Photo: Marie D. De Jesus, Staff / Houston Chronicle

WASHINGTON - Almost two years after Congress passed a law more than doubling tax credits for power and industrial plants that build systems to prevent carbon dioxide emissions, efforts to begin construction are on hold.

Companies have announced plans to build more than 20 so-called carbon capture facilities, but all are waiting for the Internal Revenue Service to issue guidance on the specifics of how the tax credit can be claimed. Considering the law requires construction to begin before 2024, and getting financing and government permits can takes years, the delay threatens to shut down many of the projects all together, said Kurt Waltzer, managing director at the Clean Air Task Force, a nonprofit working on climate change solutions.

“If you were to start a large power plant or steel plant today after the rules came out, it would be almost impossible to reach commenced construction in that time frame,” he said. “It’s not that there aren’t projects we think are going to go forward, but it’s the larger projects. It takes about six years from the original concept to the design and the detailed engineering and permitting and then getting to final investment decision and starting construction.”

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A spokesman for the IRS declined to comment on the delay..

The tax agency is coming under increasing pressure to move ahead from Democrats and Republicans, including Rep. Mike Conaway, R-Llano. In November, not long before stepping down as secetary of energy, Rick Perry wrote a letter to Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, who oversees the IRS, to move ahead on issuing the guidance before the end of the year - as he also did in 2018.

“On behalf of our many stakeholders in pursuing advanced power generation and [carbon capture] research and development that will spur economic growth, I urge your attention to these issues,” Perry wrote.

Projects are planned at sites across the country, with five under study in Texas alone. Among the companies leading the way is the Houston oil and gas company Occidental Petroleum, which relies on carbon dioxide to aid in crude production from its wells in West Texas and New Mexico.

Earlier this week, Occidental and French energy major Total announced they were moving ahead on a carbon capture project at a cement plant in Colorado. With plans to capture more than 700,00 tons of carbon a year, the new tax credit should be worth more than $25 million a year to the project.

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But estimates alone are not enough to move ahead.

“As Treasury and the Service know from its work on other tax credits, tax equity investors require the highest level of certainty on the availability of the tax credit when they invest,” David Lowman, an attorney for Occidental, wrote to the IRS this summer.

Behind the scenes, the IRS has told companies they are planning to issue at least some of the guidance on the tax credit this month, with plans to release the bulk in March. But with similar promises made last year, no one is certain the IRS will come through.

james.osborne@chron.com

Twitter: @osborneja