Google’s bets on carbon capture power plants, which have a mixed record

Google said Today it will invest in a natural gas power plant in Illinois that seeks to capture most of its carbon emissions.

The 400-megawatt power plant will be built outside Decatur next to an ethanol plant operated by Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), which already captures CO₂ from its activities. Google will buy most of the electricity to power its nearby data centers, while ADM will use some of the steam and electricity from the power plant. Low Carbon Infrastructure is creating new projects.

Google wants to capture “about 90%” of CO₂ Produced by the power plant, the company said.

Carbon dioxide from Google’s power plant will be injected into the same geological storage formations already used by ADM’s ethanol facility. The site is the first long-term CO location₂ Good storage in USA

Typically, about 2,000 metric tons of CO₂ sent to the well daily. But injection there was halted in 2024 when saline brine, which stores deeply dissolved CO2, was found to have moved into “unauthorized areas,” according to the EPA. ADM said the leak was due to corrosion of a monitoring well, E&E News ReportAnd since then they have resumed injections.

Although carbon capture and storage (CCS) shows great promise in reducing carbon emissions from coal and natural gas power plants, it has a mixed record in the field.

A Recent research The 13 CCS facilities that represent 55% of all captured carbon show that most are not meeting expectations. An ExxonMobil facility in Wyoming, which processes natural gas, is capturing 36% less than expected. The most similar to Google’s project, a 115-megawatt power plant in Canada, has taken about 50% of what it promised.

CCS, when it works, can help mitigate pollution from burning natural gas to generate electricity, but it will do nothing to address methane leaks that occur throughout the natural gas supply chain. Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas, producing 84 times more warming over 20 years than carbon dioxide.

As a result, leaks could significantly change carbon accounting. With a leakage rate of only 2%, natural gas burns continuously equivalent to coal. Capturing carbon will reduce that figure, but it can’t eliminate the warming caused by extracting and transporting natural gas.