20 C E N T E R F O R I N T E R N AT I O N A L E N V I R O N M E N TA L L AW B OX 2 © Alex Gindin/Unsplash A Note on Carbon Removal Technology Patent filings and related documents demonstrate that, from as early as the 1950s, the petroleum industry was researching and patenting technology for removing CO2 from waste streams, low emission vehicles, fuel cells, and solar panels—all technologies which might have been deployed to reduce emissions and mitigate the impacts of climate change. In 1954, the Standard Oil Development Company patented a process for the “Production of Pure Carbon Dioxide” from the combustion of fossil fuels.174 A patent for removing carbon dioxide, among other gases, was assigned to Phillips Petroleum Company in 1966.175 Another patent for the removal of acidic gases—including carbon dioxide—from gaseous streams in 1973 is assigned to Shell Oil Company.176 Carbon dioxide has important commercial uses, and it is not clear that these companies were patenting processes for removing carbon dioxide and other gases for the purpose of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Esso, for example, holds patents from 1965177 and 1970178 for processes of injecting carbon dioxide into The removal and storage of carbon dioxide as an emissions reduction strategy remains unproven, uneconomic, and highly risky.180 Even assuming such technologies could be deployed at the massive scale envisioned and promoted by industry today, and that the immense impacts to land, water, communities, and human rights attendant to that deployment could be addressed, the prospects for keeping massive quantities of CO2 effectively buried for thousands of years are extremely uncertain.181 Moreover, the oil industry’s long promotion of carbon capture as a tool for extracting additional oil and gas from the ground through “enhanced oil recovery” makes the potential benefits for the climate illusory at best. Nonetheless, had technologies for removing CO2 from waste streams been seriously deployed more than four decades ago—and their attendant costs properly factored into the costs of burning fossil fuels—both the scale of the climate crisis and the economic externalities that effectively subsidize oil and gas combustion might have been reduced. wells to increase the recovery of petroleum—a process long known as enhanced oil recovery, and, in recent years, it has been misleadingly touted as a form of “carbon capture and storage.” However, what is clear is that regardless of the purpose of these patents, the industry was aware of and actively researching techniques to remove carbon dioxide from gaseous streams. In fact, and as noted earlier in this report, a 1980 document from Imperial Oil (Exxon’s Canadian subsidiary) indicates that the company was eminently aware of both the ability of carbon dioxide reduction technologies and the relationship that technology had to climate change. “There is no doubt that increases in fossil fuel usage and decreases in forest cover are aggravating the potential problem of increased CO2 in the atmosphere. Technology exists to remove CO2 from stack gases but removal of only 50% of the CO2 would double the cost of power generation.”179 Oil companies were also investing heavily in fuel cell technology. Between 1963 and 1970, at least five patents for fuel cells were assigned to Esso Research and Engineering Company.182 Over the same period, additional fuel cell patents were assigned to Shell Oil and the Standard Oil Company of Ohio.183 Indeed, oil company patents accounted for a significant portion of the overall fuel cell research discussed in the review. Again, regardless of whether the interest in this research was to produce low-emissions vehicles for their emission profile, because they appeared to be a profitable business venture, or for any other reason, these patents demonstrate that at least three oil companies were not just aware of, but developing, fuel-cell technologies with potential uses in electric or hybrid vehicles. This research is unsurprising in light of rising interest in clean and electric vehicle technologies during the early 1960s. And it was offered as a rationale in 1967, when Robert Dunlop, president of Sun Oil and chairman of API, testified before Congress that federal research subsidies for electric vehicles and other alternatives to internal combustion engines were completely unnecessary because his industry was already doing that research.184 In 1974, responding to the oil crisis of the preceding year, the US Congress enacted the Solar Energy Research Development and Demonstration Act, generating billions of dollars in federal research subsidies for solar technologies.