CCS future, not past, relevant to LA Senate race

Republican Senate candidates trying to differentiate themselves in a field where daylight barely shines among them on issue preferences should stop playing “he said/she said” and instead concentrate on telling voters what they will do on the issue of carbon capture and sequestration.

In a battle largely played out in gatherings and on social media, Treas. John Fleming and state Sen. Blake Miguez supporters have taken to trading accusations about whether each is against CCS and when. Fleming indirectly started it when some months ago he began proclaiming that he was the only candidate not to have voted for expanding CCS at some point in his legislative career.

That hit both Miguez and, although perhaps not intended since she didn’t enter the race until recently, state Rep. Julie Emerson where they live. Since 2020, with both being members of the Legislature throughout, several matters have come through that regulate CCS in some fashion, sometimes expansionary, sometimes restrictive, that scarcely any legislator ever voted against. As late as 2024 both were voting in favor of bills expanding the scope of CCS.

While neither publicly have addressed the controversy, supporters of Miguez’s have been by trying to shoot the messenger. They claim, using a trail of web material, that not only did Fleming have a pro-expansion CCS vote while a member of the U.S. House of Representatives but also his opposition to CCS only became public when he began touting his line about CCS votes cast. They also assert that back when these votes were taken too little was known about CCS and its safety concerns and need to dislodge private property rights to hold legislators accountable for these in the present.

That’s a weak argument, akin to ignorance of the law being an excuse to break it, and could be applied as well to Fleming’s supposed 2015 vote on an omnibus energy bill where the section in question only in the absolutely vaguest sense could be read as an endorsement of CCS – it instructed the federal government that it could shovel more funds to CCS research if an evaluated project seemed promising. Keep in mind that there’s nothing wrong in conducting CCS research, or even in having CCS as long as it has adequate safety measures attached, buy in from local governments, and that government isn’t subsidizing it.

A recent executive order by GOP Gov. Jeff Landry touched many of these bases but could not address the single biggest failing attendant to CCS: federal government tax policy favoring, to taxpayer detriment, the highly uneconomical practice. Outside of enhanced oil recovery, there’s no use for captured and stored carbon at present that pays for itself.

It’s done in most cases only because of a lucrative tax credit known as Section 45Q. So, the relevant issue for the campaign is preference regarding the retention of that credit, regardless of when opposition really began or whether everybody was asleep at the wheel.

Fleming has publicly spoken about it, saying it should be repealed. We also reasonably can infer that the remaining major candidate, Republican Public Service Commissioner Eric Skrmetta, even if he has yet specifically to address publicly the issue, would be against it since he is on the record in a public forum, a year prior to launching his Senate bid, calling CCS part of  a “scam.”

So, let’s hear from Miguez and Emerson about 45Q credits. And if they pledge to try to dump them, then voters can take note that only GOP incumbent Bill Cassidy, to the chagrin of state voters, among quality candidates shows any genuine backing of CCS, giving them another reason to toss him out of office in favor of any of the Republican front runners.