Tax credits is often another way of saying environmental pollution.

They are appropriate in the short term IF they cause sufficient innovation or economies of scale to kick in.

Often they cause more waste, because tax credits often benefit less efficient and more polluting solutions. Without a very deep and very careful analysis, your best proxy for measuring environmental harm is simply the amount spent.

For example: corn subsidies for ethanol production are significantly harmful for carbon dioxide pollution (via indirect effects like fertilizer production).

What? If we have money to spend on subsidizing stuff, we should subsidize the most efficient methods, which as parent implies, are the electrochemical methods.

The most efficient way to create methane is actually to drill a well, isnt it?

I’m being downvoted for suggesting we incentivize something that will help us get off fossil fuels

I think you're being downvoted because you suggest allocating a limited resource to a method that has better alternatives.

So the tax credits should go to well drilling? And how is a tax credit a limited resource, when the US ran a deficit of over $1 trillion last year?

No, the tax credits should go to more efficient measures for atmospheric carbon capture. Tax credits are a limited resource because money's only use is to buy limited resources. If you increase the money supply to infinity, money loses its meaning.

No you’re being downvoted because you’re suggesting the worse methane synthesis method should get subsidized when a better alternative exists.