How Did DOE Waste Half a $Billion on Carbon Capture? - Bob Bauman, former federal federal investigator

As the federal government gears up to spend new climate money, it is vital to look at some of the failures in the past. This is especially true with carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) since the DOE announced last week that it plans to spend a whopping $3.5 billion on four new carbon capture demonstration plants. This week we meet with Bob Bauman, a veteran government investigator and auditor, to discuss how the Department of Energy (DOE) wasted nearly half a billion dollars on failed carbon capture and storage (CSS) technology demonstration projects in the past.

The failed CSS projects are described in a report released by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) in December 2021 called CARBON CAPTURE AND STORAGE: Actions Needed to Improve DOE Management of Demonstration Projects. CCS is a controversial technology with an unproven past and this GAO report is another cautionary tale on how climate money can be wasted away. As most in the climate community knows, we do not have time for do-overs and waste.

Bob uses his 30+ years as a government investigator to explain how this kind of waste occurs, and what it portends for the $3.5 billion the Department of Energy recently announced they're investing on behalf of U.S. taxpayers in CSS projects. Bob is the former partner of CMW Executive Director Dina Rasor in the Bauman & Rasor Group. They worked together on various federal fraud and waste projects for 27 years, espeically in bringing qui tam False Claims lawsuits on behalf of whistleblowers that returned over $200 million to the federal government and authored two investigative books together. Before running the Bauman and Rasor Group, Bob worked as an investigator for the federal government for 36 years including 12 years for the Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS).