The geography of CCS regulatory development in the U.S.

States will play a vital role in the deployment of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) in the United States. Many of the decisions and planning required to deploy CCS projects on a national scale will occur at the state and regional levels, including Public Utility Commission decisions on treatment of CCS costs, decisions on land use for building CO₂ pipelines and developing geologic sequestration sites. There has been a burst of CCS policy activity in the states over the past few years. As of August 2008, 26 states have some sort of policy in place aimed at furthering CCS. To examine the importance of states' particular circumstances on CCS policy development, we consider variables related to each state's geology, electrical power system, economy, and political ideology. We find that distinctly different profiles emerge between states with CCS policies, states with climate policy, states with both, and states with neither. Understanding the state level policy landscape provides a basis for more effective coordination between state, regional, and federal CCS policy, and sheds some light on the compromises that need to be made between geographically diverse states for CCS to be widely deployed. A case study of the Midwestern Governors Association CO₂ Management Infrastructure Partnership illustrates the opportunities that regional partnerships offer to facilitate these types of compromises and coordinate policy between states with varying circumstances but a shared interest in regional cooperation to advance commercial scale CCS.