Budget & Policy

The Department of Energy has named retired Air Force Col. Barton Barnhart as the Office of Environmental Management’s Deputy Assistant Secretary for Program Planning and Budget, effective this week. The position was previously held in an acting capacity by Connie Flohr. “His previous positions included serving as Director of Installations at the U.S. Air Force […]

House lawmakers are trying to tie any progress on interim storage to the completion of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission Yucca Mountain license review, according to the draft language of a planned bill obtained by E&E News yesterday. The bill, entitled the “Nuclear Waste Policy Act Amendment of 2015,” would enable the Department of Energy to […]

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) plans to block a Senate vote on the nomination of Monica Regulbuto to be the next Department of Energy Office of Environmental Management Assistant Secretary, he said at a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing to consider the nomination. Wyden cited both Hanford safety culture concerns and a failure to […]

The Senate Appropriations Committee (SAC) signed off on its version of the Fiscal Year 2016 defense spending bill on Thursday, matching the Obama Administration’s requests for key nuclear weapon acquisition programs. The committee voted 27-3 to report out the $575.9 billion bill to the Senate floor. SAC matched several White House proposals including its $1.1 […]

Brian Bradley NS&D Monitor 6/12/2015 House lawmakers voted this week against an amendment offered to the Fiscal Year 2016 defense appropriations bill that would have moved $25 million from an Air Force procurement account to the defense-wide research and development account to bolster U.S. military response options to respond to Russia’s alleged violation of the […]

Brian Bradley  NS&D Monitor  6/12/2015 Senate appropriators this week expressed concern about whether the Navy’s budget request for Fiscal Year 2016 accurately reflects the service’s most important priorities, including the Ohio-class Replacement (OR) Program. The Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday reported out its version of the FY 2016 defense spending bill, which does not include […]

Brian Bradley NS&D Monitor 6/12/2015 Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) this week blocked a proposed amendment to the Senate version of the Fiscal Year 2016 National Defense Authorization Act that would have prevented the Obama Administration from moving forward with a plan to accelerate dismantlement of retired nuclear weapons. Using a procedural move during floor debate […]

Brian Bradley NS&D Monitor 6/12/2015 Mirroring a House counterpart, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) this week submitted an amendment to the Senate version of the Fiscal Year 2016 National Defense Authorization Act that would prohibit using Defense Department funds to reduce the alert levels of U.S. intercontinental ballistic missiles. The language would lift the prohibition for […]

Valerie Insinna Defense Daily  6/12/2015 The House on June 11 passed its $578.6 billion defense spending bill for fiscal year 2016, after members voted to eliminate a prohibition on transferring funds for the Ohio-class replacement submarine to the National Sea Based Deterrence Fund created last year by Congress. The House Armed Services Committee’s authorization bill recommended […]

Abby L. Harvey GHG Monitor 6/12/2015 The Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory last week announced a funding opportunity of up to $3 million to support research into carbon capture from coal-relevant, low concentration CO2 sources. “Technology proposed in this topic area may include, but is not limited to: coal-relevant lifecycle GHG emissions such […]

Abby L. Harvey GHG Monitor 6/12/2015 Refusing to comply with the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed carbon emissions standards for existing coal-fired power plants is not a recommended course of action for states moving forward, Bill Becker, Executive Director of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies (NACAA), said late last week at an event hosted […]

Abby L. Harvey GHG Monitor 6/12/2015 Australian energy company AGL announced late last week that it has joined with multinational industrial gas company Air Liquide to pursue carbon capture and utilization on the AGL Torrens Island power station in Adelaide, Australia. Once completed, the post-combustion retrofit is expected to capture 50,000 tonnes of CO2 from […]

Abby L. Harvey GHG Monitor 6/12/2015 A provision in the House version of the Fiscal Year 2016 Interior and Environment Appropriations bill, reported out of subcommittee this week, would prevent the Environmental Protection Agency from using funding to carry out proposed regulations to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from existing and new coal-fired power plants. The […]

Abby L. Harvey GHG Monitor 6/12/2015 DC Circuit Court judges this week found that lawsuits brought against the Environmental Protection Agency concerning its proposed carbon emissions standards for existing coal-fired power plants were premature as the rule has yet to be finalized. The rule in question would set federally determined emissions reduction targets for each […]

Abby L. Harvey GHG Monitor 6/12/2015 Rate increases proposed by Mississippi Power last month to meet the cost of the Kemper County Energy Facility, a new build coal plant that will employ carbon capture, utilization and storage technology, have been challenged in a filing submitted to the Mississippi Public Service Commission last week. The increases […]

GHG Monitor 6/12/2015 ON THE INTERNATIONAL FRONT Leaders of the G7 group of nations this week released a declaration committing to limiting global temperature rise to 2°C in part by decarbonizing the global economy by 2100. “We commit to doing our part to achieve a low-carbon global economy in the long-term including developing and deploying […]

The House voted late last night to eliminate  a part of the House Appropriations Committee’s version of the Fiscal Year 2016 defense spending bill that would have blocked financial transfers into the National Sea-Based Deterrence Fund, a standalone account established to protect Navy shipbuilding from significant financial impacts anticipated from the Ohio-class Replacement Program. At […]

A House Energy and Commerce panel Friday will hold a hearing titled “Oversight Failures Behind the Radiological Incident at [the Department of Energy’s] Waste Isolation Pilot Plant.” It stands to be the first hearing in Congress specifically focused on WIPP since the February 2014 radiological release and truck fire that shut down the transuranic waste […]

Brian Bradley NS&D Monitor 6/5/2015 The Air Force preliminarily estimates the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent will cost $62.3 billion from Fiscal Year 2015 to FY 2044 for development, procurement and military construction (MILCON), a service spokesperson told NS&D Monitor this week. The Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center’s (AFNWC’s) ICBM System Program Office (SPO) completed this draft […]

Kenneth Fletcher NS&D Monitor 6/5/2015 Questioning recent studies finding that downblending and disposal of surplus plutonium would be significantly less expensive than completing the Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility, House Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee Chair Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) said this week those analyses are “rather incomplete.” A 2014 Department of Energy analysis of plutonium […]

Kenneth Fletcher NS&D Monitor 6/5/2015 Former Deputy Energy Secretary Dan Poneman’s appointment to lead Centrus Energy should not impact funding support from Congress for the American Centrifuge technology, Rep. Chuck Fleischmann (R-Tenn.) said late this week.  Poneman, who left DOE last fall, was appointed as CEO of Centrus Energy in March in a move that […]

Brian Bradley NS&D Monitor 6/5/2015 Members of the House Appropriations Committee are “confused” about why the Navy “prematurely down-selected” to a “single material system” in 2014 to develop sonar bow domes for the Ohio-class Replacement (OR), according to the report accompanying the committee’s version of the defense spending bill for Fiscal Year 2016. The panel […]

Brian Bradley NS&D Monitor 6/5/2015 The White House has come out in opposition to sections of the Senate version of the FY 2016 National Defense Authorization Act that would impose restrictions on retirements of nuclear-capable bombers and increase the funding cap for Laboratory-Directed Research and Development (LDRD) programs at the Energy Department’s national laboratories. With […]

Abby L. Harvey GHG Monitor 6/5/2015 SCS Energy has decided to drop plans for its Hydrogen Energy California project to use the project’s captured CO2 in enhanced oil recovery and instead will focus on storage. “HECA plans to permit the project using storage instead of EOR, at least initially. This is possible for HECA because […]

Abby L. Harvey GHG Monitor 6/5/2015 Executives from six major oil and gas companies voiced their support for carbon pricing late last week in a letter to top officials with the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. The May 29 letter, which is signed by CEOs from BG Group, BP, Eni, Royal Dutch Shell, Statoil […]

Abby L. Harvey GHG Monitor 6/5/2015 With Mitsubishi Heavy Industries having scaled up its carbon capture technology to commercial scale for NRG Energy’s Petra Nova WA Parish project outside of Houston, Texas, the project manager for the Petra Nova effort said this week that if the project is a success, it may serve to quiet […]

Abby L. Harvey GHG Monitor 6/5/2015 The Petroleum Technology Research Center this week celebrated the official opening of the Aquistore carbon storage project at SaskPower’s Boundary Dam Power Station in Saskatchewan, Canada. The project will serve as the storage site for CO2 captured from the Boundary Dam project not being used in enhanced oil recovery. […]

Abby L. Harvey GHG Monitor 6/5/2015 Lawmakers from coal states pressed Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz this week on potential reliability issues that could result from projected coal plant retirements in coming years during a House Subcommittee on Energy and Power hearing on the Energy Department’s recently released Quadrennial Energy Review. Several factors, including environmental […]

Abby L. Harvey GHG Monitor 6/5/2015 The state of Wisconsin may be unable to comply with the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed carbon emissions standards for existing coal-fired power plants, Governor Scott Walker (R) told President Barack Obama in a May 21 letter. The proposed regulations, dubbed the Clean Power Plan, would require states to develop […]

GHG Monitor 6/5/2015 ON THE INTERNATIONAL FRONT Royal Dutch Shell reported its planning application for the Peterhead carbon capture and storage project to the Buchan Area Committee of the Aberdeenshire Council this week. The application will now move on for consideration by the full council on June 18. The Peterhead project will retrofit CCS technology […]