan Yates, executive director of the Ground Water Protection Council, a nonprofit whose membership includes energy and water regulatory agencies.
“One of the reasons is a simple numbers game,” Yates said. Rather than EPA managing wells for multiple states, distributing the load across multiple state agencies with better access to data makes sense, he said.
