Brad Crabtree, assistant secretary for the US Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management, kicked off the Carbon Action Alliance’s CO₂NNECT 2024 conference in Keystone, Colorado, with keynote remarks looking into the future of carbon management deployment in the country. Crabtree, also a former vice president at the Great Plains Institute, highlighted the Department of Energy’s ongoing efforts to support carbon management projects and the critical importance of local communities‘ input in the process.
The keynote set the tone for the three-day conference taking place Sep. 30-Oct. 2 that centered around how all parties involved in carbon management projects, from industry to policymakers, Tribal nations, nonprofits, labor, and local communities.
Crabtree shared with attendees “if we are to deploy carbon management projects and infrastructure at climate scale, we must engage meaningfully with communities, tribes, and other impacted stakeholders—and deliver high-quality projects that create economic and environmental benefits for communities where projects are built. And by meaningful, I mean engagement that not only seeks to inform, but also to provide opportunities for local community and stakeholder input that demonstrably helps shape the actual design and development of projects and their associated benefits.”