What they’re saying: Carbon Engineering says its machine — part of which includes a giant fan — will be able to capture CO2 at less than $100 a ton. Its CEO says that's the cheapest price any company of its kind has achieved (only a small handful of such companies exist).

“There has been a lot of discussion around how [this technology] costs too much. What you’re seeing here is clear evidence that is not the case. This is financially sensible and ready to go to market.”

Where it stands:

• Carbon Engineering's investors include billionaire Bill Gates, venture arms of oil companies Chevron and Occidental Petroleum, several equity firms and private family foundations.
• This $68 million, which the company says is the biggest such publicly disclosed announcement, is more than half of the total funding it has received since its founding a decade ago, a spokesperson said.

One level deeper:

• For at least the near term, the technology needs policies incentivizing it, Oldham said, and in America there are 2 big ones: a recently expanded federal tax credit for captured CO2 and California’s new law requiring 100% of its electricity come from carbon-free sources by 2045.
• The captured CO2 can then be stored underground (often, ironically, after extracting oil) or turned into transportation fuel with another of the company's technologies.

What we're watching: The company will announce later this year the sites of 2 commercial plants, with at least 1 in North America, per Oldham. One of its investors, Jim McDermott of Rusheen Capital Management, says the cost curve will drop, much like what happened with solar energy as more plants are built.

Go deeper:

• Earth's climate-change liposuction: Sucking carbon from the air
• The oily path to tackling climate change
• Big oil's interest in carbon tech increases

“[A carbon tax] would make American gas more expensive. Since we buy American gas as cheap as possible and try to resell it on the world market, it’s going to be a very significant cost to Tellurian. Regardless of this, it’s the right thing to do. We need to accept it and move on.”

Where it stands: The 3-year-old company is working to build an export terminal in Louisiana backed by its own gas resources and pipelines that allows partners to gain equity — a business model it hopes can ensure cheaper prices than competitors. It's projected to begin operating in early 2023.

• Souki told me an interview last year that he supports a $40 per ton carbon tax, which is what his company modeled, although he says that ultimately he’s agnostic on whichever policy is able to adequately reduce emissions. Any tax would “affect companies individually, but it’ll be insignificant on the global scale," Souki told me in another interview last week at the CERAWeek by IHS Markit conference in Houston.
• At least in the short-term, natural gas is likely to benefit from a carbon tax that pushes out coal for electricity, particularly in Asia's growing economies like India, which is poised to become one of Tellurian’s customers. Over time, though, it would also in theory reduce the use of natural gas and oil.

By the numbers: Tellurian ended last year with a nearly $126 million loss on roughly $11 million revenue, according to the Houston Chronicle. The Chronicle notes that the results are better than in 2017, when the company had $230 million loss on $5.4 million of revenue.

The big picture: Oil and gas companies are increasingly supporting and putting money behind lobbying for a carbon tax, driven by investor pressure and greater public awareness. But it remains a far-fetched idea in Washington for at least the next couple of years, with President Trump in the White House, Republicans controlling at least one chamber of Congress, and Democrats focused on the Green New Deal, which as of now doesn’t include an explicit price on emissions.

Reality check: It’s easier for companies to absorb new taxes than it is for individual consumers, partly because companies often pass along those costs to consumers. That’s the main argument from Republicans for why they oppose any big action on climate change, although independent modeling — some done by Columbia University — shows that a carbon tax whose revenue is returned to consumers ultimately helps lower-income people.

Go deeper: Energy pioneer tries to surf the natural-gas wave

Editor's note: This piece was corrected to show Charif Souki is a co-founder of Tellurian (not CEO).

The intrigue: The juxtaposition was on stark display last week.

• I spent the first half of last week at a major oil and gas conference in Houston (CERAWeek by IHS Markit), where virtually all executives acknowledged climate change as a pressing issue and a few, including CEOs of major oil companies like BP and Equinor, implored the industry to do more and embrace big policy changes.
• The second part of the week I was back in Washington, D.C., where Republican leaders of House committees held a press conference to criticize the Green New Deal but didn’t discuss policies they would pursue instead of it.

Where it stands: After a decade of either questioning or ignoring climate change, some Republicans are slowly beginning to discuss the issue. But for now it's mostly rhetoric and it's not enough to convince the majority of the party, and especially Trump, to change their views.

• Trump is considering creating a controversial panel questioning federal climate reports. A senior administration official said the government takes "seriously the issue of climate change and it is important that policies and decision-making be based on transparent and defensible science."
• The loudest voices in the Republican congressional caucus are those who make inflammatory or bizarre statements, such as likening the Green New Deal to genocide and responding to a question about climate change by explaining photosynthesis.

Between the lines: Those remarks aside, a fundamental difference persists between what most Republicans say should be done about climate change versus almost all other leaders: mostly status quo with incremental bills versus more sweeping policy changes.

• Republicans say what they’re supporting now — relatively narrow bills on topics like carbon-capture technology, hydropower and nuclear power — is sufficient.
• Zack Roday, spokesperson for Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said: “I disagree that those are minor bills — solutions that reduce emissions while expanding America’s renewable energy options matter.”
• Bigger policies that could more substantially reduce emissions are unpopular with most conservative lawmakers: a price on carbon emissions, regulations or subsidies.
• Matt Sparks, spokesperson for House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, said: "Conservatives are leaning into the debate on our future. ... But whether it is a carbon tax or Green New Deal, the conventional conversation in Washington today has impacts that hurt working Americans."

Almost everyone else says far broader policy changes are needed — including most oil and gas executives, other parts of corporate America, scientists, the United Nations, Democrats, economists, environmentalists and youth activists.

• There’s big disagreement about what that policy should be and how to ensure a big reduction in greenhouse gas emissions doesn’t cost too much. Energy costs are traditionally regressive: hitting poorer people more.
• There's certainly no consensus that it needs to be the Green New Deal, which shows how far some Democrats have shifted to the left. The proposal is a non-binding resolution calling on Congress to pass a 10-year plan drastically reducing emissions and creating government-run health care and job guarantee programs.

At the Houston conference, energy executives and other experts, including Ernest Moniz, President Obama’s former energy secretary, said the proposal is unrealistic. Yet amid the criticism, there was widespread agreement the government should be acting more.

“I think there is a general acceptance in the energy industry that there should be some kind of pricing on carbon emissions,” Charif Souki, a pioneer in the natural-gas industry and founder of Tellurian Inc., a Houston-based gas export company, told me on the sidelines of the conference.

On the Green New Deal, Souki said: “This is a bunch of aspirations. Tell me how we’re going to get there and tell me how also we’re going to provide electricity to a billion people who don’t have it.” Yet he said the debate around it is healthy: “That’s part of democracy.”

Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.), who is the top Republican on the new select committee Democrats created to discuss climate change, is looking for new bipartisan policies, according to spokesperson Kevin Roig.

• One includes making changes to the Climate Change Technology Program to focus on "technologies we can truly commercialize that will result in” lower energy costs and emissions, Roig said.
• That program dates to 2002 and is led by the Energy Department. Its website isn’t working, and among the only information I could find about it is this 2006 report.

What we’re watching: whether Republicans support new, more substantive policy, including a price on carbon emissions.

• Two House Republicans, Francis Rooney of Florida and Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, support a carbon tax — out of nearly 200 GOP House members.
• The Climate Leadership Council, a group backed by former Republican politicians and oil companies, has a plan to tax carbon emissions and send the money back to consumers. The leader of that group, Ted Halstead, predicts the Senate will introduce a bill on that policy later this year — with Republican support.